Some visitors show up at the abbey for a night or two, alone, in a group, or with a spouse. Some want to talk to a monk. Others want to be left alone to roam the grassy path around little Lake Placid or walk the wooded trail that includes the stations of the cross.
Jennifer Phelps started coming to the monastery five years ago. Now she travels the 140 miles from her home in Carlisle, Iowa, once a month to rest and pray.
''Frequently, napping is the first thing I do at the monastery,'' says Phelps, 60. ''I usually don't go with an agenda. ... I like to go where it is soothing, calm and tranquil.
''Not everyone I know thinks it's necessarily a good idea that I go so often. ... But when my work schedule gets heavy, and I miss a month or two, I can really tell.''
Scott Killgore, pastor at the Wyatt Park Christian Church in St. Joseph, has been coming to the abbey several times a year since 1999.
''The quiet is a huge part,'' says Killgore, 53. ''My cell phone service is not very good up there. That's a gift from a God.''
Killgore is also drawn to the prayers and services, even though he is a pastor in another denomination.
''As soon as I hit the ground up there, I know I'm on holy space, and I just feel my stress level and everything go down,'' he says. ''As a pastor I get so busy doing church stuff, sometimes, as ironic as it may sound, I have to get away from church to have some me and God time.''
Abbey guest rooms are simple. Most consist of two twin beds, shelving and a toilet and sink shared with the room next door. Showers are down the hall, and meals are in the guest dining room. If you arrive late, pick up your key at the welcome center and leave payment in the mail slot.
A single room costs about $25 a night during the week. It's an additional $5 for weekends. If you choose to dine with the monks, it costs about $7 a meal. Reservations are required. Tours of the abbey grounds, the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception and the abbey's printery are $10.
Prayer, of course, is also encouraged. At Conception Abbey, where the ethic seems to be more peaceful reflection than rosary kneading, the prayer schedule is extensive, with six a day, starting with vigils at 6 a.m. in the basilica and running through the evening prayer, the Compline, at 7:15 p.m.
Prayers and services in the basilica are all among the dark-robed brothers, whose voices don't so much break the quiet as soothe it.
On a recent evening with a nearly full moon rising beyond the large red-brick basilica, conspicuous among the farm houses dotting the landscape, the monks slid promptly and quietly into their places near the alter. They sang their prayers, a sort of reverent, gentle farewell to the day.
Afterward, the monks — some older, some looking like college kids — lined up and just as quietly left the sanctuary, leaving a traveler alone in the pews — with the quiet.