Duluth will welcome three tall ships into the harbor August 1-3, with on-board tours of these fascinating replicas of historic vessels. The ships will be in port as part of the Duluth Maritime Festival, celebrating the state’s Sesquicentennial. There will be a concert at Bayfront Festival Park Saturday evening, with other entertainment planned for the weekend, as well.

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Geocaching: A High-Tech Hunt for Minnesota History

Geocaching, a kind of high-tech treasure hunt, is at the center of a new program that Minnesota State Parks is rolling out for the summer of 2008 in celebration of the state’s 150th birthday. Geocaching, which has become very popular in the past few years, is a modern hide-and-seek game using GPS (global positioning system) devices to track down a stash hidden at a location that has been posted on a website by latitude and longitude. The GPS is a hand-held, computerized navigational tool used to track these global coordinates via satellite technology.

Tags: birding, geocaching, nature, state parks

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The newly revamped indoor amusement park in the center of Mall of America became Nickelodeon Universe on March 15, 2008, with several new rides and characters from Nickelodeon’s popular television shows. It’s the first themed park for Nickelodeon, one of the country’s top kids’ entertainment brands, whose cartoon characters include SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer and Jimmy Neutron.

Tags: family, mall, theme park

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Summer is a great time to relax and listen to the music-jazz, blues, country classical-whatever gets your toe tappin.’ And if it’s out in the open air, so much the better. With its wide assortment of music festivals, Minnesota makes it easy to get out and groove to the sounds you like best.

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The Running Aces Harness Park, near Forest Lake on the northern edge of the Twin Cities metro area, will open for its first season April 11.

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The southeast bluff country of Minnesota is strikingly picturesque, a landscape of wooded bluffs, limestone cliffs, and streams winding through rural valleys. But it wasn’t really “discovered” by tourists until the Root River Trail was developed in the 1980s and lured thousands of cyclists to its secluded scenic pathway. But if you haven’t been to this corner of the state lately, you might be surprised by all you find there now.

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Minnesota became the 32nd state in the Union on May 11, 1858. Throughout 2008, communities and historic sites will celebrate the state’s Sesquicentennial. For more information on events related to the Sesquicentennial, go to www.mn150years.org.

Tags: Events, history

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The Minnesota Zoo will debut a major new, permanent exhibit called Russia’s Grizzly Coast on June 7, 2008. This $23.6 million project re-creates the habitat of the little-known Kamchatka Peninsula, a wilderness area along Russia’s far eastern coast.

Tags: attractions, family fun, nature

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This is a listing of most of Minnesota’s county fairs, as reported in February.

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Minnesota, long celebrated for sky blue waters, has uncorked another vibrant liquid. It’s wine, made in Minnesota from Minnesota-grown grapes. Now, with vineyards beginning to speckle the state’s landscape and wineries opening apace (21 now and more to come), you can embark on a Minnesota wine tour.

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