minneapolis and nature (Elk River, Stillwater: camping, place to live, garden)

[hannm843]

My wife and I are thinking about moving to the Minneapolis area from NYC. One of our main criteria for the next place we move is access to nature, and by nature I don't mean manicured city parks like Central Park but actual woods, etc. It seems like the Twin Cities have a lot of lakes and parks but I was wondering what people thought about access to the outdoors. We're also looking at Portland but it's a bit far from our families (NY, MI). I'm from a 1,000 person town in rural MI, so cold and flat terrain do not frighten me.

[MplsTodd]

The Twin Cities has a great collection of regional parks within the metro. These areas tend to have rolling topography, with a mixture of woods and wetlands/lakes. One park, Theodore Wirth, is within the Minneapolis City limits and has a quaking bog, nature trails and wildflower garden within about 3 miles of downtown. One of my favorites would be William O'Brian State park along the St Croix river (north of Stillwater along the MN-WI border).

Here's a site which has some info on Metropolitan Regional parks

http://www.metrocouncil.org/parks/map/parksmap.htm

There's also numerous state parks within a 1-3 hour drive for camping, hiking and canoeing. So, overall, I'd give the Twin Cities a B+/A- for access to nature. We're drfinitely not in Denver's league. I've also been to Portland and would have to say they have better scenery (due to the mountains and the Columbia River Gorge).

[knke0204]

http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/bicy...haredlanes.pdf

http://www.minneapolisparks.org/docu...system_map.pdf

[Kebinminn]

Also consider state forests, there's a few north of here.

There's also some state parks, I've been to several, their wooded. Even some city parks are.

[llratke]

If you live anywhere North of the twin cities it is much more wooded. I'm 30 miles NW of downtown Minneapolis in Elk River (which is a very wonderful town!) and I'm on one very wooded acre. There are horse farms up here, but to get a lot of land you need to go further north. Southern Minnesota is flatter with not as many trees....Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin are considered to us "God's country" with lot's of hunting and fishing.....the further north you go, the more lakes you see. This is a very beautiful place to live, f you can stand the winters. I just fly south in January and get outta dodge!

[savraliv]

In addition, if you're looking to live in the city and don't want to drive far, Minnehaha Park (the dog park area), even though it's for dog's too, is very wooded and magical to me. I go there every week basically, and if you go when no one's there, it feels like you're in the middle of the forest. There is nice biking around it, too.

[golfgal]

You also have nice access to many areas in the outlying metro area with county parks/state parks as well as places like Stillwater with the cliffs along the river for exploring, etc. Each "corner" of the state has different terrain to so exploring the state and the different areas is fun as well.