“It’s like the Hamptons without the fancy restaurants and celebs,” I said on the phone.  

“There’s a lot to be said for that,” answered Catherine, who has homes in Paris, San Francisco, Florida and Washington, D.C., and knows quite a bit about see-and-be-seen restaurants and celebrities. “Where is it again?” 

“Northern Wisconsin, on Lake Superior. It’s called Madeline Island.” 

“You know,” said Catherine, “that’s a whole part of this world I know nothing about.” 

And, until I moved to Minnesota nearly six years ago, I didn’t know anything about these parts, either. 

If you’d told me a few years ago I’d vacation on an island in Lake Superior, I’d think you were nuts. But this is my third summer on Madeline Island, and let me tell you why this product of thousands of years of glacial action is a gift from Mother Nature: 

—It’s beautiful, there are no traffic jams and it’s easy to wander off on your own. There are no traffic lights on the 45 miles of paved and dirt roads on the island. A fairly pricey ferry ride ($70 round trip for a car with four passengers) from the charming village of Bayfield to the island means if you’re coming here, you want to come here. You’re not a day-tripper browsing antique stores. 

—The island, the largest in the 22-island Apostle chain, is 14 miles long and three miles wide. It’s mostly covered with birch and pine trees and is littered with purple and yellow wildflowers in the summer. An outpost for British, French and American fur traders for 150 years, Madeline has some year-round residents, but most visitors arrive in the summer to visit (or rent) second homes on the island. Duluth is 90 miles to the east, and the Twin Cities are 220 miles south. There’s one inn, The Inn on Madeline Island, that offers overnight accommodations with all modern amenities (flat-screen televisions, Internet connectivity and a pretty darn good restaurant). The inn can also arrange a house or a condo rental. 

—Life moves slowly here, and you’re rewarded accordingly. Last summer, while biking, I passed a brown bear sitting at the side of the road, as still as a totem pole. While reading on the deck of the home a kind friend allowed me to use this week, a humming bird dipped its beak into a huge pot of purple petunias not three inches from my shoulder. At sunset, stretched out on the home’s dock that reaches into the still and clear waters of the world’s largest fresh-water lake, I watched a mother duck lead 13 ducklings on a leisurely swim. At night, the Milky Way stretched overhead, something we city boys don’t get to see too often.

—As I told my friend Catherine, you can rent a very nice home here for $2,500 a week, a quarter of what I know some friends pay to rent a home for the same period of time in East Hampton. But you can also pay $17 a night for a beautifully situated campsite (plus $5 if you want electricity) at Big Bay State Park, which has beaches and trails. Yes, there are sandy beaches on the island. Although they’re not the big, wide, Atlantic Ocean beaches of Long Island, they are beaches, and both kids and this adult can spend hours searching for Minnesota’s state gem, the Lake Superior agate in shallow waters. On hot days, northerners swim happily in the lake’s chilly waters and then, at night, warm up next to bonfires.  There’s also kayaking, biking and hiking available. Oh, and a Robert Trent Jones-designed golf course. 

—Tom’s Burned Down Café calls itself the “Carnegie Hall of junkyards,” and it’s the bar to hit at night. It has burned down twice, so it’s barely a skeleton of a building, a mostly open-air bar with a gerrymandered striped circus tent covering part of the bar. Fires in wood-burning stoves keep you warm beneath the stars. The floor by a stage where live acts sometimes play is a hodge-podge of street signs and license plates nailed into rough wood. Random flowers grow around the bar, which is approximately ten steps up from street level, giving patrons the feeling of being on a boat captained by madmen. Everywhere are hand-painted plaques with slogans including, “I had a handle on life but it broke,” and “Let’s make getting in trouble fun again.” Drinks come in plastic cups, and don’t ask for anything fancy—last summer I had to explain to a bartender how to make a white-wine spritzer. The uniform of patrons: shorts or jeans, shirts or sweatshirts. I’ve seen end-of-the-world bars like this in Key West or the Caribbean but am mystified to see it each summer at one of the northernmost points of Wisconsin.

In the interest of full journalistic disclosure, there is one worth-a-detour restaurant, though it’s on the mainland side, just outside Bayfield. Wild Rice is a stylish and very popular eatery with white tablecloths, a huge open kitchen and wine tower and original art inside and out. It’s the project of artist and foodie Mary Rice, heiress to the Anderson Windows fortune. Open only five days a week in the summer, Wild Rice can’t possibly return a profit (in my humble opinion), not with its setting on acres of forest and wild flowers and state-of-the-art kitchen. Which makes this restaurant, clearly a labor of love, even more extraordinary. Get a reservation if you can to sample Chef Jim Webster’s cooking—this is his 18th year at the helm. And the sommelier, Randy Anderson, stands ready to serve. Figure on approximately $70 per person for dinner with wine, tax and tip. 

Keep Madeline Island in mind—it deserves discovery by travelers beyond the Midwest.

See you at the Burned Down.