Itasca State Park

Yeah

... from the FM Metro, or even Itasca State Park-

Mm-hmm

... or Buffalo River State Park's even closer, um, the next couple days here.

The North Shore Scenic Drive along Highway 61 hugs Lake Superior's rocky shoreline, passing waterfalls, lighthouses, and dramatic overlooks for nearly the entire stretch up toward the Canadian border.

The Great River Road follows the Mississippi from its humble beginning at Itasca State Park, tracing the river through forest and farmland before it grows into the massive waterway most people picture.

The Gunflint Trail winds deep into the Boundary Waters region, offering genuinely remote forest scenery most travelers never expect this far into the Midwest.

And driving through the Twin Cities itself, the parkways circling Minneapolis' chain of lakes offer a surprisingly scenic urban detour worth the extra hour.

The Boundary Waters canoe area draws paddlers from across the country for genuinely unmatched wilderness solitude found almost nowhere else.

Minnehaha Falls, right inside Minneapolis, offers a surprisingly dramatic waterfall in the middle of a major city park.

And Itasca State Park protects the actual headwaters of the Mississippi River, where you can literally walk across the river's very beginning on a shallow rock crossing.

A few things worth knowing.

For all intents and purposes, they were extirpated by then.

And elk from, uh, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as well as a cervid farm, an elk farm from Ramsey County, were translocated to Itasca State Park and put into an exclosure, and years later, many of those elk were translocated subsequently to the Griggla area.

Hmm.

Now, that stated, there are elk that occur, of course, like we already talked about, in Kittson County, that naturally came there from places like, uh, Manitoba, and who knows where else, Rob.

... and we followed all along.

Uh, so I don't know if we saw you on the trip there, but it was like my wife, myself, and our, our kids were trudging along with, uh [laughs] with all the Perpetual Pilgrims through the, uh, through Itasca State Park, and it was just, just so cool.

What a awesome experience-

Oh-

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The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier, Part One, by Charles E. Flandrau, Section 46, Origin of the Name Gopher State, State Parks, Itasca State Park, and Interstate Park, The Dulls of the St. Croix.

Origin of the Name Gopher State.

Most of the states in the Union have a popular name.

Minnesota is the peculiar home of the typical form and thus derives the name of the gopher state.

Although the name originated in ridicule and contempt, it has not in any way handicapped the commonwealth, partly because very few people know its origin, but for the greater reason that it would take much more than a name to check its predestined progress.

State Parks Itasca State Park In a previous part of the work, under the head of lumber, I have referred to the fact that a great national park and forest reserve is in contemplation by the United States at the headwaters of the Mississippi, and made reference to the state park already established at that point.

I will now relate what has been done by the state in this regard.

They, that's on their bucket list.

They'll, they'll go over to, say, oh, uh, Itasca State Park or Maple Wood State Park.

Some people will even go as, uh, far as, like, the North Shore of Minnesota just because it's so beautiful.

But if you just Google up Minnesota color finder map, um, you can do it that way, too.

So the last 30 years, we've been giving back, as the sisters have told us.

We built St. Francis Lodge by Itasca State Park, where the headwaters of the Mississippi are, and started a mission.

It's free for women who are discerning to become Catholic sisters as a way of life.

and or women who are fully vowed, they come, they stay with us, we provide everything, it's all free, to give them a chance and rest.