Recreational Biking in Minneapolis

If you’re a person who likes to get on your bike and ride-and not have to constantly watch out for cars and pedestrians-Minneapolis is a great city to live in. First of all, the main downtown area of Minneapolis is small and clean enough to bike around without any trouble. Also, if you’ve got the endurance and time, you can also get to the downtown or uptown areas from anywhere else in the city. Transportation aside, the real draw to biking in Minneapolis is its recreational bike trails.

The Midtown Greenway Trail takes riders from the Mississippi River straight west to the Uptown trails around Lake Calhoun, Lake of the Isles, and Lake Harriet. The Greenway Trail is a two-way paved and marked bike path with a separate path for pedestrians. The trail runs along an old railway route (the rails have been taken out completely) about fifteen feet below street level. Although you can still hear the noises of the city above, you can go for miles without seeing or having to worry about a single car. It’s a truly unique city biking experience.

Once the Greenway Trail connects with the Uptown lake trails, riders have their choice of three lakes to bike around. Lake Calhoun is the perfect choice for bikers who like to be around other people. On the afternoons and weekends, the lake is always filled with boaters and the sidewalks and trails are filled with people walking, running, skating, and biking. The paths around Lake Calhoun are also only blocks away from the heart of Uptown with its unique places to shop and eat. Lake of the Isles and Lake Harriet also offer complete paved trails, but with much less of a crowd.

Other biking highlights in Minneapolis include bike lanes on ten major downtown roads and the West River Parkway, which follows the Mississippi River from downtown Minneapolis south to Lake Nokomis.

If you’re looking for biking completely uninterrupted by cars and pedestrians though, the Three Rivers Park District offers over twenty parks in Minneapolis and its immediate suburbs, many of them with substantial bike paths. Elm Creek Park Reserve in Maple Grove-only 17 miles from downtown Minneapolis and the best of the Three Rivers Parks for biking- contains an amazing 20 miles of paved bike trails. These bike trails go through woods, over wetlands, and through old farm fields. They give the rider the feeling of biking in rural areas and wilderness. Once you get on the trail, you can bike for miles without seeing or hearing cars or other city noises. These 20 miles of trail offer a serene yet challenging ride with many hills and curves.

This is not in any way an inclusive list of the biking possibilities around Minneapolis. One of the greatest thrills of biking in Minneapolis is that you can find a new trail or a new way to connect between or combine trails every time you go for a ride. The city’s five-year plans, available on the city’s website along with maps of most of the trails, also promise even more possibilities for bikers to come. So if you’re in or around Minneapolis, get on a bike and start riding, you’ll find it’s one of the best places to be a biker.