The Outdoors in Dallas, Texas

White Rock Lake, just a few miles northeast of downtown, is Dallas's outdoor heart — a large lake ringed by a roughly nine-mile trail popular with walkers, runners, and cyclists. Sailing, kayaking, and paddleboarding fill the water, and the shoreline parks and skyline views make it a favorite escape.

Having a lake this size and this close to downtown is rare for a major city, and it's where a lot of Dallas goes to get outside on a nice day.

On the eastern shore of White Rock Lake, the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden spreads across 66 acres of stunning gardens, with seasonal displays that draw huge crowds — the autumn pumpkin village and the spring tulips are especially famous.

It's consistently ranked among the best gardens in the country, and the combination of the lake and the arboretum gives northeast Dallas a genuinely beautiful outdoor stretch.

Closer in, the Katy Trail is a 3.5-mile urban rail-trail running through Uptown and the surrounding neighborhoods, built on an old railroad line. It's packed with runners, cyclists, and walkers, threading green space and patios through some of the densest, liveliest parts of the city.

It's one of the best examples of an urban trail done right, and it connects easily to the restaurants and bars of Uptown for a walk-and-eat afternoon.

Downtown, Klyde Warren Park is a 5.2-acre deck park built over a sunken freeway, functioning as the city's town square with free programming, food trucks, and green lawns between the Arts District and Uptown. It's a modern marvel of urban design.

Beyond it, the Trinity River corridor and the Great Trinity Forest on the city's south side add more trails and green space. Between the lake, the gardens, the trails, and the parks, Dallas covers the outdoors well for a major city.