Why We Love our House: Westwood Hills Nature Preserve

We often get the question: if you call this your "Little House of Horrors," why are you so in love with the property? Well, like any good fixer-upper, we see a ton of potential in our house. It just needs A LOT of attention to reach that potential. But another reason we love the house, is it has several really neat qualities you simply don't find in just any old property. In what will be a reoccurring series, we'll lay out some of these unique traits ... mostly to remind our parents we have a method to our madness.

As the title of our blog suggests, our property is located on Westwood Hills Road, which as coincidence would have it, is across the street from the Westwood Hills Nature Preserve, a 160-acre natural area featuring marsh, woods and restored prairie. After living in St. Louis Park for five years, we didn't even know the place existed as it's fairly nondescript and hidden. If you're familiar with the St. Louis Park area, it's directly southeast of 169 and 394, behind all of those car dealerships.

Recently, we decided to check it out and were greatly surprised by what we found.

There is a huge lake in the center of the preserve where you
can rent canoes or kayaks and paddle around. 

Around the lake is a boardwalk trail approximately 1.5 miles long.
Ashley loves running on it because of the lack of people and the
fact she can look at beautiful scenery the entire jog. 

A ton of birds, ducks and geese stop here on their migratory
patterns. We walked right by them and they didn't even quack
at us. I guess we're not very imposing figures.

When we walk around the preserve, it is impossible not to
run into an abundance of wildlife including deer, frogs and ...

... the infamous wild turkeys! Who wants in on Thanksgiving
at the Williams on Westwood? 

There is also a nature center with tons and tons of family
programming that takes place on the grounds. Everything
from learning about bees and waterfowl, to art camp and a
Halloween trail. There's also a pretty sweet outdoor
playground complete with a rock-climbing area. 

We have been taking walks around the preserve a couple times a week and absolutely love it! Feel free to join us anytime and perhaps we'll find you Thanksgiving dinner as well!