Mille Lacs Lake is a large but shallow lake in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is located in the counties of Mille Lacs, Aitkin, and Crow Wing, roughly 75 miles north of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.

Minnesota is a state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes" but actually has 14,380 bodies of fresh water covering at least ten acres each; roughly a third of the state is forested; much of the remainder is prairie and farmland. More than 60% of Minnesotans live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the "Twin Cities", the state's main political, economic, and cultural hub and the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Other minor metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and St. Cloud.