Itasca State Park, Minnesota.

Summer is burgeoning the upper midwestern United States. Tired of the cold winters, residents of the area look forward to travelling to lakes country to enjoy the beauty of Minnesota’s legendary 10,000 lakes.

North of Park Rapids, Minnesota, travelers will find Itasca State Park. Minnesota’s first park is large enough to house over 100 lakes, but that’s not the park’s claim to fame. Lake Itasca has an outlet, visible in the image above on the right. Water drains between those stones into a relative trickle headed southerly for over 2500 miles (4023 km), all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. You might have heard of this river, the mighty Mississippi. At Lake Itasca, visitors can cross the Mississippi on those rocks without getting their feet wet. I’ve published a couple of blog posts about the park here at Journeys, both fall color trips, but summer is beautiful in its own right. You can view other photos of the park here and here.

About this photo:

We were visiting the park for an overnight stay and went to the Mississippi headwaters around sunset. The air was calm but a bit cool, not uncommon in September. This photo was captured with my Samsung S6 cell phone, edited in Lightroom and processed to a 3D popout in Photoshop Elements.

John Steiner