City: Franconia, MN

Category: Parks & Recreation

Telephone: (651) 257-6668

Address: 29836 St. Croix Trail

Description: For years Franconia had an almost mythic status: an outpost among the central Minnesota cornfields where towering creatures and garbage-can towers held silent domain over a land you seemed to have all to yourself. A few years ago the park moved a short distance to a location better suited to educational programs and other activities, and since then it’s enjoyed a rising profile. There are classes for kids and residencies for sculptors, who can be seen in, as it were, their natural environment assembling their oft-massive creations. If your favorite piece at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden is Spoonbridge and Cherry rather than Charles Ginnever’s abstract Nautilus, Franconia is for you: The work here is weird, wild, and gleefully postmodern.