Cathy Stevenson and her dog, Melody, walked all 50 of Woodbury’s parks that include trails between September and November 2023. Up next are local counties, including Dakota, Ramsey and Washington, plus the state parks. Photo: Chris Emeott
Cathy Stevenson discovers new places and faces as she traverses the city’s parks.
What can a person accomplish in just seven weeks? Between September and November 2023, Woodbury’s Cathy Stevenson achieved a pretty unique goal: walking all of the city’s walkable parks and averaging more than 15,000 steps daily. Her motivation: a love for movement and observation, plus the companionship of her most stalwart walking buddy—her 3-year-old dog, Melody.
“I like to observe things and see people and places,” Cathy says. “How do people do their front yards? Who’s getting new siding? Just the other day, I noticed they’d taken out some bushes at one park.”
Cathy says she’d tried running in the past but found the pace too hurried. “You’re not really noticing things while running,” she says. “With walking, you can see the changes in nature around you.” She’s also enjoyed connecting with fellow Woodbury residents. “Everybody has been really friendly,” she says. “The community here is wonderful.”
In fact, Cathy’s children, Jennifer and Matt Stevenson—now adults—helped her discover some of Woodbury’s beloved parks back in the 1990s. “There was a list in one of the telephone directories that had all the parks in it,” she remembers. “At the time, there were probably fewer than 20.” She and her kids made it a mission to visit every park with a playground. “My daughter called it the ‘playground quest,’” she says. “We loved it.”
For many years, Cathy has had a daily walking practice, mostly in the parks and neighborhoods near her home by Valley Creek Road and Woodbury Drive. Even if she can’t make it outdoors, she and her pup head to Home Depot, or she and her husband, Jim Stevenson, head to the Mall of America to get some steps in.
One day in fall 2023, Cathy saw a TV news report about someone who’d walked all of Minnesota’s state parks. “I thought, ‘That sounds cool,’” she says. “I visited the City of Woodbury website and looked at all of the parks with walking or hiking trails. I decided I was just going to do them all.” She made a spreadsheet to keep track of her adventures, and she logs data like the number of steps, distance from her home and more.
Undaunted, by November 8 that year, Cathy had walked all 50 of Woodbury’s parks that include trails. (There are officially 62 parks in the city.) Eleven were walkable from her home. “Two were a stretch,” she says. “One of them was over 6 miles by the time I got there—I almost had to call my husband to come get me.”
Some days, she’d explore an entire area, planning routes where she could walk one park, walk the neighborhood nearby, walk to another park and then walk back to her car. Cathy discovered some unexpected beauties along the way, with Carver Lake and Prairie Ridge standing out as two favorites. “Those are gorgeous,” she says.
Generally, Cathy’s walking gear is pretty minimal. “It’s a hat, sunglasses, and water for me and my dog,” she says. Almost all of Woodbury’s city park trails are paved, so hiking boots aren’t needed.
What’s next for Cathy and her trusty sneakers? More walking quests. “I’ve created spreadsheets for Washington County, Ramsey County, Dakota County and the state parks,” she says. (As of this writing, she’s walked all nine of Washington County’s parks that include trails, as well as some in Ramsey County.) She also plans to explore other parts of the Metro, maybe meeting up with friends to walk the parks in their neighborhoods. She wonders, “What haven’t I done yet? What’s the next one I should try?”
