Frick Park: 644 Acres of Forgetting You're in Pittsburgh

Largest park in the city. Main entrance on Forbes Avenue drops you through a stone gateway and within five minutes the traffic noise is gone. The Falls Ravine Trail follows Fern Hollow Creek through hemlock groves and past small cascades, and the ferns lining the path are thick enough in summer to feel like parting curtains.

Pittsburgh is built on rivers and ravines, and Frick Park is what the landscape looked like before the steel mills. Old-growth Eastern forest, dense and layered, quiet enough to slow your pace without deciding to.

Fall is best — the ravine becomes a corridor of amber and red, creek reflecting color from below. Spring wildflowers carpet the forest floor in April: trillium, bloodroot, Virginia bluebells. Summer is green, humid, and the mosquitoes are enthusiastic. Bring shoes with tread and the willingness to get temporarily lost.