Winona is a lovely river town in SE Minnesota; parts of my mother's family came from the area. It's across the Mississippi from LaCrosse, WI (more or less), where there is a branch of UWisconsin. It's pretty rural and probably an hour from the Twin Cities (the commute would be atrocious, though, in the winter). St. Mary's is not very good, quite frankly, it's a Catholic college run by brothers, and it seems to me to be a dying college--but it's been a few years since I've had anything to do with it (through job candidates and relatives) so I could be wrong. A quick glance at its website tells me it's a comprehensive with lots of pre-professional and professional programs so it isn't very liberal artsy at its basis. But again I could be wrong....
The campus is gorgeous (we've had family reunions there)--it is very bluffy and hilly and forested--drop dead gorgeous in fact (though it's quite...interesting....when a tornado comes through, as one did when we had a family reunion back in the early 1990s). Good luck!
Anth, It's more like 2-1/4 hours from the Cities, over 100 miles of 2-lane roads (yes, terrible during the winter). There's also Winona State University or whatever it's called these days.
Yep, it's very pretty there.
