Minnesota

Situated a few blocks from the Mississippi River in the heart of downtown, the Four Seasons Minneapolis is an excellent option if you’re looking for many of the great amenities that come with staying at any Four Seasons. Here you’ll find the usual suspects: enormous marble bathrooms with soaking tubs and heated floors, a buzzy outdoor rooftop pool scene, cloudlike beds that we gladly sank into after a full day at the Minnesota State Fair. (Yes, wellness can be found wherever you look for it.) Floor-to-ceiling windows—even in the bathrooms—offer unobstructed city views that stretch as far as the next town over, and the indoor pool would be a hit if you’re traveling with kids. As would the Nordic Village, which in the winter transforms the rooftop deck into a scene from a Hallmark movie, complete with log cabins for private dining. As with most things we discovered during our time in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, the Four Seasons here really leans into a friendly yet quietly sexy vibe. There are plenty of incredible places to eat and drink when you’re in town (Alma, Khâluna), but the hotel’s…

With over forty different land and water activities to choose from, campers at Camp Lincoln and Camp Lake Hubert can build an impressive skill set over the summer—in mountain biking, trap shooting, martial arts, dance, crew, fishing, and more. You name it, Camp Lincoln–Lake Hubert probably offers it. Campers are allowed to explore five new activities every three days, making it the perfect setting for the child still searching for his or her place. The boys’ and girls’ camps (Lincoln and Lake Hubert, respectively) are separate, but there’s an option to join at coed camp—a ten-day program that runs at the end of summer. Parents have the option to get involved, too, with a special family camp program that allows for a rare family vacation with no cell phones or electronic devices.

The idea behind Concordia Language Villages is to create a study-abroad experience Stateside (it's part of Concordia College). Concordia offers fifteen different language-immersion programs—in Spanish, German, Finnish, Arabic, and more—for kids of varying ages and language levels. (There are year-round programs for toddlers even, but the summer sleepaway camps are typically for kids ages seven to eighteen, with shorter one- and two-week programs for younger students, and then longer four-week programs available for older kids.) The programs are organized by language, and the different language "villages" are spread between five locations in Minnesota. "Village passports" are stamped at "customs," campers engage in activities relevant to the language they are studying (whether that be fútbol or martial arts), and they enjoy "local" cuisine (whether that be Swedish meatballs or kimchi). Concordia also offers family, adult, and educator programs.