Break cabin fever with the Grout Museum District’s upcoming Snow and Ice Exhibit.
With the onset of cold weather, Cedar Valley residents and visitors needn’t hunker down, but can double down on plenty of fun outdoor recreation and exploration. This exhibit is designed to showcase some of those options.
Museum visitors will learn all about outdoor activities that can be enjoyed with friends and family. From skiing, skating, sledding, snow shoeing, fat-tire biking, and ice fishing available, the Cedar Valley has it all.
Wherever there’s a decent slope, you’ll find people sledding. Parks like Hope Martin, Gates, and Bontrager are popular.
The area’s sprawling 60-plus miles of recreational trails don’t go into the deep freeze for the winter; on the contrary, their use just warms up.
For cross country skiing there are lots of options with trails that have set tracks. The Waterloo Parks System, Leonard Katoski Greenbelt and George Wyth State Park all have groomed trails. For a more rugged trail experience, try Hartman Reserve.
The snow trails offered by the Cedar Trails Partnership are a popular destination for area snowshoers. Hartman Reserve occasionally hosts organized snowshoeing activities.
And Young Arena, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary, is the place to go for most ice skating in the Cedar Valley, with open skating times and organized hockey and figure skating activities. Free outdoor ice skating can be found, weather permitting, at Gateway Park in Cedar Falls.
Just as residents and visitors to the Cedar Valley took to the trails and streams this past summer with biking, running, walking and kayaking as an alternative to many activities constrained by Coronavirus, so too can residents find an antitdote to inactivity and boredom among a plethora of outdoor and indoor cold-weather recreational options in the greater Cedar Valley area and while exploring the Grout's Snow and Ice Exhibit.