One of the first camping trips of 2018! Yes, that’s right, I’m finally getting caught up with all my old posts. All the trips take time away from work and working on the blog then it takes time to get caught up, it is quite the vicious cycle 🙂
Maplewood State Park
Part of the Minnesota State Park System
~40 mins south of Detroit Lakes, MN
The weather has been odd in 2018 to say the least, the winter lasted longer than usual, then it got HOT quickly (in the upper 90’s), and has been fluctuating ever since. Don’t even get me started on how this winter has been so far. Thankfully this trip, planned since January, fell on a weekend when the weather was perfect for camping – in the mid 70’s and sunny. We went up on a Friday after work, trying to leave somewhat early in order to avoid traffic, but that didn’t quite happen. It took us around 4.5 hours to get up to the park, when it should have only taken us 3.5 at most. Thankfully the days are long this time of year.
As we were nearing the park, we started to notice all the rolling hills and small lakes that are present in the area. We were not quite expecting that, since the park is on the border of the plains and coniferous forest areas. As we drove to our campsite along the long and narrow road, we admired how secluded this park is from the road and towns around it. We stayed in the Knoll Loop Campground, which is a smaller campground that only has 14 sites and they’re all non-electric. The campground sits on a hill overlooking Grass Lake and most sites are well covered with trees.
After getting our site set up, we quickly made dinner and enjoyed a fire for a bit before going to bed as we had a lot of hiking planned for the next day. There are roughly 25 miles of trails traversing the park and we were eager to stretch our legs after a long winter. In the morning after eating breakfast, we went to the town of Pelican Rapids, about 15 min away, because I forgot some of the food I had planned to bring. Womp womp. I really need to start making a list for packing.
As soon as we got back we headed out on the trails, we headed north from our campsite on the Hiking Club trail, which is also one of the interpretive trails in the park. The trails are very well marked throughout the park and correlate well to the map. We stayed on the Hiking Club trail past Cataract Lake then looped over to head towards Lida Lake, which is one of the main features of the park. The trail was a nice mix of rolling grassland hills and woods.Given that Maplewood State Park is park of the Alexandria Moraine, so there are many small glacial lakes dotted throughout the park.
Once we got to Lida Lake we went up to Hallaway Hill Overlook, which is quite the steep climb compared to the rest of the rolling hills in the area. The overlook does give some nice views of the surrounding hills and peak at Lida Lake. After coming down from the overlook, we had our lunch in the picnic area. It was a little early still, but we welcomed the opportunity to hang out by the lake and relax.
After lunch we headed out on the longer leg of hike that day. We headed south continuing along Lida Lake, again weaving in and out of forest and rolling hill grasslands. Towards the end of our hike, we started to regret biting off such a long hike for our two day camping trip as we were planning to hike around nine miles that day. But the end of the hike afforded us some nice variety because we passed by some of the hike in campsites that were quite nice and situated on some lakesides.
When we finally got back to camp we were quite pooped and enjoyed a nice cold beverage and relaxed in our camp chairs for a quite a while. A nap might even have been taken right before dinner ;). We finally got rejuvenated enough to make dinner and start our fire. The next morning we headed out somewhat early as we were not sure what kind of traffic to expect on the way home given the drive we had up there.
Maplewood State Park will stick in my mind as a relatively underrated park. The whole weekend, there was maybe one or two other groups in our campground – granted it was one of the smaller campgrounds at the park. The trails were not very full, but there were plenty of miles offered, considering we only hiked about half of the trails offered. They also have multiple lakes that you can either boat, fish, or swim at. Overall, this was a great park and I wish it was closer to the Twin Cities, but either way I know we’ll back!
Until next time!
average girl's adventures 