A Good City to Raise a Kid?

Backpacker Magazine recently published an article about The Best Cities to Raise an Outdoor Kid. I realize the article has to contain real cities with a significant population or the “contest” wouldn’t create enough buzz.  While Duluth and Minneapolis did make the top 25 list Grand Marais did not.  I personally cannot think of many other “cities” that raise outdoor kids like Grand Marais does.

When you walk into Cook County Schools you can see immediately that we have outdoorsy kids and smart ones at that. They know how to dress in the cold weather, they play outside when it’s twenty degrees below zero and most of them know how to fish, hunt and drive a snowmobile by the time they reach double digits. These kids know how to snowshoe, cross-country ski, downhill ski, ice fish, drive an ATV, filet a fish, camp in the wilderness, trap a beaver, catch a frog, identify a tree and so much more. These are real outdoors kids who spend quality time outside.

You can see the methodology Backpacker used below. I don’t know how many subscribers we have to Boy’s Life Magazine but the fact we only have over 1000 people means there probably aren’t many. I also don’t know how obese the kids are here but when you spend winter here you need a little extra meat on your bones. I do know our kids are outdoor kids and the best place to raise your kids in my opinion isn’t in any city at all.

Methodology
The stats and assumptions behind our rankings
To determine which U.S. cities offer the most fertile soil for raising outdoor kids, we crunched 38 different metrics, from the distance to the nearest national park to the density of Boy’s Life subscribers. We looked at climate stats, outdoor education figures, and unemployment and obesity rates. We also polled BACKPACKER readers and editors–because you can’t reduce everything to numbers. For a full list of metrics and sources, go to backpacker.com/outdoorkids.