Wakeboarding in Minnesota
 

Some friends and I are thinking about making a trip up to Minnesota this summer (August). Looking to stay in a cabin within an hour or two from the twin cities. I’m looking for recommendations for lakes around that might be worth looking into.

Take your pick, there is every type of lake about 2 hours away. Gull Lake is probably the most popular (outside Lake Minnetonka) and has a bunch of big resorts, restaurants, bars, and golf courses all around it. There are other towns that have their own comparable resorts and atmosphere such as Cross Lake, Detroit Lakes, Alexandria, Mille Lacs, and anywhere there is a Zorbaz Pizza. There are also quieter lakes if you're looking to get away from boat traffic and like to keep the party to yourselves, just look up Airbnb or vrbo.com

That’s the problem, there are so many. :eek:

The Whitefish chain in Crosslake would be high on my list. Lots of cabin/vrbo options, variety of lakes, and some nice waterfront restaurants. Some pretty sweet golf up that way too if you're into that. Gull would be another, or anywhere around the Brainerd area.

I'd avoid Mille Lacs - not a great lake for riding as it tends to be rough.

If you wanted to camp/rv, there's a cool little lake-front camp ground on Serpent Lake in the Crosby/Deerwood area (some vrbo options on the lake as well). The lake's pretty quiet on week-days, and not bad weekends outside of the 4th of July. There's also some really nice mountain biking there at the old mine-pits.

Any information on Pelican Lake? When I look at it from the google satellite view, the lake looks shallow in a number of parts.

I don't know Pelican personally, but looks to have a mix of pretty shallow and really deep holes from the maps. If you want to check out depths for lakes in Minnesota, this is a good resource:https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/maps/compass/index.html

Find your given lake, and when you zoom in far enough, it'll show the depth charts.

Alternatively, you can get also get pdf depth maps from here: https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/lakefind/index.html

Which Pelican Lake? There are a bunch. The two most popular have Breezy Point Resort north of Brainerd and the other is south of Detroit Lakes. The Breezy Point one has a lot of good riding spots, but does have a lot of shallow bays and sand bars. The bay that Breezy Point has their docks on is muddy and weedy that we cleaned the intake filter every time we would leave the bay. I don't recall many depth issues on the Pelican near Detroit Lakes.

I live in Grand Rapids on Pokegama lake, 3 bars, and a golf course you can boat too. Tons of islands and great beaches. At 6600 acres its a great lake. 3 hours out of the cities, but if you come up this way we'd be happy show you around the area. 2 million bucks worth of new wakeboats added to the lake in the last two years.