Midwest

By Brian E. Clark Thom Burns grew up in Dewitt, Iowa, a small town far from any ocean. In fact, the Pacific was about 2,000 miles to the west and the Atlantic was 1,000 miles east of his home. He’d never sailed until he joined the Navy directly out of

By Brian E. Clark In 1857, wealthy builder Alexander McDonnell asked architect and German emigrant August Kutzboch to design him “the best house money could buy.” The ostentatious McDonnell chose a wooded lot for his home on a promontory called Bug Hill on the isthmus between lakes Mendota and Monona

By Brian E. Clark In the 1979 bicycling and coming-of-age movie “Breaking Away,” the star’s father walks with his son around Indiana University in Bloomington and muses about some of the handsome limestone structures he helped build. While some things have changed in Bloomington since that film was made more than 40

By Brian E. Clark Jim Vick, operations manager at Lutsen Mountains (lutsen.com), has had numerous opportunities  to work at western ski resorts. And it’s not that he wasn’t tempted. But Lutsen’s perch on the northwest shore of Lake Superior and its location next to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which

  By Brian E. Clark For most Midwesterners, flying to New England this fall to see the brilliant changing hues of the region’s hardwoods is probably off the table. But you can still get your autumn-color fix. The rolling landscape of western Michigan in and around Ludington is an excellent