Growing up in Minnesota, I felt some pride that we must be the most "lakey” state in the nation because we had 10,000 lakes. Of course, I didn’t think we had exactly 10,000 of them, but I could imagine the consternation early explorers would have felt had they counted only 9,999. As a limnologist - a scientist who studies lakes and rivers - I have spent a fair bit of effort counting and measuring lakes and have an answer to an often-asked question, “How many lakes are there in Minnesota?”