Minnesota

Minnesota has always been a well-run state with honest elections and decent people (at least for the most part). It is a state with both income taxes and high property taxes. However, the schools are good, the state parks are superb, and the highways and local streets come with planting holes (potholes in local parlance). Stay away from the NW suburbs of the Twin Cities if you are looking for progressives. It is a hot bed of MAGA types that spawned the likes of Michelle Bachman and Tom Emmer. Minnesota is the only state in the nation with a sales tax where the proceeds are dedicated to the arts (both visual and performance), historic preservation, water quality and wildlife habitat improvements. We spend more on the arts than in most states on a per capita basis.

It is dam cold in MN in the winter. Where we live, the air temperature in January was minus 31 or colder for a week straight (much colder windchill). But, if you embrace it, it is also one of the few places where you can walk on water (frozen water). People ski (cross country and downhill), ice boat and ice fish and use motorized vehicles like ATVs and snowmobiles. My father was an ice fishing fanatic. He used to go all over the place to fish for sunfish by bobbing a little jig with a wax worm up and down in holes on his Swiss cheese like patch of ice (drilled lots of holes). He was at an old school type that believed that if you needed an ice-house, it was too cold to go fishing (minus 20 was his cut off). We had a snow dog that loved that minus -45 to -50 wind chill stuff (had to walk her twice a day totally bundled up in googles and works). So, there are critters who really like the freezing weather.

MN is one place where a four-wheel drive vehicle is more than nice. It helps a great deal to plow through snow drifts and to get up steep hills and driveways (some places like the North Shore are semi-mountainous). We have trout streams, over 90,000 miles of rivers and creeks, share one of the country’s best Wild and Scenic Rivers with Wisconsin (the St. Croix) and have well over 10,000 lakes. It also sits on the greatest of the Great Lakes, Superior. Superior is bigger than the State of Maine and is shared by Canada, Wisconsin, and Michigan. It is a one-of-a-kind lake where you can drive for nine hours and still be on the same lake.

Anyhow, without adding any more information, suffice it to say that Minnesota has always been one of the best states in the nation. It has its share of people with delusions of grandeur. But most everyone is reasonably practical (which is a useful tendency at minus 31).