The are lots of rea­sons to visit the Great Lakes any time of the year, from island camp­ing and div­ing ship wrecks to vis­it­ing his­toric light houses. This com­ing sum­mer, there will be one more rea­son: the Great Lakes will host the Tall Ships Challenge race series in 2010. The ships will race through all five Great Lakes, mak­ing port appear­ances in cities through­out the region.

Explore Minnesota Tourism offers direct assis­tance to trav­el­ers of the state. Sometimes, inter­ac­tions prove very inter­est­ing. Here are two lists of top 10 inter­ac­tions from our phone/mail ser­vice and our state high­way travel infor­ma­tion centers.

TwinsFest 2010 is sched­uled for Friday, Jan. 29 from 4 to 9:30 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 30 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 31 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Metrodome. More than 50 cur­rent, for­mer and future Twins play­ers are expected to appear through­out the course of the week­end. A com­plete list of play­ers attend­ing will be released in the com­ing weeks on www.twinsbaseball.com.

Beginning this week, Explore Minnesota Tourism will pub­lish weekly reports on down­hill ski and win­ter trail con­di­tions. These online reports offer enthu­si­asts infor­ma­tion on where the con­di­tions for down­hill and cross-country ski­ing and snow­mo­bil­ing are optimal.

Some Like it Cold! So when the tem­per­a­tures start to drop, escape to Minnesota’s Northwoods and expe­ri­ence a majes­tic win­ter won­der­land at The Historic Grand View Lodge!