Minnehaha Creek begins at the eastern edge of Lake Minnetonka and flows east about twenty-one miles, spills over the limestone lip of a cliff as Minnehaha Falls, then travels one last mile to feed the Mississippi River. Contrary to popular belief, Minnehaha does not actually mean “laughing water,” though as I stand at the foot of the falls, I find the mistranslation appropriate. This is a joyful place—not just because I’m here with my love, and love makes most things joyful, but because it’s a place of natural beauty in the middle of a city, and a place to which hundreds of thousands of people flock to celebrate nature every year. I’ve wanted to see Minnehaha Falls in person since Elena hung this Mark Herman print in our living room, and on our last full day in Minneapolis, right before we hand over the car that was the reason for this trip, I finally get the chance.
We walk from the meadows of the park’s upper glen to the lower glen, whose paths follow the creek from the waterfall’s plunge pool to the Mississippi. Along the walk are deposits of the same limestone that makes up the lip of the falls—part of the Platville Formation, formed, like much of Minnesota’s geography, 460 million years ago. In the Ordovician Period, this entire region sat at the bottom of a tropical sea. Within the limestone, you can still find fossils—trilobites, coral, bryozoans, molluscs—ancient life embedded in the soft rock where lovers carve their initials today.
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This is the twelfth and final post in a cross-country road trip series. To start from the beginning, click here!
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