Points North

In 2014, a group of botanists discovered that a very rare plant native to the Kankakee River in Illinois, had vanished from its only known native habitat in the world. That set off a quest to bring back the missing Midwestern flower.

What would happen if our devices were alive? Would it change the way we treat them? One researcher in Chicago wanted to find out. So she made a smartwatch that has to be fed and watered to work.

Lake Champlain is more than 16 times smaller than Lake Ontario, the smallest Great Lake. But in 1998, Congress designated Lake Champlain as the sixth Great Lake, teeing off a historical and cultural fight over which lakes can really call themselves Great.

Blue moon ice cream, this quintessentially Midwestern, bright blue dessert, is a mystery. No one can agree on what it tastes like, and no one with the info will say. We try to find out.

Ron Reimink knew how uncomfortable and annoying swimmer’s itch could be. He spent much of his adult life trying to eradicate it in lakes across northern Michigan. Then one day, he realized he was completely wrong.

In 2021, Emily Ford goes on a winter vacation. She doesn’t go to some warm beach location, though. She sets out to thru-hike Wisconsin’s 1,200 mile Ice Age Trail.

Tom Farnquist is in the business of preserving underwater artifacts and displaying them in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. The problem is, a lot of those artifacts were technically stolen from the State of Michigan. And one day, the state notices.

After Traci Lynn Martin’s mom died, she knew she couldn’t keep putting off her dream: Becoming the first person to kayak around the Great Lakes in one year.

Minnesota and Wisconsin are bitter rivals at just about everything. So in 2019, when Wisconsin’s secretary of tourism claimed her state had more lakes than Minnesota, the embers of an age-old debate were stoked. Minnesota is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”, but does Wisconsin really have more?

Cougars are making a comeback. The iconic wildcat hasn’t had a breeding population in the Great Lakes states since the early 1900s, but now they’re moving east. Experts say they could be back soon. Some people swear they already are.