MN good places to overland?

Hey MN folks!

I'm up on the range, and have slowly been trying to hit as many gravel tracks as I can with my new truck. Trying to plan some more trips, since my 6yo lives the truck and wants to "get more gravel in our travel" Any suggestions for new places to hit up?

 

@Tigerian can point you in the right direction

 

Superior National Forest has tons of good stuff. MN state forests aren’t bad either, just hard to find good mapping on some of them, the DNR website is awful with state forest stuff.

 

yeah. SNF is goinf to be my main go to. I actually think my town is surrounded by it. I drive out of town and I'm in the forest. Now I'm just trying to figure out which roads and routes are appropriate for the Tacoma.

 

The Forest Service map will tell you what each road is rated for. Zoom in and click on the road.

https://www.fs.fed.us/ivm/index.html

 

cool.

 

I enjoy the strip mall in Eagan off cliff road, lots of rocks and curbs to climb. Just watch out for target shopping carts.

 

Small world - I live in Eagan and sub to your fishing rant thread.

 

Any chance you can confirm the off-roading quality of that strip mall?

 

Well if you see a inferno orange 3rd gen with a black soft top thats me! Im one of the only infernos in the area. The only other 2 I know of are a short bed sport that was in burnsville (it was a lease, so its gone now) and a extended cab inferno in apple valley (have not seen him in awhile though)

 

https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...6ec2dda62024acb!8m2!3d44.791481!4d-93.2058258

There are large rocks leading into the target parking lot. Nice curbs with rocks in there and in the winter they make a giant snow pile in the cub foods parking lot.

 

Oh you were dead serious haha

 

My wife likes to offroad there with her lexus... she calls me in the winter to tell me how many trees/rocks she has hit.... and she wonders why I dont really want to buy her a new car.

 

There's an MN border2border route that is being worked on. I found the proposed maps a while back and took some liberties with them. But it was a super fun trip and would be great for beginner overlanding. During the main trip I don't think I needed to even use 4wd, which was a little disappointing, but it's not like we're driving mountain passes here in MN. If you are interested in the GPX files let me know.

 

That looks like a lot of fun

 

Just saw this post. Would love the GPX for the BTB. I'm pretty sure I live fairly close to some of it.

 

Here you go, guys. Straight outta Gaia.

 

Here are two other pretty cool spots. The view is just insane for MN, and 100% worth stopping at if you're in the area. Unfortunately, you "can't" camp there. The other spot is the Lost 40, which is a pretty cool little hike where some early cartographers made a mistake and left an entire 40 acres untouched by logging.

 

awesome. Thanks. I'm going to have to check out that spot with the amazing view when I do my short hike to the northern teminus of the SHT this summer, real close to it.