Throughout the years Chuck Lennon, communications director at Explore Minnesota Tourism, has fielded some pretty strange questions regarding his state – the most outrageous of which he would add to his annual year-in-review report. Then, in a stroke of marketing genius, he decided to make the list public.

Minnesota’s “Quirkiest Queries” list is a compilation of the funniest questions posed to the agency over the past year. And the list is comprehensive. Lennon even tapped counselors from the state’s call-in lines and 11 different travel information centers to send him details about the most memorable calls they had fielded.

The Star Tribune Reports that some of the anecdotes are from Explore Minnesota Tourism travel information centers, which tourists visit in person, while others are compiled from phone or mail queries:

– “I’m coming in July and I want snowmobile rental information.”

– “Where do we go to do the whale-watching?”

– “Is there such a thing as an easy fishing lake? Something without having to hunt and work real hard?”

– “We want to tour the Edmund Fitzgerald.” (The ship sank in Lake Superior in a storm off Michigan’s Upper Peninsula in 1975, in Lake Superior.)

– A traveler asking to see a bridge in Minnesota with arches was shown various photos, none of which seemed right to her. She finally identified a picture of the St. Louis Gateway Arch as the right attraction, and was given directions to Missouri.

– “Does one need a travel permit or visa to visit Minnesota?”

– “Is it always foggy in Duluth? What time will the fog lift?” (It is often foggy in Duluth but the fog does not lift on a prearranged schedule.)

– A New Yorker who stopped by the Thompson Hill travel information center in Duluth mentioned that he’d gotten a speeding ticket on the way there. He said that when he told the officer he was headed to northeastern Minnesota to see owls, the cop didn’t just give him a citation; he also directed him to good places for owl-watching.

– “I want an adult-only resort, no kids! I also want a beach, but there has to be a swimming pool, I’m not swimming in that filthy lake!”

– “Congratulations to the Minnesota Legislature for being willing to include money to support this type of visitor center and keep important the little towns, which could be regarded as dead or dying.”

[Via: StarTribune]

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