Fall 2011
Five for Fall:
Splendid places for stunning
color
A gem on Lake Minnetonka Dockside Edibles:
Pizza as Art
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The Best Events…
DOCKSIDE Jennifer Sorenson jsorenson@swpub.com
Editor:
Angelo Gentile agentile@swpub.com
Designer:
Brian Sorenson
th
Contributors this issue: Mathias Baden, Kristin Holtz, Sarah Tieck
Are On Lake Minnetonka & Mississippi River! P ro Priv ub u g a lic h te C an O r d ct u ob ise er s 22 n !d
Publisher:
Advertising Sales: 952-345-6477 Dockside is published quarterly by Southwest Newspapers. For advertising information, call 952-345-6477. For general comments and questions, send e-mail to agentile@swpub.com or call 952-345-6676.
2011 Fall Public Cruise Schedule!
Visit us online at: www.docksidemagazine.mn
• Mon-Wed-Fri 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m. Narrated Sightseeing Cruises $13.50 • Tuesday Night Happy Hour & Pizza Cruise “Free Pizza” $25.50 • Sunday Brunch, 11 a.m.–1 p.m. Includes Brunch, Sodas, Juices & Coffee! $30.50 • Children under 10—50% OFF Book Sightseeing • Reservations Required
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We love our lakes in Minnesota, in every season. Dockside Magazine covers lake life all year round. Publishing four times a year, the magazine invites readers to enjoy an engaging mix of features covering lifestyle-related stories and recreational-oriented topics, capturing the passion we have for playing and living on our gorgeous Minnesota lakes. We focus our attention on Lake Minnetonka, Prior Lake, and all of the scenic lakes in our southwest metro region. Welcome to life on the lake. To advertise, contact Jennifer Sorenson 952-345-6477, jsorenson@swpub.com.
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www.TwinCitiesCruises.com Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
3
departments
features
Recreation
14 Colorado in Minnesota? Sand Creek Adventures offers an uncommon setting.
Lake Lifestyles
8
A Gem on Lake Minnetonka Bringing the outside in.
Dockside Edibles
6
Artisan Pizza Pizza as art: Just use your imagination.
Season Preview
11
The Lure of the Leaves Try these five great places for fall foliage.
ON THE COVER Minnesota’s colorful autumn is arriving soon at places such as the Superior Hiking Trail at Oberg Mountain near Tofte. Photo courtesy of Explore Minnesota Tourism. All contents © 2011, Southwest Newspapers
Visit us online at www.docksidemagazine.mn
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Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
5$3,'0$5,1(%2$76 &20
Editor’s note
AFFORDABLE LANDSCAPING...
Beautiful Results
Autumn: Time to cool off
After an unusually steamy summer, most of us are looking forward to less humid conditions as fall arrives: mild mornings on the dock or in the boat, and cool evenings on the patio or deck.
COMMERCIAL/ RESIDENTIAL
This autumn may find you on the road in search of the brilliant fall colors that emerge at different times throughout the state. Freelance writer Laura French reports on the best places to find this colorful foliage. She lists some of the perennial favorites but a few of her choices may surprise you.
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Steve and Lois Bergerson will enjoy the cooler temps this time of year among their stunning gardens outside their light-filled Minnetrista home. Read in this issue about how they solved that “disconnect” between outside and inside as they created an inviting and welcoming home on Lake Minnetonka.
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In the kitchen this fall, change things up a bit by trying out a new approach to an old standard. The new approach: Artisan pizza. Freelance writer Sarah Tieck reports on this trend in Dockside Edibles.
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As we reach the two-year mark with this, our eighth issue, we welcome your ideas and thoughts about this magazine. Contact me at agentile@swpub.com.
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Dockside Edibles
O
n a recent Friday night, author Terry Walters became more than just the mom who makes her kids eat healthy stuff. The author of Clean Start, who will be a featured speaker at the Creative Connection conference this September in St. Paul, found herself with a group of kids to feed, so she emptied out her fridge and hosted an impromptu pizza party. Walters let go of the traditional pizza model, and let the artisan pizza trend—a sort of food art with handcrafted, high-quality ingredients—inspire her. She baked personal polenta crusts and set out everything in her fridge—pesto, spinach, basil leaves, red Photo by Gentl & Hyers onion, spring garlic, fresh mozzarella, and grated parmesan—for toppings.
Artisan Pizza You’re only limited by your imagination
Terry Walters
When you let go of what you know, she says, suddenly a pizza is a vehicle for getting goodness in. It can be a crisped tortilla topped with salad, locally grown farmers’
By Sarah Tieck
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market finds, and other ingredients that nourish your body, your senses, and your soul. “It’s like an artist’s palette,” Walters explains. “You can do anything with it. You’re only limited by your own imagination.” Author Cristina Ferrare also hosts pizza parties. The Big Bowl of Love author, also a Creative Connection speaker, makes Wolfgang Puck’s pizza dough recipe. She says this fast recipe makes about four personal-sized crusts. Then she sets up a buffet of pizza toppings and watches her friends and family create. “The only downside is if you have one oven,” she says. Ferrare tends toward gourmet ingredients, like prosciutto, creamy fresh burrata cheese, or fresh Thai basil. Or the ingredients could be unusual or exotic combinations like a cooked crust topped with a combination of creme fraiche, thinly smoked salmon, olive oil, parsley, and red onions. She serves it topped with fresh arugula and a lemon wedge. She’s also found some easy, quick prepared options, like Rao’s Sauce. “I like odd things,” she says. “I don’t like the pepperoni and cheese—that’s been done to death.”
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And no matter what the weather is like outside, she likes the flavor of the grill—a cast-iron grill pan in a 500-degree oven is a good stand-in for an outdoor grill.
For artisan pizza recipes by Terry Walters, visit www.docksidemagazine.mn.
Best of all? As long as you focus on savoring the melding of flavors, you can’t mess it up. “If it’s too runny or heavy, you just fold it up and eat it like a calzone,” Ferrare says. “That’s what’s fun about pizza: you can be inventive.”
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Lake Lifestyles
A gem on Lak
Steve and Lois Bergerson of Minnetri home is a study of light and nature w enjoy the view.
STEVE AND LOIS BERGERSON BRI 8
Dockside â—† Fall 2011
ke Minnetonka
ista have embraced lake living on Upper Lake Minnetonka. Their while the lot is full of lush gardens and relaxing places to sit and
Steve and Lois Bergerson affectionately call their Lake Minnetonka home, the Light House. Walk through the glass front door, and you immediately understand why.
Perched above Upper Lake, the house has expansive, east-facing windows that blur the distinction between indoors and outdoors. “We wanted a house that didn’t reach out and grab you. We wanted a house that would touch you,” Steve says. The Bergersons purchased the 3,200-square-foot, walkout rambler in 1993 after an exhaustive search through more than 125 Minnetonka lake homes, looking for the ideal combination of an east- or south-facing lot and gardening potential. What they found was the perfect lot but an old, dark 1960s rambler, complete with avocado fridge and shag carpet—a far cry from the beautiful restored Tudor they were leaving in Minneapolis. With loving patience, the fastidious couple transformed the Minnetrista house into the uplifting lightness the Bergersons grew up with on the South Dakota prairie. “The house was designed to bring the outdoors in and to diminish, to the extent possible, the disconnect between inside the house and outside the house,” says Steve, an advertising and trademark attorney at Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis. “We wanted them to become one as much as possible and the only way to do that, of course, is with glass or adding living space outdoors, which we did.”
Renovation The Bergersons did not rush their remodel. They spent seven years attending Parade of Homes remodeler showcases, clipping out magazine ideas, consulting architects, and studying how they used the home’s space. Then in 2001, they moved out and left the work to a construction crew to strip the house down to its studs, remove walls, and bump up low ceilings. They kept the main footprint, adding only 800 square feet including a glassed-in breakfast nook that floats over the couple’s impressive gardens. The Bergersons were the general contractors for the year-long renovation, working with Dream Home Builders of Howard Lake, Minn., to oversee every aspect of their new home. The result is a living space where the lake takes center stage. Floor-to-ceiling, custom-made Marvin windows provide panoramic views of Lake Minnetonka from every room in the house. The open-concept combination of kitchen, dining, and living area feels light and airy thanks to delineating columns and white molding and trim. More than 100 recessed lights, custom cabinetry, maple floors, and natural materials brighten the home, while French doors and transom windows let light flow uninhibited through the hallways.
ING THE OUTSIDE IN
Story and Photos by Kristin Holtz Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
9
outh, calls the Light House an idyllic setting, dramatically perched above the lake. “The gardens just absolutely make that,” he says.
Even the interior color scheme—soft pastel yellows, greens, and blues—draws from nature, says Lois, a retired controller from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul.
While majestic in summer with Steve’s gardens bursting through every window, the lot is really a theater of seasons, Steve says. White and pristine winter gives way to a budding spring, a summer in the making. Then comes fall with the oranges and reds bursting along the lakeshore.
“What is so spectacular is the attention to detail,” says longtime friend Jean Engebretson of Wayzata. “This is perfection.”
Living outdoors Creating a house that embraces nature requires expanding the living space out of doors, too, and the Bergersons have mastered lake living with gorgeous gardens and decks/patios. An avid gardener, Steve has turned the lot’s perennial gardens into a work of art. From the front walk to back terraces, the gardens are thick with lush greens, delicate blooms and bold colors. Statues and plaques pop playfully among the plants while benches offer seating to appreciate the lake view. Most stunning is the hillside garden that cascades down to the water.
An open-concept dining and kitchen is light and airy thanks to white cabinetry, light wood and pale yellow walls.
“Steve’s gardens are not a ‘garden’ at all; his entire lot is landscaped,” Engebretson says. “You encounter his gardens as you pull up the driveway, as you walk toward his front door, as you sit on the back deck, as you walk down to his boat. His wonderful work is everywhere.” At night, the gardens glow with soft, outdoor lighting by Touchstone while the Minneapolis skyline shines in the distance. Every summer, the couple throws a full moon party for friends, family and colleagues. Steve’s co-worker, John Pickerill of Plym-
“We love it. We absolutely love it,” Lois says. Every morning, Steve takes the stairway through his garden terrace to the dock to sit in his boat and read the paper. Living in the house and yard is like a spiritual experience, a oneness with nature, the Bergersons say. It’s like being on vacation all the time. “That’s how we feel. This is our piece of paradise,” Steve says. Kristin Holtz is a staff writer for the Shakopee Valley News.
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Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
Season Preview
The Lure of the Leaves Five best places for fall color By Laura French Photos courtesy of Explore Minnesota Tourism
If summer’s heat and humidity kept you housebound, treat yourself to an autumn outing…or two…or three. The long north-south rectangle that is Minnesota offers a six-week season of fall foliage. Minnesota’s Department of Natural Resources provides a weekly fall color update beginning September 1: Visit the agency’s website at DNR.state.mn./us. Jana Albers, a Forestry Health specialist with the DNR, says our hot, humid summer has put us “on course for a spectacular season of fall color.” The lemon yellow of aspens peaks earliest, Albers says, followed by the crimson of sugar maples, while the russet hues of oaks
hang on awhile. The tamarack is the last to go. A sunny day is ideal, contrasting the reds, yellows, and oranges with the bright blue sky. Of course, heavy rains and high winds can strip the leaves off the trees overnight. All the more reason why you may need to look in several directions for great fall color.
North The website Northshorefallcolors.com provides 25 separate tours, starting with Duluth’s Skyline Parkway and extending to Grand Portage, north of Grand Marais. The tours are divided into driving, hiking, and biking. There’s even a sailing option, aboard the 50-foot schooner Hjordis that departs for two-hour cruises from Grand Marais through Oct. 15.
Twin Citians tend to assume that “northern Minnesota” means “northeast,” but the northwestern part of the state also provides some great fall color. Maplewood State Park, just outside of Pelican Rapids, provides not only its namesake sugar maples, but also basswood, elm, and oak for a wonderful array of color. The Friends of Maplewood State Park host “Leaf Days” from Sept. 24 through October 2, with children’s activities and geocaching. There are 25 miles of trails for hiking in addition to 20 miles of trails for horseback riding.
East The shortest distance to great fall color from the Twin Cities is probably straight east, to the scenic St. Croix River valley. The St. Croix Trail follows the river on the Minnesota side, and Afton State Park offers hiking and paved bike trails. But if you’re going to enjoy fall color on the river, why not be on the river? There are several places on the St. Croix that rent pontoon boats for half-day, full-day, or weekend excursions. Beanie’s at Maui Landing is just minutes south of I-94. Visit Boatingatbeanies.com. The proximity to the Twin Cities also means that the St. Croix Valley offers more than just flora and fauna. Marine on St. Croix has its 38th annual art fair on Sept. 18. Hudson hosts the Spirit of the St. Croix Art Festival and Afton offers Art in the Park on September 24 and 25. Stillwater’s Fine Art and Jazz Festival is scheduled for Oct. 1 and 2.
Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
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South
Safe. Sound. Secure.® Since 1916
If the season gets away from you, don’t worry. Minnesota saves the best for last. The Mississippi Bluffs stretch 60 miles from Red Wing to Winona along Highway 61. Red Wing, Wabasha, Winona, and Lanesboro all offer food and accommodations if you want to make it a weekend trip. Lanesboro offers B&B&B: Bed and breakfasts galore, plus miles of bike trails. In Winona, you might consider one more form of transportation for fall color: A golf cart at The Bridges, an 18-hole course with 7 holes
designed by Robert Trent Jones. Drive down the Minnesota side and come back north on Wisconsin Highway 35, and you’ll also be able to explore at least a half dozen wineries. Learn more at Exploremississippibluffs.com.
Down Chuck Lennon of the Minnesota Department of Tourism says seeing the fall color from above can provide an intriguing new perspective. Try
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Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
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Mount Josephine, northeast of Grand Marais, or the Hovland Lookout Tower on the North Shore. Or, for something truly spectacular, take a ride in a hot air balloon, “floating along at treetop level,” according to the Stillwater Balloon website Stillwaterballoons.com.
Up When I asked friends for their suggestions about where to see fall color, my friend and former student Karl Crose said, “Look up. That’s
And who knows—there may be a single perfect maple right down the block that will provide a lasting memory, if you just take the time to enjoy it.
where the leaves are.” It’s true: We can get so set on a trip to the forest that we neglect to appreciate the trees that are right here with us— just look up. One year I was busily researching great fall color trips and found a Top 10 list that included the park two blocks from my house. The Marshall/Lake Street Bridge over the Mississippi River between St. Paul and Minneapolis is a spectacular view. Two-hour cruises on the Mississippi depart from Harriet Island in St. Paul for under $20 (Riverrides.com).
Laura French is a frequent contributor to Dockside.
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Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
13
Recreation
Bringing Colorado to Minnesota Sand Creek Adventures offers rare challenge course – and, eventually, river rapids rides
By Mathias Baden
Pictured: The author tries out the course.
Kendra Larson would’ve loved to live out West by the mountains. Instead, she vacations there with her family. Additionally, her husband, Duane, brought home a piece of Colorado. Duane Larson of New Prague and Jeff Frick of Cedar Lake Township are building a challenge course rare to Minnesota – “second to none so far,” Kendra Larson says. Due to open soon, Sand Creek Adventures capitalizes on the wide Minnesota River Valley vista from the hundred-foot-high bluffs over Sand Creek; a Colorado-like terrain. Parts of a heavily wooded, 20-acre property in Helena Township near Jordan feature a zip-line drop from a platform on a pole about 120-ft. up on a bluff, three other zip lines, high and low ropes, a small-team challenge climbing wall, a rope swing element, and suspension bridges. If another, tentative side of the business works out, Sand Creek will also become the first kayak outfitter on the creek, which is quietly and locally known for its rushing rapids between March and June. Kent McInthany, founder and president of Colorado-based Cross Bearing Adventures and a family friend, visited the Larsons near the wooded day park and immediately saw the potential of the bluffs and adjacent river.
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Dockside ◆ Fall 2011
“It’s not the Arkansas River, but it’s a pretty highly rated river in Minnesota,” Frick says of Sand Creek. Even in Colorado, where the Larsons got a taste of the adrenaline rush, spiritual discussions, and teamwork training from Cross Bearing, the bluffs aren’t as perfect for a challenge course as they are on the Sand Creek land, says Caleb Liser of Cross Bearing. “You need terrain,” says Liser, who among many others visited for about a month to put together the challenge course this summer. “Really nice. It’s perfect for what they’re doing.” There’s not a lot like Sand Creek in Colorado, either, Kendra Larson said. “I think we have a much better zip line than Colorado.” It’s exhilarating, says Frick, who recently took a test run that flew him over the creek onto the island. Beyond the challenging terrain and scenic beauty of the course, Sand Creek’s motto is “a park with a purpose,” Frick says. It will offer some opportunities for the owners and operators to share their Christian faith, when appropriate. The appointment-only, day-park ministry is modeled after Cross Bearing Adventures, where the Larson family tried
rappelling, rock climbing, high and low ropes, and zip lines, all viewed in the realm of family and marriage teamwork, communication, and problem solving. Their time there was rooted in spirituality and having fun together. Energized by the friendships with McInthany and his family, as well as the familystrengthening trips to the Garden of the Gods, Cheyenne Canyon, and elsewhere, Duane Larson embarked on a journey to create his own challenge course. Sand Creek will focus on recruiting local businesses, corporate clients, and nonprofit organizations that want to bring a group to the day park for lessons tailored to their needs. After participating in a number of challenge course elements, customers will retreat to debriefing areas. They’ll learn lessons chosen by their employers, likely aimed at improved teamwork, team development, problem solving, or leadership. A challenge course is meant to bring out the best in people.“Maybe the best that they didn’t know they had,” Frick says. For more information, call (952) 463-8486 or send an e-mail to sca@integra.net. Mathias Baden is the editor of the Jordan Independent.
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Dockside â—† Fall 2011