Land O'Lakes

Before I embark on my journey home, I thought it fitting to include a tidbit on my native state, Minnesota. As a Minnesotan I am innately proud of many things my fine state has to offer, ice fishing, Nate On Drums, snow mobiling, cross country skiing, the ice palace, Prince, Kirby Pucket before he got in trouble with the law, the old Minneapolis Lakers, Charles Lindbergh, Garrison Keilor... but most of all, we are proud of our lakes. In fact, our state motto is the "land of 10,000 lakes." Aha, but recently a conniving, malevolent geograhy professor from Ohio has said that Texas, the land of bad mottos (e.g. "Don't mess with Texas"), has 269,976 lakes!

In Minnesota's defense, this same professor showed that humble Minnesota actually has upwards of 100,000 lakes. And, I suppose if you were to break it down density-wise, Minnesota would most definitely have Texas beat. However, there is little defense against coming in 7th out of 50 (yes, there are now 50 states in the union!) particularly because we lost to such winning states as Kansas and Oklahoma.

Of course, one argument is that many states are actually artificially increasing their lake count via reservoirs and other man-made bodies of water. They say this is for aesthetic or water irrigation reasons, I say it's because they want to beat Minnesota. Fat chance of that happening, we have Moose (Meese?).

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