As the air starts to turn cooler and the leaves start to turn my family gets both a sense of excitement about the upcoming snowmobile season and a sense of gloom. The gloom is due to one of our favorite places to visit up north shutting down until next spring.
As with many things in life, good things and places come to those who have patience and wait for the best to appear. One of those places for us is Nelson’s Resort on Crane Lake in northern Minnesota.
Nelson’s Resort was started by John and Millie Nelson in 1931. With one and a half miles of shoreline, quaint log cabins, lodge, and beautiful views of Crane Lake, it truly offers families, couples and even honeymooners a memory that will last a lifetime.
Nelsons offers both one and two bedroom cabins for rent, a full service restaurant and lounge and many activities to enjoy. The facilities include a swimming beach, hiking trails, game room, sauna, playground, canoes, volleyball, laundry facilities, boat launch, wireless internet and general store with clothing and accessories to purchase.
Our family has never stayed at Nelsons, but we make it a point to travel from our lake home to Crane Lake several times each summer season to enjoy a great meal in the restaurant and soak up the views. We’ve also taken a Van Air float plane ride from our dock to Nelsons for a special anniversary meal. What a treat!
The restaurant serves many great things, but I always enjoy knowing that some of the fresh ingredients I'm eating were grown right on the resort's site in Millie's Garden. The garden produces much of the fresh ingredients served to the customers. I know I was enjoying some of the fresh baby carrots the other night in my salad! They were great! The garden is now tended by Millie's granddaughter, Jacque. I'm sure Millie would be proud to know her legacy lives on.
The lounge offers a pianist Thursday through Saturday evenings for additional ambiance. If you get a chance to get there early, it’s always nice to start the night off with a glass of wine on their recently built deck area overlooking the resort and lake. Be sure to also ask for their hot fudge brownie sundae for desert. I won’t say it’s Weight Watcher friendly, but if my husband orders it I make sure I get at least two savory bites each time. Terrific!
This past Saturday night we drove up to Nelsons for what is probably our last visit in 2011. They will be closing at the end of the month for the winter season and re-opening next spring again. We enjoyed yet another great meal at the lodge and even got to have fun visiting with some guests staying at the resort.
There were three couples enjoying a fun night together in the restaurant that night. When they came in to be seated I immediately noticed that the three women were wearing walleye fish hats on their heads. The couples were having so much fun together it almost made me want to join in on their fun. Because our tables were seated next to one another it was possible for me to overhear that the ladies had won a friendly fishing contest with their male counterparts. Their special crowns that night were displaying proudly their win. I thought to myself, “What can better be an example of an up north girl experience than this?” so I boldly went over to their table and explained that I would love to take their pictures and include them in my blog. Without a pause they all jumped up and said, “We would love it! Where do you want us? Is in front of the fireplace ok?”
As I’ve taken this summer to reflect on what I want the next forty-five years of my life to “look” like…..this was it! I wanted to take time to get to know these women and learn what made them tick. They were having fun and obviously living life to its fullest that evening. They were able to laugh at not only each other but themselves and not give a care to what anyone else in the lodge was thinking. I only inspire to be that carefree and fun. Thank you ladies for showing me how it can be done!
As I continue to read on the book “50” is the New Fifty by Suzanne Braun Levine I read a passage yesterday that made me think again of my new friends at Nelson’s Resort proudly displaying their fish trophies. Her chapter entitled “a circle of trust is a must” talks about women’s friendships and how important they are. Furthermore it talks about how studies are now showing that women’s friendships are possibly a reason why women outlive their male counterparts.
Ms. Levine quotes a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Melissa Healy, who said the following:
Women are keepers of each other’s secrets, boosters of one another’s wavering confidence, co-conspirators in life’s adventures. Through laughter, tears and an inexhaustible river of talk, they keep each other well, and make each other better.
Across species and throughout human cultures, females have banded together for protection and mutual support. They have groomed each other, tended each other’s young, nursed each other in illness and engaged in the kind of aimless sociability that has generally mystified male anthropologists.
But the power of girlfriends is beginning to yield its secrets to science. For women, friendship not only rules, it protects. It buffers the hardships of life’s transitions; it lowers blood pressure, boosts immunity and promotes healing. It may help explain one of medical science’s most enduring mysteries: why women, on average, have lower rates of heart disease and longer life expectancies than men.
Maybe the ladies I met at Nelson’s Resort this Saturday have figured out this secret already and are living it! I suggest we all get this secret figured out and put having fun in life at the top of our priority list!
No comments:
Post a Comment