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(To read more and view pics of Nicole's blog on Live And Love Minnesota experience, click here:  http://www.liveandlovemn.com/blog/crowwingcrestlodge)

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Each year at our fall conference, the Community of Minnesota Resorts (CMR) presents the Resorter of the Year Award. This award is given to a resort owner or manager [who] exemplifies the spirit and goals of the CMR. Criteria center around the operation of a successful and progressive resort business, service to the tourism industry both at a local and state level, and community service in other areas. Mentoring and helping other resort owners and membership in the CMR are also part of the requirements. Nominations for this award are generated entirely by CMR members, who are encouraged to nominate those peers they feel uphold high standards and contribute to our industry.   To read more, click here: page 6.

(Kim's comment: I do not speak five language (i wish!) but I did study them for many years.   Other corrections:  my nephew only visits, does not live on site.  Big John's daughter & husband live and work here now (since 2013.)  Meet the Owners here.  :))

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I have been asked repeatedly to re-post link to PBS special on MN Resorts that aired in July 2016 (we were 1 of 10 resorts interviewed). It's 2 hours - whew! But, u can c me and da big guy at about 49:36 - 57:10 and a 'teaching moment from nature' story I relayed at 1:46:42 (then a couple of our guests after the story. Actually last 15 minutes with several resorters & guests including ours were my favorite part).

Link to PBS Documentary here 

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Link to photos and article on LillieNews.com, a St. Paul suburban news publication June 2, 2016.

http://www.bulletin-news.com/articles/2016/06/02/rediscovering-joy-spontaneity

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by Graydon Royce

Our daughter Addie was 10 months old when we made our first trip to Crow Wing Crest Lodge. This summer will be her 25th.

Addie likes tradition. She insists on everything in its place and a time for everything.

She will spend lots of time in the arcade building, upping her score in Crystal Castles.

She likes campfires, visiting the little nearby town of Akeley and driving in to Walker, where we eat our Friday night dinner every year and then walk down to the Leech Lake docks.

Last year, she swam across 11th Crow Wing Lake and got a rowboat ride back.

One year she broke tradition and went horseback riding with her sisters and friends from other cabins. I think they had a good time but they’ve never repeated.

Personally, I like to bike on the Heartland and Paul Bunyan trails — more than 100 miles of wide, paved trail at your disposal.

I have also known several guys at the resort who play golf every day at one of four or five area courses, and still have the energy to fish late at night. I fish only one day, with another daughter, Caroline. It’s our tradition.

There have been two owners during our time at Crow Wing Crest. John and Kim Bowen bought the resort in 2000, and along with Kim’s brother, Kris, and a few others, they keep things shipshape. John also does reflexology sessions, Kim adds aromatherapy, and they have been known to bring in a massage therapist.

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Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, May/June 2015

Cast Into the Past

Tucked into the woods, this little fishing lake is a nearly untouched hideaway.

by John Myers

It seems almost everything about Big John Bowen is big. He stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs 320 pounds. He has a big voice and big hands and a gentle but definitely big personality.

And Big John Bowen likes to catch big fish. Big bass. Big northern pike. Even big bluegills. So it might be surprising that one of his favorite places to fish is little Lester Lake in Hubbard County in north-central Minnesota.

Early one morning this past fall, Bowen threw his 12-foot boat into the back of his pickup truck, stowed an electric trolling motor, and headed to the lake, not far from the resort that he and his wife, Kim, own and operate.

At about 70 acres, Lester Lake is one of those places that most anglers drive past at 60 mph on their way to big lakes like Leech, Winnibigoshish, or nearby Kabekona. Lester Lake and hundreds of acres of rolling hills around it opened to the public in 2010, after the state acquired the undeveloped, privately owned property.

Big John & author launching non-motorized boat- pic by Layne Kennedy

Roughly a mile long and a quarter-mile across at its widest, the lake is surrounded by a mixed forest of paper birch, red maple, oak, pine, and aspen on the high land and lots of black ash, white cedar, alder, and sedge meadows in the low spots. The forest is a special place, with rare orchids and insects and a diverse population of native upland and wetland plants and animals. A DNR scientific and natural area and a DNR aquatic management area protect the land and the lake.

It's what's in the water that Bowen and I were focused on. We hadn't moved 100 yards out from the landing when he had his first fish on—a scrappy northern pike.

"Just a little guy. But they fight big," Bowen said as he gently let the fish slide out of his hand and back into the lake. "Before this opened up to the public, everybody just called this the Pike Pond. It's always had a ton of pike in it."

We cruised across the lake and then up the far shore, casting and chatting along the way but quietly enough to pass within 20 feet of a great blue heron fishing for its breakfast. We were the only people on the lake on this crisp but sunny morning under an azure sky with a few wisps of high cirrus clouds.

"I can't think of any place I'd rather be right—whoa, got another one!" Bowen exclaimed.

"Double!" I bellowed, as I tagged into a fish at the same time. Both were small pike, but the action was fast for a while.

photo by Layne Kennedy

Lester Lake holds bluegills too, some that weigh in at more than a pound. We didn't catch any that large on this trip, but Bowen has in the past. Sample netting done by the Department of Natural Resources also shows they are there.

"I've had people out here with me swear they had a big bass on. And then up comes a big bull bluegill, and they just about have a heart attack," Bowen said.

To be sure, the lake is home to largemouth bass, including some monsters like one we saw jump clear out of the water and shake Bowen's lure. "That was what we are looking for! Only we want to see it a little closer," Bowen said with a laugh, shrugging off the loss of a trophy fish.

Catch and release.

It's not as if we could have kept the big bass anyhow. That's because Lester is the only one of Minnesota's 11,842 lakes with a mandatory catch-and-release regulation for all fish caught, no matter their size or species. Given Lester's small size, catch and release was the best way to protect the lake's big bluegills and bass when the lake moved from private to public access, said Doug Kingsley, DNR area fisheries supervisor.

"We knew the lake had a very good fish population when we took it on, and some good-sized fish, and we wanted to keep it that way," Kingsley told us at the boat landing. "It's not something we're going to do on a lot of lakes. But we've had really good support for catch and release here."

If you come to Lester, leave the big bass boat at home. The access road is narrow, winding through an old red pine plantation. The landing is carry-down only, and it can be boggy and wet. Canoes and kayaks are perfect. So are small rowboats like Bowen's. And no outboard motors, either, because only electric trolling motors are allowed.

"That really keeps a special flavor to this place. Just listen," Bowen ordered.

All I could hear was the splash of his lure as it hit the water, followed by the whir of his reel.

We were casting mostly spinner baits for pike and bass into the relatively clear but tea-colored water. The spring-fed lake has some 40-foot-deep holes but is shallow in most areas near shore, and that's where we caught most of our fish, near beds of emergent aquatic plants. Cattails line parts of the shoreline. Some fallen timber lurks below the waterline, probably a remnant of when beavers dammed the outlet and the lake rose a bit.

Biological wealth.

Lester Lake's outlet, named Sucker Branch Creek, flows clean and clear into Lake Kabekona less than a mile away.

"It's not just protected as a good fishing lake," Kingsley noted. "Protecting the land around Lester Lake is going to help protect the water quality in Kabekona and beyond."

The lake property had been for sale for years when, in 2007, the DNR made a thorough assessment and biological survey of the land. The agency couldn't come to terms on a purchase price with the property's owner, a Walker businessman. There was word that the owner was considering a housing development that would ring the lake. But the DNR's ecological evaluation confirmed the land around the lake held a wealth of biodiversity—from virgin stands of old-growth white cedar to 62 bird species and 82 plant species, including the very tiny, very rare white adder's-mouth orchid. The Minnesota Biological Survey concluded the area should receive "the highest level of protection available."

Natural Lake Lester - non-motorized, catch & release fishing strictly enforced. Photo Layne Kennedy

MBS ecologists and other DNR staff continue to find new treasures on annual treks. "It's an amazing place to go for a walk in the woods because there is so much diversity there, especially the wetland species," says Christine Herwig, DNR regional nongame wildlife specialist. She rattles off a list of birds including blue and green herons, kingfishers, swamp sparrows, woodcock, woodpeckers, and warblers. "There's a pretty good migration of ring-necked ducks in the fall," she adds.

Part of the charm of the Lester Lake property, Herwig notes, is that it has both upland and lowland habitats, including sandy forest openings that are home to a rare tiger beetle.

"I saw my very first mink frog at Lester Lake," she says. "You don't have to go very far to see a lot of different things. And that's a pretty good clue why it rated so high to be protected as an SNA."

Push to protect.

As the DNR was documenting the ecological value of the property, residents and cabin owners on Lake Kabekona, who had formed the Kabekona Lake Foundation, decided to make a push to have the land protected. They joined with the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which secured an option to purchase and then organized a financing package to seal the nearly $1.5 million deal that the owner eventually agreed to.

"It sits inside our Upper Mississippi Headwaters focus area, which is an effort to protect the larger watershed," says Bob McGillivray, senior program manager for the Trust for Public Land in Minnesota. "There's also the connectivity of habitat. Lester Lake tied together parts of the Paul Bunyan State Forest. … To be able to protect an entire lake at once, that's pretty rare.

"Part of our goal at TPL is to connect people to the land, places people can be out in the wild," McGillivray adds. "And Lester Lake really does that."

The team effort, McGillivray says, is a model for how 21st-century conservation projects can work—a blend of local support, nonprofit expertise, public and private funding, and state management that creates lasting protection and public access. Some 114 members of the Kabekona Lake Foundation donated $60,000 in critical local seed money. The glue that bound the deal together was grants from the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund and the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council. The council decides how to spend money from the state's Outdoor Heritage Fund, created by the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment. Partners included the DNR Scientific and Natural Areas Program, the Trust for Public Land, DNR Fisheries, and the DNR Reinvest in Minnesota critical habitat match program.

State law requires local approval for any new scientific and natural area designation, and the Hubbard County board granted it with a unanimous vote.

"We knew the property was for sale, and everybody agreed they didn't want to see it developed. It's such a special place," says Luther Nervig, Kabekona Lake Foundation president. "If that property was developed, it would have changed the whole character of the Kabekona area."

Nervig, 72, of Wadena, has been coming to Kabekona since he was 6 weeks old. Lester Lake, not far from his family's cabin, has always held a strong attraction for him. "There were No Trespassing signs up all over and a locked gate on the little road," he says. Nervig has taken many memorable trips to the lake since the gate came down and the SNA signs went up. His nephews ice fish there in the winter.

"It's one of those places to go, not just to catch fish—and there are some very big fish—but to get away from civilization for a little bit," Nervig says. "It feels like you're up in the wilderness. And it's going to stay that way."

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Crow Wing Crest Resort

www.crowwing.com

1-800-279-2754

At this delightfully quirky mom-and-pop, a Thursday night potluck luau, an owner who is also reflexologist (think foot massage), another who is an aromatherapist (class offered each week) and a congenial atmosphere make for a devoted following.

To do: Activities range from drum circles and yoga to Norwegian volleyball and craft hours for kids. Try a stand-up paddle board, kayak, canoe, fish, water ski, eat ice cream or pizza in the century-old lodge, swim from the beach to the floating raft and take a lakeside sauna. A playground and small antique carousel (rides for a quarter) entertain the kids.

Details: In Akeley, on 11th Crow Wing Lake. There are 19 cabins equipped with kitchen essentials, but bring kitchen and bath towels and soap. High-season rates range from $395 weekly for a two-person sleeping cottage (walk to bathroom in the lodge; no stove) to $2,878 for a modern four-bedroom spacious cabin.

Above excerpt from Travel Section:

A cabin of one's own

Don't own your own cabin? These resorts will make you feel as though you do.

Heading to "the lake" is such a classic Minnesota rite that those who can't claim their own shoreline retreat might feel dejected. Fortunately, there's an easy fix. Throughout the state, lakeside resorts that rent housekeeping cabins offer a sense of ownership without the upkeep and taxes — for a week or as long as the checkbook and vacation time allow.

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Other destinations beckon, but few can beat the classic summer vacation. Here's how one family found their resort.

by Beth Gauper (published first St. Paul Pioneer Press April 2007, now a permanent part of Gauper's Midwest Reflections website for Minnesota traveling.  Last edited 2012)

Up north, there's a lake cabin with my name on it.

I don't own it, and I never will. But for a week in August, it's mine.

Only a generation ago, most middle-class folks in this area could think of nothing better than renting a little housekeeping cabin on a lake.

"In the glory years, gosh, it seemed every Minnesotan vacationed at a Minnesota resort," said Dave Siegel of the Minnesota Resort and Campground Association.

Now, there's so much competition for a family's vacation time — Cancun and Orlando, recreational vehicles, the new cabins wealthy families build for themselves.

And high-school sports leave only a few weeks between summer baseball and the football season.

"We always say, 'If only we had 20 million cabins for the last week of July and first two weeks of August,' " says Kim Bowen, proprietor of Crow Wing Crest Lodge near Akeley and a member of the Congress of Minnesota Resorts.

The demand for lakeshore property has made it more profitable for resort owners to sell to developers than run a business, and in the past 15 years, the number of resorts in Minnesota has shrunk from 1,300 to perhaps 800.

But that's still a lot of lake resorts. And little has changed about the classic formula of sun, sand and water.

Every year, without fail

My grown daughter and son have been going to Crow Wing Crest since they were infants. When they were children, they would have rioted if I'd told them they couldn't go.

My son's e-mail address is CWCtheplacetobe, and he keeps in touch with his resort friends throughout the year. Once, three generations of one family came to watch him play football when his team had a game in a suburb near their home.

Watching the transformation of strangers into steadfast friends is Kim Bowen's favorite part of running a resort. She holds bingo night and a kids' scavenger hunt early in the week, so guests can get to know each other right off the bat.

"By Tuesday, they're all running around together, and by Wednesday, the kids are all mixed up, and everyone's watching everyone else's kids.

"By Thursday, they're best friends, and by Friday, there are tears and people don't want to leave," Bowen says.

I've vacationed at a lot of places, and I still think a week at a lake resort is the best vacation of all. It's the most relaxing, anyway. There's nothing like the beginning of a lake week, when time seems to slow to a crawl.

"You get there, and there's nothing to do . . . but enjoy," says my sister Lynn, who flies in from Orlando.

We wake to loon calls and take a cup of coffee down to the lake, where we sit in swinging chairs and watch fishermen putter with their gear and canoeists push off for a morning paddle.

The young people sleep until noon, so I might walk down the road to gather wildflowers from the ditches. Then, I'll recruit a sister or a niece for a ride on the Heartland State Trail, perhaps to Walker for breakfast or to Dorset for a root-beer float.

Or I might spend the whole afternoon on the beach; I bring a book, but I always end up chatting with other guests or watching children taking flying leaps off the raft.

In the evening, most everyone ends up at the 1898 log lodge, putting together jigsaw puzzles, playing cards or foosball, watching the sunset from the deck.

Some nights, we fire up the old sauna and swelter until we have to rush into the lake. Then, we float on our backs in the cool water, trying to spot a shooting star.

The days go by and then time seems to speed up, like grains tumbling down an hourglass. It's bittersweet, but eventually, we have to leave our cabin for another family to use, until the next summer.

A close call for Crow Wing

Over the years, genial co-owner Terry Heller became a family friend, and we always looked forward to seeing him. Then, in 2001, he had to sell the resort —  to developers, he figured.

"I didn't want to take anyone's vacation away, but we knew that's probably what was going to happen," he said.

It would have been an ignominious end to the resort, which began life as a logging camp and includes several virgin white pines, including a 300-year-old called Luna.

After the Akeley sawmill burned in 1916, the site served briefly as a chicken farm before becoming Aunt Polly's Girls' Camp, where etiquette was taught to children from around the nation in the 1920s and '30s.

It sat vacant during World War II, but in 1946, it became a family fishing resort.

The first day Crow Wing Crest was listed, a couple from Newton, Iowa, drove up and bought it.

Heller thought he was selling to a developer, Krupp Rental Properties of Newton, Iowa, but was pleasantly surprised when the Krupps' daughter Kim and her husband, Big John, continued to run the business as a family resort.

John Bowen had spent childhood summers at resorts in northwest Wisconsin, and he and Kim had shopped for a resort for three years, limited by their desire for one that didn't rely on a bar to make a profit.

When a Park Rapids real-estate agent tipped them off to the impending Crow Wing sale, they sprang into action and made an offer.

"There was a developer who was interested, and they were livid they didn't get a crack at it," says Kim Bowen, who says she receives at least one call or letter a week from developers hoping she'll sell.

For now, she won't: "It makes me sick even to think about it," she says.

A week at the lake for everyone

Now, my family and about 250 others still have our summer week at the lake.

We're grateful. The Bowens have retained the resort's peaceful atmosphere and signature phrase — "If you are looking for a resort for heavy drinking and all-night partying, do not choose us" — and added various New Age pursuits.

It makes for an interesting mix. I've attended and enjoyed John's introduction to reflexology and Kim's aromatherapy class, but I passed on the drumming circle and sing-along.

There's too much to do outdoors. Little kids fish, ride the carousel, play in the log playhouse and use the kayaks and paddleboats.

Bigger folks play volleyball, basketball, bocce ball and horseshoes; one family brings a bean-bag game, and another a homemade game it calls "cowboy golf."

A family from Iowa brings two hand-made canoes and a sailboat. A four-family group brings three powerboats and spends most of their time water-skiing and tubing.

"We want to be on the water all the time," said Michelle Boelter of Winona, Minn., who switched to the smaller 11th Crow Wing Lake after nine years at resorts on big, windy Leech Lake.

Michelle Rademacher of Blaine, Minn., wanted to be on the beach most of the time, with a good book.

"My husband doesn't fish, we don't own a boat, we're not big-toy people," she says. "You don't rush around, you just relax."

She found Crow Wing Crest after the resort her family went to closed. Like so many people, she gravitated back to lake resorts after spending childhood summers at them.

"When I was little, we went to a lake resort near Osakis, Minn., and I have great memories of that," Rademacher said. "My husband didn't have that, but he's a convert."

There's a resort for everyone — with as much tranquility as anyone could want, or as much action and activity.

It may not be the most glamorous vacation in the world, but for many people, it's the best.

Finding a resort of your own

Relaxing on the beach up north at a lake. The good life.

If you want to make a resort part of your family's traditions, and you want to know how to find one, see One in 1,000.

Reserve up to a year in advance. At most smaller resorts, guests reserve their cabin for the following year before they leave.

So the best time to reserve a cabin is the Monday after the week you want to go the following year.

If you'd like to bring your extended family, see Planning a family reunion.

If you need more than one cabin, try to reserve at least two years in advance.

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Minneapolis Star Tribune

By Chris Welsch

From family games to championship golf, these resorts provide Up North vacations with plenty of diversions.

Thick early morning fog had erased the view from Cabin No. 15. But as the sun rose over the tree line, shapes emerged. The spindly geometry of the dock extended onto the surface of 11th Crow Wing Lake. Then the shadows of the pines emerged on the shoreline. Finally, a loon cruised by, breaking the calm surface of the lake.It wouldn't be calm for long. Giggling kids would swarm the swimming float, anglers would cast off in the row boats, and the porch swings would be occupied by novel-reading parents, temporarily relieved of their charges.In the boom years after World War II, Minnesota had more than 4,000 resorts, most of them literally mom-and-pop operations. Today, there are about 900 in the state. Wisconsin's resort scene has undergone a similar evolution. While the lake is still typically the focus of the vacation, the resorts that thrive occupy distinct niches that draw a steady and passionate following.

At Crow Wing Crest Resort, Thursday night potluck luaus, a foot massage specialist and a congenially quirky atmosphere keep the cabins full all summer. At the other end of the spectrum, the American Club in Kohler, Wis., centers its appeals on world-class golf, a sophisticated European-style spa and adventures of the culinary sort.

Here we've chosen five of the Upper Midwest's best resorts. They span the range of budgets and styles, but they all know how to make the best of summer in the north.

Continued on page G4 . . . . . . .

Crow Wing Crest: A funky place by the lake that's second home to many

Crow Wing Crest is a mom-and-pop resort of the sort that is harder and harder to find Up North.  Most of the 19 housekeeping cabins are homey and idiosyncratic (one sports tilted floors that would be at home in a fun house) and they cluster together on the shore of pristine 11th Crow Wing Lake near Akeley,  But owners Kim and Big John Bowen have perfected a "we're all in it together" vibe, which extends to Thursday night potluck luaus, when the guests clear out their refrigerators and Minnesota hotdish meets the aloha spirit.

WHAT TO DO:  fish, swim, sauna, play cards, join the drumming circle.  Bring a bike for the nearby Heartland Trail.. Kids enjoy a game room, a coin-operated merry-go-round and various organized activities.

PERKS:  John Bowen is a reflexologist (foot massage) with a dedicated following, and Kim Bowen offers programs on aromatherapy.

ADVISORY:  No "personal watercraft" allowed.  Lovers of big engines and loud parties should look elsewhere.

PRACTICALITES:  Near Park Rapids, Minn.  Book in advance; returning guests keep the occupancy level high.  In high season, cabins rent from $380 for the snug two-person "Sleeping Cottage" (the bath is in the main lodge building) to $2,342 for a four-bedroom, newly built cabin that can easily accommodate a family reunion.  More info www.crowwing.com, 1-800-279-2754

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