Best of
the Twin Cities
For odd, remarkable, and otherwise unclassifiable sights a short drive from the Twin Cities, the pancake-flat stretch of central Minnesota up I-94 can’t be beat. St. John’s Abbey is maybe the most otherworldly building in the entire state, a concrete and stained-glass marvel right out of science fiction. The Johanna Kiln, also at St. John’s University, is the largest wood-fired kiln in the world, accommodating over 1,000 pottery and sculpture pieces at once. A short drive south, in Cold Spring, marvel at Assumption Chapel, a little stone hilltop church built by German immigrants in the 1870s to mark the end of a plague of locusts. Finish the day with the best fried walleye in the state at Fisher’s Club in Avon, an old-school wood-paneled supper club on the shores of the improbably named Middle Spunk Lake.
