My month in Minnesota

My take on Minnesota

where I went this month

You can see I made a valiant effort to cover a lot of Minnesota, which wasn't easy with it being the 12th biggest state.  I missed the strip all along the west side, most of the far northeast corner and most of the far southeast corner.  But I still managed to see probably the majority of the state.

Minnesota's lands

MN has the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, where about 60% of the population lives, and several much small cities, such as Duluth and Rochester.  But most of what's land is farmland and forests.

Of course, what MN really has is water.  Lots and lots of water.  The state's nickname is "Land of 10,000 Lakes," though the folks up here are all quick to tell you that it's really more like 14,000, and books I read before my trip suggested 15,000 - 22,000 bodies of water big enough to be called lakes.  As far as I could figure, a lot of them are pothole lakes, left over from the glacier era.  Glaciers covered all but the far southeastern corner of MN, and the melting ice pack filled the low places with water.  That SE corner that I didn't get to see is said to have steep bluffs and high ridges; the rest of the state is rolling hills or somewhat flat.

MN is a beautiful state, though a lot of its beauty is low key.  It has lakes everywhere of course, rivers and huge forests.  But the farmlands are most of what I saw, which is why I said the beauty is low key.  There was certainly a lot of manufacturing, but aside from a few companies like 3-M, most of it is agriculture-related - such as fertilizer production.  My impression is that this state is almost entirely about agriculture.  And given the serious reduction in recent years in both rainfall and snowpack, agriculture is already in a real bind for water and it could get much worse.  But right now this state is really pretty.

Minnesota's people

Minnesotans liked where they lived - and the usual reason I was given was that it was quiet and they like their neighbors.  A few people said they like the beauty of where they live.

My first impression of the folks here wasn't quite accurate.  I know they have a bit of a reputation for being Canadian-style nice, and in general they are.  But they weren't reliably nice on the roads and they didn't go out of their way to be friendly or anything like that.  I guess I'd have to say they seemed as nice as the folks I've met in most other states.

The vast majority of residents are white, a hold-over from their heritage of Scandinavian/Germanic immigrants, I guess.

MN has a lot of professional sports teams, and I'm now not surprised that a state without a particularly large population base can support so many.  As far as I could tell, people are crazy about their teams - and I saw a lot of support for their college team as well.  The Minnesota Twins weren't having a great season while I was here, but I still heard the detailed reports on the radio.  Even in defeat, people were supporting them, so imagine if they were having a winning season.

Minnesotans love the outdoors and are probably delighted when tourist season is over and they can get back out again without the crowds.  Instead, the crowds I saw all came with MN license plates.  The campgrounds were often full, and almost all the vehicles were from MN.  Most parking areas for hiking trails held at least a few cars in them.  Of course I saw highway signs for snowmobile trails and parking areas for them. And I guess many of these multi-thousand lakes are used for ice skating and hockey.

Driving in Minnesota

Minnesota has, hands down, the best signage for highways of all the states I've visited.  Because of the rural nature of the state, most of the roads I traveled on were state or county roads, and some of my itineraries were convoluted.  Thanks to the signs by the MN Highway Dept. I could always find the road I wanted.  I was really impressed.

For all its size, MN has only 2 interstate highways: I-90 that runs from La Crosse, WI, to Sioux Falls, SD, across the extreme south of MN; and I-94 that runs diagonally from just east of the Twin Cities up to Fargo, ND.

In general, MN's roads are in pretty good shape.  They're often narrow without even an inch of shoulder space, but considering the weather they get up here, I was surprised to find the roads weren't particularly bumpy or pot-holey.

They've got a few specialty plates,
but most vehicles had this plate on them.

I'm happy to report that most drivers recognized when there was a safe opportunity for them to pass me - either one I created or one the roadway created.  It's very wearing to have to pay attention to someone following me - usually fairly closely - but who refuses to pass (and go away and leave me alone).  After a while it feels like a physical burden on my back, and I was glad not to have much of that here.

What I wanted to see that I missed

I actually managed to get around the state enough to be able to see most of what I'd hoped to.

But even though that southeast corner that I missed doesn't look very big, it holds several places I'd wanted to visit.  For instance, the town of Winona has a steamboat center and a mountain called Sugar Loaf.  Red Wing is the home of the famous Red Wing shoes and boots.  Wabasha is said to be a beautiful river town, and the Anderson House there is MN's oldest hotel still in use.  Those towns are all along the Mississippi River, which in that area serves as the boundary between MN and Wisconsin.

Slightly farther inland but still in that corner is the town of Harmony, of Amish heritage, where there's a 60' waterfall and Niagara Cave, one of the US's biggest caverns.  All of this is in addition to the steep bluffs and high ridges, so noticeably absent from the rest of the state, but are here because the glaciers didn't come and mash the ground flat.

But I did my best to cover the state and saw most of what I'd hoped to see.

My conclusion

Minnesota has been the birthplace of a surprising number of very well-known people: Bob Dylan and Prince; 2 Supreme Court justices, William O. Douglas and Warren Burger; Charles Schulz (of Peanuts fame) and F. Scott Fitzgerald; Jessica Lange, Jane Russell and E. G. Marshall; Richard Sears (as in Sears & Roebuck); Lindsey Vonn and Roger Maris; the Andrews sisters and the Coen brothers.  And I can't help but wonder how much the kind of life folks live up here had to do with shaping the character of these particular people.  I mean if there's anything they all have in common it's perseverance - the determination to live to the fullest of their talents.  I would think living in MN would teach them that.

And it's the sort of shaping that the land does that I liked best about this state.  These seem to be good, fairly down-to-earth people with a sense of humor (Paul Bunyan? Babe? really?) and a decent grip on reality.  And those are qualities I'm guessing they learned from the land here.

I liked it here and would enjoy coming back for some of the places I missed.  And I think I'd've liked living here when I was younger.  But I'm not sure I'm tough enough any longer for the life here now.  An odd thing to realize about myself.