Get Outdoors
Hit the Trails Expedition Detroit showcases the metro region as a gateway to world-class outdoor recreation By Giuseppa Nadrowski
Entrepreneur Dan Cooke, of Expedition Detroit, provides guided hiking, trail running, snowshoeing, backpacking, and night hiking trips in southeast Michigan.
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here are 11 state parks within about an hour’s drive of metro Detroit. For many people, that may come as a welcoming surprise — which is why Dan Cooke began Expedition Detroit, a one-stop destination for all things outdoors in the state’s southeast region. The company offers guided adventures as well as advocacy and volunteer programs, and includes content that’s replete with tips and tricks for local enthusiasts. Launched in 2022, Expedition Detroit provides strategic marketing for organizations, companies, mom-and-pop shops, and larger retailers that are either based within the Detroit region or are trying to market to the region. “We also provide guided hiking, trail running, snowshoeing, backpacking, and night hiking trips,” Cooke says. “Our guided hikes are affiliated with the state parks, so a percentage of the revenue generated directly benefits our state parks, trails, and waterways.” An avid outdoorsman since his youth, Cooke, a Detroit-based lawyer and native of Washington, D.C., with family roots in Michigan, would often travel with his friends across the country or overseas in search of their next extreme adventure. Then the pandemic hit. “When COVID happened, we had no idea when our next backpacking trip would be. We had no idea when we’d even be able to leave the country again,” he says. “We just felt like we couldn’t scratch that itch.” So, Cooke and his friends decided to explore the metro Detroit area’s local state and metro parks. “To our pleasant surprise, they weren’t only very good, they were amazing. I got to explore all these campgrounds, trails, rivers, and new parks that I’d always heard about.” As the year progressed, Cooke and his friends continued to explore and discover all that the region has to offer. Then, “a light bulb went off,” he says. “If anyone should know that these places exist and how valuable they are, it should have been us — and we had no idea. So, if we didn’t know about these places, we wondered who else didn’t.”
PHOTOS (BOTH PAGES) COURTESY OF EXPEDITION DETROIT
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