Best Place to Hike
Parkville Nature Sanctuary
Parkville Nature Sanctuary is so expertly designed that just three miles of hiking trails manage to hit the Midwest's best wilderness features. Besides a picnic area with a barbecue pit at the trail head, there are wide, ADA-accessible paths through prairie grasses and across a boardwalk winding through cattail-filled creeks, and there are even hikable sections of jagged backwoods that would give mountain goats trouble. Maps mark three routes, graded on difficulty. Payoffs come at every turn: a 20-foot waterfall, an old Girl Scout cabin converted into a picnic shelter and benches scattered atop high points to let you look back over the rustic countryside.