The Great Outdoors

Settling on a location for your vacation home just got easier. Heck...these places are so great, you may want to consider a permanent change of location! Forbes.com published a special report on the best cities for the outdoors. Topping the list were a trio of California favorites, including San Francisco, San Diego and San Jose. But dig a little deeper into the list and you may come up with some surprising cities you may not have considered. For example, Minneapolis, Kansas City and Cincinnati all made the top 20—who knew?

The criteria are as follows: spending per resident, park land as percentage of city land, number of recreation facilities, precipitation, sunshine, temperature extremes and air quality. Which made us wonder: How much do these factors matter to you? Would you pursue a more active lifestyle if you had more sunny days? [Forbes.com]