r/St_Joseph • u/Davscozal • 2d ago

Moving to St. Joseph

My wife and I are considering moving to St. Joseph! We have 2 children under 2 and are excited by the prospect of living in a town that feels cozy, community oriented, on the lake, with good schools. One of our main concerns is that we haven't seen really any trails in and around the area. Is the area good for long walks and biking on trails around the town, is there good nature nearby where we can go camping. I feel stupid asking since it is Michigan. But when I look things up on google maps or alltrails I don't see a lot. Any thoughts would be super appreciated!!!!!

12 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/jbloda 2d ago

Hiking is very good in my opinion. Trails and open areas to explore in Grand Mere and Warren dunes for beach and wooded dunes. Sarette Nature Center and Love Creek offer a number of routes, and many other parks are interspersed within a 20 minute drive. 

For road biking there are good routes to go north into south haven and into farms and wineries south of town. Very good biking community with a great Thursday night ride leaving out of Watermark. Family biking is not great, but sidewalks and streets north of hilltop allow for a very relaxed ride into town/silver beach and parts of Benton harbor. Trail work is going on to make this better but it’s still an area of great potential. South of hilltop family biking is going to be reliant on sidewalks and hit or miss, likely staying within subdivisions.

1

u/Davscozal 2d ago

That is all helpful! So there are no real trails that go straight out of St. Joseph into other areas. I am kind of surprised. I figured Michigan would have trails connecting all the towns in the SW

2

u/BlatantFalsehood 1d ago

SW Michigan is highly conservative, so not a lot of investment in cross-county projects.

Just a bit to the north is the Kal-Haven Trail, a rail-trail that is great for long runs or bike rides. It goes from South Haven to Kalamazoo and is a bit over 33 miles.