Special Report: Land of 10,000 Lakes

Minnesota follows Alaska as the second northernmost state. It is so far north, that it’s motto is Star of the North, though most people think of it as the land of 10,000 lakes.

When Fresno color spotter Nick King, a reporter at Fox 26 KMPH, wrote saying he’d been hiking in Minnesota last week, I just had to ask, “Did you get any photographs of fall color?”

Nick’s photos establish that the land of 10,000 lakes does not disappoint when it comes to autumn color. A mix of deciduous maple (sugar, red), red twig dogwood, witch hazel, birch, poplar and smoke tree grow among coniferous pine and spruce in the state’s two main forests, the Laurentian mixed forest and Eastern broadleaf forest.

This color now carpets the undulating hills of the Sawtooth Mountains (north shore of Lake Superior) and Misquah Hills (northeast Minnesota), with a Peak blend of evergreens with red, orange, yellow and russet.

Nick wrote that he found the Oberg Mountain Loop trail to be truly spectacular. True to his training as a TV newsman, he wished he’d had a drone with him. Oberg Mountain was an easy three-mile hike on the north shore of Lake Superior, with about 500 feet of elevation gain.

This past week, he described, the treetops “started to look like lollipops, and the further inland from Lake Superior, the better. Another hiker told us that she was there just two days earlier, on Monday, and everything was basically green.”

At Gooseberry Falls State Park, also along the north shore, only a few trees were showing any color change. And, at Shovel Point at Tettegouche State Park, “the color really hadn’t made it’s way to the lake yet, but there was some signs of yellow.” He noted that as a first time visitor to Minnesota, he was impressed at how much the cliff side of the lake looked like the Northern California or Oregon coast.

Minnesota’s mountains only reach elevations of 2,266′. So, though hiking there is not likely to make you breathless, the autumn color certainly will. 

Minnesota (2,266′) – Near Peak (50-75%) GO NOW!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: CaliforniaFallColor.com does not make it a practice to report on areas outside California, though we have occasionally published reports from New York, Idaho, Arizona, China, and – now – Minnesota. If in your travels, you capture beautiful scenes as Nick King did, here, please send them to editor@californiafallcolor.com. As, we enjoy seeing autumn beauty everywhere.