It’s Spring Break in Mpls. With the Stay-At-Home restrictions in place our goals are to get out into nature as much as possible and find new places off the beaten path to explore. Once such place is the Hiawatha Golf Course in Mpls. When it’s not in use for golf in the summer you can find its open for cross-country skiing and light hiking. Now I’m not saying go run around the course and ruin the greens but it’s a beautiful wide open space to explore and feels quiet in the big city. But beware there are a lot of geese when means lot of goose poop…LOTS of goose poop. On a side note, did you know there is a Junior Golf Program called First Tee for kids at our City Parks? More to come on that soon.

So how do you get there? The fence is open in quite a few places around the perimeter so if you are driving around you should be able to enter from almost any direction . We parked in the Lake Nokomis Community Center Parking lot and walked over to the tennis courts.  If you bike or rollerblade you can also take advantage of the bike park set up on the old tennis court.

If your daughter would like a fun activity this summer there is a bike club at Nokomis Rec Center just for girls. It is full as of right now but if more people add it to their waiting list they might open up another class! You can find more info here.

Here you can see a pretty good view of the Mpls skyline and right behind this fence is a little trail that will bring you down to the water.

There are plenty of trees to climb and birds to watch. See if you can find the owls nest.

Kids were building forts which gave it kind of a magic Huckleberry Finn vibe. I’d advise you to bring better hiking boots than Roller blades. We were not prepared.

So many “treasures” to be found. Also a good reason to pack an extra garbage bag for items that aren’t as “treasure-ific”.

A huge beaver dam.

Opens up to a sand bar and another stunning view of the lake with the Mpls skyline.

We were able to walk around the entire Lake in about 40 min….took a little longer with kids that were excited to explore and one kid walking on rollerblades. We went on a cloudy day but a sunset from here would make anyones day.

As always we love when others share their stories or where their next adventure might be. Leave comments below.

Happy travels!