Biking-Camping - Detroit Lakes and the Trolls

Another biking and camping trip with my friend, Bud. The video is here.

We drove up to Detroit Lakes on Sunday. It was grey and rainy.

The camping portion of the trip was at a HipCamp site called Tumbleweed Base Camp just outside of Detroit Lakes and adjacent to Detroit Mountain Recreation Area.

To get our bearings, we drove into Detroit Lakes to check out the first of Danish recycling artist Thomas Dambo's trolls, Alexa's Elixir, in downtown next to the lake.

Full disclosure, I cheated by looking up the location of all the trolls. If you want to follow the clues to discover each troll, don't worry, I won't divulge where each one is.

Tumblweed Base Camp has a nice setup (we really appreciated having a heater in the tent) but wasn't conducive to making our own meals, so we ate dinner in town. We did fix breakfast Monday morning before heading out on our biking adventure.

Monday was a beautiful day for biking. After purchasing a pair of gloves (Bud) and bike shorts (Jeff), we got started around 10:00am.

We started back at Alexa and used GPS to get around. It was fun to cycle then walk around each park where each troll was located. A kind of surprising find was that this part of Minnesota had rolling hills and even a ski hill (mountain??).

I had mapped out riding to each troll. The farthest we had to go was about 10 miles to Frazee. We were on dedicated bike paths most of the time (big shout out to "rails to trails"). 

Thank goodness for The Monarch Coffee House in Frazee. They were open on Monday and serving a hearty lunch.

We saw lots of swans...an unexpected and delightful surprise. The fall colors were nice but not dramatic. The art park, Ortenstone Gardens and Sculpture Park, is a fantastic addition. Be sure to go behind Barefoot Frida to be amazed.

We made it to all the trolls by bike except the last one. It was getting late and it turned out the last troll was near our campsite. The timing was perfect as we got to see the setting sun from the highest point in the area. We ended up biking over 26 miles.

Tumblewood Base Camp teepee

Trying to find breakfast Tuesday before we started the drive home was a challenge. Most places were closed though the internet told us they were open. We ended up at Northside Bar - a cash only local spot serving a very good breakfast.

We took a scenic route back to Minneapolis. Click here to watch the trip video.