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I am not surprised Minneapolis is leading in the poll because it has a lot of natural lakes! As a matter of fact of all the inland cities east of the Rockies, Minneapolis metro has the most acres of water contained in natural lakes outside of the Great Lake cities. I have spent some time in Minneapolis and was quite impressed.
I visited Cuyahoga National Park last year and was really impressed that Cleveland had such a great natural asset, especially due to the bad rep the city has as one of the penultimate examples of rust-belt urban decay in America. With the Lake and this park, I voted for Cleveland, Chrissie Hynde be damned....
Yes I visited the park for the first time last year and was blown away with the fact they could put together this beautiful park in a highly urbanized area between Akron and Cleveland. One of the chief architects long time congressman, Ralph Regula, really helped gave northeastern Ohio a jewel. I also consider Lake Erie a national treasure with beautiful water, rivers, islands and world class fishing. Yes there is an algae problem in the western basin and hopefully our current governmental leaders will step up in the tradition of Ralph Regula and preserve this tremendous resource.
Glad to see Cleveland was able to finish in the Top 3 in spite of the city's overall reputation. Each of these places really do have their own unique charm though. Thank you to everyone who voted!
I really think that Grand Rapids has been overlooked. The western suburbs of Grand Rapids are beach towns along Lake Michigan. Muskegon, Norton Shores, Port Sheldon, Grand Haven, Holland, Saugatuck are places hard to beat in terms of beauty. Frankly, I don't think that any of the cities mentioned in this poll have a surrounding area as breathtaking as Grand Rapids. The only thing is that Chicago and Cleveland are on the water, but their surrounding areas pale in comparison to the Gold Coast of Michigan which is right in Grand Rapids Metro area.
RoM, I don't deny that Lake Michigan has gorgeous shoreline on that end, however, admittedly, it is a bit of a hike from there (about 30 miles) to the shoreline itself, and while I did say within 60 miles, I think there is also something to be said for having more scenery closer in (like within 20 minutes, or even right downtown, as Chicago and Cleveland's shorelines are). Also, I would like to see pictures of the surrounding area of Grand Rapids before I make any decisions on that. I'll give you that Gold Coast beaches are likely of a higher quality, and that there are also likely some sand dunes similar to Indiana Lakeshore also. However, as a whole, just based on what I know (perhaps you could post some pictures showing otherwise), Cleveland's surrounding area has more old growth deciduous tree canopy, and is as a whole more topographically and geologically dynamic than is GR. Lastly, while I'm sure GR has nice offerings, the general idea of the post was "Big League" not in the sense that something about the cities was necessarily better than GR, but that they happened to have big league teams, and populations. GR is probably the largest city/region in the midwest outside of that tier, however, it still is around 500K smaller in population than the smallest other region on this list. Again, there isn't anything wrong with that though, as I think many cities on this list would gladly take the vibrancy of GR's downtown.
Edit: I'm sure those gold coast towns are nice, but I would like to see more diversity as a whole (bodies of water, forest, hills, caves, rock formations, waterfalls, etc.). That's why I went for Cleveland, but seeing the pictures that the other poster put, Minneapolis is quite diverse in this regard also.
Chicago is dead flat. The Lake is remarkable and the dunes in Indiana are special but the overall area (outside of a few parts of the fox River valley) is very featureless.
So hills are the only contributing factor that can make nature "beautiful", huh? Very interesting.
There are many areas of rolling, nice hills in Chicagoland. All of the river valleys (not just the Fox) have hills and steep banks in many areas. I believe the 60-mile range will also put the Rock River Valley (near Oregon, IL) in reach, too. Maybe? Thats very hilly and gorgeous out there, too. Throw in prairies (even sand prairies with cacti), deep woods, streams and creeks, forest preserves, waterfalls, etc, and Chicagoland has plenty of stuff to look at.
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