Minnesota's state parks and trails offer outdoor activities for all
Our May 2022 workshop was an engaging presentation on Minnesota’s wonderful system of state parks and trails by Arielle Courtney, partnership development consultant for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. She began with a summary of the health benefits of getting outdoors, especially in natural areas, and why “two hours outdoors is the new 10,000 steps.”
Courtney then talked about the many ways the state of Minnesota can help us get our “dose” of outdoors. Minnesota has 75 state parks and recreation areas, 25 state trails, and 35 river trails spread across the state’s hardwood forests, pine forests, and plains. These places offer an abundance of ways to experience them, such as hiking, canoeing, fishing, camping, driving, and listening to interpretive programs. There are activities and facilities for all ages and abilities, including programs and hikes for little kids, trails, and even all-terrain motorized wheelchairs and off-road track chairs for the mobility impaired.
Active visitors can join the Minnesota State Parks and Trails Hiking Club. There are 68 designated hiking trails in the parks, often showcasing the park’s most scenic features. In the middle of each trail is a secret word. As you accumulate words and mileage, you can earn patches and even free camping nights.
Another club is the Passport Club, which doesn’t require hiking but just visiting a park and stamping a book. Accumulated visits then earn rewards similar to those of the Hiking Club.
I Can Fish!
Within the state parks you can fish without a license; you can check out free fishing gear, and, for a small fee, you can join the I Can Fish! program to learn how to fish. You can also join an I Can Camp! program and learn other outdoor skills like canoeing.
Many parks also have kits that can be checked out for activities like birding, orienteering, and KiDS Activity Booklets.
Courtney highlighted a number of parks for particular activities:
- For the active adventurerBackpack camping at George Crosby Manitou State Park
- Canoe camping at Scenic State Park
- Biking on the Paul Bunyan State Trail
For families and grandkids
- Cabin camping at Whitewater State Park
- Nature play at Nerstrand Big Woods State Park
- Swimming at Flandrau State Park
- Hiking on short trails at Frontenac, Big Bog, Lake Shetek, Minneopa, and Banning State Park
For the less mobile
- Wheelchair accessible camping and hiking at Lake Bemidji State Park
- Traveling along the accessible Root River, Douglas, and Howard Munger trails.
For those seeking solitude
- Carley Lake, Killen Woods, and Schoolcraft state parks, and the Minnesota Valley Recreational Area
Besides visiting there are also several other ways one can be involved with Minnesota’s state parks and trails. You can become a campground host, where you stay at a campground for several weeks and monitor its activities. You can join a friends group for a particular park or trail and volunteer at the park or fundraise for it. And, at the U of M, you can enroll in the Minnesota Master Naturalist program to become a steward and interpreter of the parks and outdoors.
Minnesota’s state parks and trails are a wonderful resource, waiting for us to enjoy and nurture them.
—Ron Matross, UMRA president-elect and Program Committee chair
Portals to health and happiness: Minnesota state parks
Tue, May 17, 2022, at 11am
Arielle Courtney
Partnership development consultant
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
Event to be held via Zoom.
Our May workshop will be about Minnesota’s crown jewels, our state parks. Minnesota is fortunate to be positioned where four major North American biomes converge: aspen parklands, prairie grasslands, and deciduous and coniferous forests. We are also blessed to have a system of 75 state parks and recreational areas covering this great diversity of landscape.
Arielle Courtney, partnership development consultant for the Parks and Trails Division of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), will talk to us about how we can engage with this wonderful resource and use it to help ourselves and our families become healthier and happier.
Please register for this Zoom webinar and join us at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, May 17.
Her presentation will describe ways that everyone, regardless of physical abilities, can get outside and enjoy the state’s parks and trails. Whether it is through a challenging adventure like mountain biking or backpacking, a relaxed picnic, or a stroll on an accessible paved trail, there is something for everyone in our parks.
The pandemic has given us all a greater sense of the importance of time outdoors for our physical and mental health; and our parks, near and not-so-near, offer us the chance to renew our bodies and spirits.
Courtney holds both BS and MS degrees from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities in environmental policy and natural resources management. She joined the DNR in 2013 as a social science researcher and strategic planner. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband, two-year-old daughter, and rescue dog. They enjoy camping, hiking, paddling, and biking all around Minnesota, but especially in the Driftless Area and along the North Shore.
—Ron Matross, UMRA Program Committee chair
Upcoming Events
In 2009, Albert Lea became the pilot project for adopting Blue Zones strategies to improve a whole community’s well-being. Since then, the project has expanded to more than 70 communities across North America. Cathy Malakowsky, the guest speaker for UMRA’s March 18 workshop, will explain the changes made in Albert Lea and new projects in the works.
Stephanie Daily will lead the discussion of Good Night, Irene by the Mexican-American poet and novelist Luis Alberto Urrea when the UMRA Book Club meets via Zoom on Friday, March 21.
The U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts since 2025 is considered to be the most conservative and activist in history. But it has much in common with the 1963–69 Warren Court, widely viewed as the most liberal and activist. U of M professor of political science and law Timothy R. Johnson will put these claims into perspective as the guest speaker for UMRA’s March 25 brunch forum.
UMRA’s Fourth Friday Book Club will discuss The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson when it meets on Friday, March 28, via Zoom. It is a horrifying and compelling read.
The Family History Interest Group meeting on April 2 will feature a presentation by UMRA member Barbara Fifield Brandt (pictured), who will describe how she unlocked the story of her ancestor, Almira Fifield, MD (1833–63), the “lost heroine of Porter County (Indiana)” and one of the first female physicians in the U.S.
The UMRA Hiking Club will explore wildlife along the Mississippi River in Fort Snelling State Park. The 3.9-mile Pike Island Loop is generally considered an easy route and takes just over an hour. Hikers can leave at that point, or stay to add another short loop. The trail is located below the bluff on which the historic fort sits. The last time we were there we saw a lot of deer, and the river always provides fascinating views.
“Geometrical shapes” will be the theme when the UMRA Photo Club will meets on April 8 at the Hennepin County St. Anthony Library in the St. Anthony Village Shops shopping center at New Brighton and St. Anthony Boulevards. For those interested in lunch first, meet at 11:30 a.m. at the Great Dragon Buffet, located across the parking lot from the library.
The University of Minnesota Archives, with its major holdings largely tucked away in two huge underground caverns along the Mississippi River under the West Bank campus, holds the essential records of our University of Minnesota’s past. University Archivist Erik Moore will interpret the holdings and bring out a sampling of what it holds. We will also get a tour of the caverns (Minnesota Library Access Center), revealing where these precious materials are housed, including the original tapes of KUOM, now Radio K.
Would you enjoy gathering with a group of 15-20 other UMRA members to share breakfast and conversation about a specific topic? Then UMRA’s new topical breakfast gatherings at The Original Pancake House in Roseville are for you.
For UMRA’s April 15 Living Well Workshop via Zoom, professor emeritus, author, and Braver Angels co-founder Bill Doherty will share with us what he has learned about overcoming differences in our families and communities in a highly polarized world.
The UMRA Book Club will discuss Random Family by journalist Adrian Nicole LeBlanc when it meets via Zoom at 2 p.m. on Friday, April 18, 2025.
The UMRA Hiking Club will welcome guest leaders Bion Beebe and Linda Bjornberg from Twin Cities Hiking Meetup to introduce our group to a “new-to-us” trail on Monday, April 21. We will hike approximately 4 miles at a moderate 17 to 18 mile pace along the Minnesota River to Bass Ponds, a floodplain marsh and premier birding area.
You are cordially invited to see Rick Huebsch, Associate VP for Research, Technology Commercialization at UMN, who will discuss UMN Technology Commercialization. Tech Comm facilitates the transfer of UMN innovation beyond the research lab, to benefit the public good, foster economic growth, and generate revenue to support the University's mission.
UMRA’s Earth Day forum on April 22 will feature a presentation by UMRA member Peter Moe, the recently retired director of the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. He is well known and admired for building an incredibly successful facility and program for the University.
UMRA’s Armchair Traveler program on Wednesday, April 23, will take us to the coast of British Columbia for a month-long cruise and—halfway around the world—to Rwanda, a landlocked country located just a few degrees south of the Equator in East-Central Africa.
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Peter Moe, retired Minnesota Landscape Arboretum director and UMRA member, will be leading a hiking tour of the Arboretum again this year. The amazing tulip display was at its peak for our hike last year, and we will undoubtedly enjoy seeing many spring-blooming trees, shrubs, wildflowers, and perennials. Plan to stay for lunch together (optional) after the hike at the Rootstock café in the Oswald Visitor Center.
Do you have a box or several albums of old family pictures that you are not quite sure what to do with? Or perhaps you just want to find out more about your ancestors and are not sure where or how to begin. This meeting of the Family history group will be an open discussion.
We will revisit the University of Minnesota Archives, with its major holdings largely tucked away in two huge underground caverns along the Mississippi River under the West Bank campus, holds the essential records of our University of Minnesota’s past. University Archivist Erik Moore will interpret the holdings and bring out a sampling of what it holds. We will also get a tour of the caverns (Minnesota Library Access Center), revealing where these precious materials are housed, including the original tapes of KUOM, now Radio K.
You are cordially invited to this presentation by Andy Whitman, Professor, Attorney, Volunteer Financial Planner. He will discuss investments for your grandchildren.
In May we will be doing a photo shoot at the Como Conservatory.
.Wood Lake Nature Center is a peaceful 150-acre cattail marsh, woodland, and restored prairie that is a haven for migrating birds and waterfowl. This UMRA hike is a great opportunity for those who would like a shorter, easier hike. The trails are dirt, grass, and woodchip, with some bridges and a bit of paved trails. Only a couple small hills to navigate, the park is mostly flat.