Lakes beckon, despite hurdles, and we're happy to take the bait

This was supposed to be Minnesota's summer that wasn't. Four-dollar gas and fear of economic free-fall were supposed to force us to skip our vacations and settle for the municipal pool and the back porch.

But as I surveyed the scene on westbound Interstate 94 last weekend, it was clear that half the state wasn't listening.

Some of the cars headed to Brainerd, Nisswa and points north were towing high-tech craft designed for stealth attacks on unsuspecting walleyes. Others towed testaments to testosterone -- bullet-shaped speedboats with motors that looked as if they could power a small aircraft carrier. Mostly, though, I saw ordinary cars crammed with young and old, and their North Country paraphernalia.

Why are so many Minnesotans willing to fork over a small fortune in gas money to make an annual pilgrimage to our state's lakes and pine forests?

Back in 1871, no one dreamed of this massive migration. That year, Brainerd was established as a railroad town and named after Anna Eliza Brainerd, the wife of the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad. By the 1890s, however, anglers began to appear, and they turned to local farmers for food and lodging.

In 1898, a German immigrant named Joseph Ruttger and his wife Josephine -- who had homesteaded on Bay Lake -- began catering to anglers with home-cooking and piano playing, and converted their hay barn into a dormitory. Ruttgers Bay Lake Lodge is still the oldest family-run resort in Minnesota, according to "Brainerd Bound," a 2004 book by Mark Rustad and Mark Rutter.

By the 1930s, Minnesota had become the nation's third most popular travel destination, after Florida and California, write Rustad and Rutter. In those years, they add, more than 1,200 resorts dotted the state's lakeshores. Tourism got another big boost in the 1950s, as baby boom families flocked to Gull, Whitefish, Pelican and other Brainerd area lakes.

My love for the Brainerd Lakes area began when I was teenager. My parents -- Iowans with six kids -- bought a little cabin there after a particularly disastrous camping trip and the demise of an old school bus we had used for vacation travel.

Today, the area boasts more latté shops than when I was young, but the essence of its magic hasn't changed.

The first thing you notice when you reach your lakeside destination is the stillness. The city's din is gone. The daily white-knuckle travel battle is a distant memory, as is the often numbing schedule of kids' soccer games and hockey camps. In their place you find lapping waves, the loons' haunting trill and the Milky Way in its full glory.

Amidst this beauty, TVs and video games are switched off and the laptop mostly stays in its bag. Thus liberated, you are free to enjoy simple pleasures: canoeing out to the rocks, dozing in the hammock, fishing off the dock and huddling around the fire pit to escape mosquitoes.

For many pilgrims, however, the best part of a trip up north is the gift of time to be a family. As you gather by the grill or over a game of hearts, you find yourself having the chats you never seem to make time for anywhere else.

This spring, she asked them to name their dream vacation. She was unprepared for the answer. "Let's go to back to Minnesota, Mom," they chorused. "It's the best vacation ever."