The Best Cities in Utah To Live In For Easy Access To Outdoor Recreation

What's going on, you guys? It's Cody Steck. I'm going to keep this article nice, short, and simple. Today we're discussing the best cities to live in for easy access to outdoor recreation. If you're thinking about making a move here to Utah, there's a very good chance that you're making that move because you want easy access to the amazing nature and outdoor recreation that we've got here in Utah.

Whether you're looking to go boating, skiing, fishing, hunting, climbing, mountain biking, hiking, I mean, anything you want to do, you've got easy access to do that here in Utah. That's what brings so many people here to this beautiful state. So with that being said, we're going to talk about exactly what city you should consider living in based on what activities you see yourself doing on the most consistent basis. So I'll be listing down every outdoor activity and giving you my thoughts on the best cities to live in when it comes to these different activities.

No. 1 Skiing and Snowboarding.

So number one on our list is skiing and snowboarding. Well, it's really hard to beat living in Park City if you want easy access to go skiing and snowboarding, especially if you want to do cross country skiing, Park City is one of the best places for this. You've got easy access. You're like ten or 15 minutes, maybe even walk out your back door to get easy access to skiing and snowboarding. There are a lot of houses that are on the mountain.

They're not going to be cheap, but there are a lot of houses that have skiing ski-out access there in Park City. So that is very hard to beat if that's not your scene, if it's too expensive for you in Park City, definitely the next best option, in my opinion, is going to be either Sandy or Cottonwood Heights. This is going to give you easy access to both Big and Little Cottonwood Canyon, which is where you've got Brighton and Solitude and Big Cottonwood Canyon. And then in Little Cottonwood Canyon, you've got Alta and Snowbird. So living in Sandy or Cottonwood Heights is probably your best next option.

You're going to be about a 15 minutes drive from the bottom of the Canyon up to the ski resort. So for a lot of people, that's really not that bad at all. Add on a little bit of time to get from your house to the bottom of the Canyon, and that's how long it's going to take you to actually get from your house up to the ski resort. So for a lot of people, really not that bad, especially when you're commuting. I've heard of other people commuting 2467 8 hours just to go snowboarding or skiing for just one single day. So we've got a really lucky here if you're looking for that type of outdoor activity.

No.2 Boating.

Next on our list is boating. If you're looking to go boating, you're going to want to be going to a lot of the Lakes, Utah Lake, and the Great Salt Lake. You're not going to do a lot of boating there. A lot of people move here or just I talk to a lot of people and say, oh, yeah, we can go boating on Utah Lake or on the Great Salt Lake, but that's not actually the case.

If you want to go boating, there's a very good chance you're going to be going to the Lakes that sit in the Wasatch Mountains to the east of Salt Lake City. So this is going to include if you can get up into those cities such as Canvas or Heber or Midway or any of those that are close to those reservoirs that are there nearby, that's obviously going to be your closest and best option for that. But a lot of people don't live up there. They live here in Salt Lake City, and then they make the 45 minutes to 1-hour drive to get to their favorite reservoir, whether it's Jordanelle, it's Deer Creek, it's Strawberry Echo, or it's Rockport or whatever that looks like. If you're looking to get into a little bit more like a long-term trip, maybe a weekend trip or a week-long trip, you're going to go up north to Bear Lake.

You're going to go out east to Flaming Gorge, or you're going to go down to the southeastern part of the state of Utah to hit Lake Powell. That's my all-time favorite Lake. I grew up boating on that Lake and had so much fun. So that's an absolutely beautiful place to go. If you're looking to boat, you're going to be driving about 45 minutes to an hour if you're living here in Salt Lake.

So it doesn't really matter which city you're living in because this is going to be a little bit more of something that you actually have to plan out and talk about Lakes.

No.3 Fishing.

Let's also talk a little bit about fishing. Right. So if you're looking to go fishing, you're going to either want to be on the river or the Lake, depending on what type of fishing you'd like to do. This is going to be the same thing.

You either want to be up north, kind of in the Eden or Ogden area to have easy access to a lot of great Rivers for fishing, or you're also going to want to be on the east bench of Salt Lake County again to have easy access to that fishing. This also goes, I should mention, for like rafting or paddling. If you're looking for those Rivers to do that, you're going to want to be on the east bench of Salt Lake County or anywhere further east. Whether you're looking at Davis County, Weaver County, or even Utah County, this is going to give you the easiest access to get to those types of activities.

No.4 Hunting.

Hunting is a very popular thing where they like it or you don't. That doesn't matter. That's not the purpose of this video. What we're talking about here is if you are into hunting, Where are the best places to go? Well, most people I know go to the northeastern part of the state.

So getting closer to that is going to be a better option for you. If you want to live on the east bench again, you'll probably see a recurring theme here, living on the east bench or the east part of the Valley here in Salt Lake City, you really can't go wrong if you're looking to get outdoors. So that's probably where I'd recommend again unless you can get up into Park City, Heaver, Midway, Camus, or any of those cities that are kind of in the Summit or Waste Counties, those are going to be great options that are close as well, but they are more expensive, they're a little bit less populous, and they may be further away from where you're actually working. If you have to be at a physical location during your move here to Utah, I'd also recommend checking out Eden, which is to the northeast of Salt Lake City. It's a very popular city.

It's growing like crazy, and it's got really good access to a lot of these amenities that we're talking about here.

No.5 Climbing.

Well, luckily, you've got climbing gyms kind of spread throughout Salt Lake County. There's one in Mill Creek, there's one in Sandy, I believe there's a couple of others.

I believe there's one in Holaday and some other smaller ones around, I'm sure as well. So if you want to go climbing, if you're looking to do indoor climbing, you can get to that in just about 10,15 to 20 minutes drive. So it's really not too bad. But again, if you want to go outdoor climbing, you're going to be heading into the Lost Edge Mountains. So try to stay on the east part of the Valley if that's something you want to do after work or before work or even just on a weekend trip.

No.6 ATV and Off-road.

If you're into Offroading, if you're into Razors, if you're into Canyons or four-wheelers or anything like that, you're probably going to want to look in Saratoga Springs or Eagle Mountain if you want easy access to this. In a lot of these places, you can just drive out of your garage on your ATV or on your off-road vehicle and just literally drive up to the trail and nobody cares. You should be street legal if you're driving on the streets, but a lot of people aren't just because they live so close to the trail. So it's great to be able to just drive out of your garage and have easy access to that.

So again, I would say Eagle Mountain or Saratoga Springs or something like that. Or also check out Tooele County. If you're looking for a little bit more of a small-town feel, Tooele County could be a great option as well, where you're not going to have a ton of restrictions on these things either. Also, I should mention that because we're here in Utah, we've got Moab, which is amazing for rock crawling. A lot of people like to take their off-road vehicles down there and do some rock crawling.

So that's going to be about a three-and-a-half-hour drive from Salt Lake City. So again, living in a particular city is not as important if you're making that long of a drive.

No.7 Hiking and Backpacking.

For most people, they're going to go into the Eastern part of the state or maybe the Northeastern part, maybe even into Wyoming a little bit as well. These are the most popular hiking and backpacking routes.

So the closer you can live to that is going to be more beneficial. If you're looking for something, you can just do it first thing in the morning or after work. Again, you're going to want to live kind of along the mountain benches, which could be the avenues. If you're looking downtown, it could be the University area, it could be Sugarhouse or Mill Creek, maybe Holiday, Cottonwood Heights, or anywhere along the East Valley. The Eastern part of the Valley is going to be the best option for you if you're looking for easy access to go hiking.

And before we jump into this next thing, if you're thinking about making that move here to Utah, make sure to get in touch with me. I absolutely love it when you guys reach out. I've had people from all across the world call me, text me, and email me, asking what it's like to relocate here to Utah and purchase real estate along the way, and I've got your back when making the move here to Salt Lake City, to Park City, Provo Lehi, Ogden, anywhere in between, we've got you covered and so with that, let's jump into our next item.

No.8 Mountain and Road Biking.

We're going to be talking about mountain biking. Mountain biking you can do just about anywhere. Again, it's going to be in those waste mountains.

That's where a lot of these trails are at. So good cities for this are going to be Draper, another good city is going to be Bountiful, which is in Davis County to the north of Salt Lake. That's going to be a great option as well. Even a lot of people like to take their bikes down to Moab and do some mountain biking down there as well.

So there's no shortage of mountain biking here in the state. And if you want easy access to it, I definitely recommend Draper or bountiful specifically expanding on biking let's talk a little bit about road biking as well. One of the most popular routes is waste Boulevard and this goes from about Draper all the way up into mill Creek or probably even like the Foothill area just south of the University of Utah so this is one of the very popular routes and a lot of people like to go road biking here but there's also a lot of other options as well. A lot of people go road biking on Highland drive on seven DS it really just depends on what type of road biking you're looking for so there are other routes out there that are kind of specifically designed for that in particular. So even though massage Boulevard probably is the most popular route There are a lot of other road biking routes as well so you really can't go wrong with that.

Whether you're looking in the Western part of the county or the eastern part, maybe you're looking in Utah County. It doesn't matter. There's going to be road biking just about everywhere you go. So with that being said, guys, thank you so much. Make sure to share this article with your friends and family members who are interested to move to Utah and I've got your back when you're making that move here to salt Lake city so make sure to reach out to me.

I absolutely love hearing from you guys. My information is here listed down below. Feel free to call, text or email anytime. I'll catch you in the next one.

Cody Steck, Realtor

Real Broker, LLC

801- 244- 2297

Cody@fastutahhomes.com