My Minnesota!!

I am finally back to writing about States again. We have still been having fun learning about a new one each week. (I just don't seem to post about a new one each week.)

Today I am finally writing about Home!! Minnesota is my state and a very wonderful one! (Except lets not talk about the politics!!) My state has so many neat things about it that I don't think we can fit it all in one post so you will have to bear with me, Today we plan on finding out some facts and later we will get to food, the beautiful wildflowers, where you should visit and how to talk when you get here. Feel free to leave your comments about MN too! (As long as they are nice!)

Water is a huge part of MN, we have lakes, and lake and more lakes. MN is also the source of the countries mightiest river: the Mississippi. Our state borders the greatest of the great Lakes - Superior we also usually get a lot of water (snow) coming down from the sky each year. And we love our water. We do lots of boating, swimming, canoeing, fishing (ice fishing too!), ice skating and more each year. The word Minnesota comes from a Dakota term meaning "Cloudy Water". Our License plates also read "Land of 10,000 Lakes" all though we have way more than that.

Here are some other facts:

~MN became a state on May 11, 1858; the 32nd state.

~The capital is St. Paul.

~The state bird is the Common Loon (which is quite beautiful and makes such a neat call.)

~The state flower is the showy Ladyslipper.

~One nickname is "The Gopher State".

~Wild Rice is MN's state grain.

~Minnesota is the top Iron mining state.

~Moo juice (milk) is the state drink.

~Minnesotans grow a lot of wheat and have a lot of dairy cattle which has led to another nickname the "Bread and Butter State".

~Mn grows more suger beets than any other state.

~Minnesotans live longer than people from any other state except Hawaii.

~Mn has the distinction of going longer (over 40 years) than any other state of always voting for the Democratic presidential candidate.

~Mn is home of the Mayo clinic, the most well known, used world wide, medical facility.

~Mn is home of the biggest shopping mall in the US. I can speak from experience that shopping there can be quite tiring! :-)

~Sports are also present in MN. We have the MN Twins, The Vikings, the Timberwolves and the MN Wild.

~The tallest ice sculpture ever built was in the 1992 St. Paul winter carnival when an ice palace was built that was taller than 150 ft. and made out of 25,000 blocks of ice.

~In-line skates were invented by two MN students. They were wanting to practice hockey in the summer so they replaced their blades with wheels.

There are a ton more neat and wonderful things about MN but I need to quit for the day. You will have to chime in to tell me what you know.