Trip Report -- Big Bog, Minn.

Just got back from an odd one. This weekend I traveled to northern Minnesota and the Red Lake Peatlands, a spongy, hard-to-access wilderness that is the lower 48 states’ largest bog.

This “Everglades of the North” covers nearly 500 square miles of area, and it is an alien place where carnivorous plants dine on bugs, wolves and moose roam on soft earth, and orchids bloom in the green.

It is a region of rare landforms called flarks and strings, where ovoid islands are surrounded by rivers of ooze. For the assignment, photographer TC Worley (www.studiobluempls.com) and I took a sightseeing flight in a four-seater Cessna and tromped the boardwalk at Big Bog State Recreation Area.

We snooped for moose, spied on tundra swans, and hiked a section of bouncy ground for a peek at the Big Bog’s mysterious inner sanctum of spongy earth and ooze.

Here are a few photos from the trip. Watch for a full story soon.