Recreation: Work It! >>

• Best Fishing Hole
  Basswood County Resort
  Here's what you won't need to bring to Basswood County Resort: a pole, bait, a boat or a fishing license. This aquatics depot offers gear rentals (poles are just three bucks a day), and its four spring-fed lakes are lined by docks and stocked with big ol' catfish, bass, crappie and carp. All of... More >>
• Best Batting Cage
  Mac-N-Seitz Baseball & Softball
  Royals fans who wonder why Angel Berroa strikes out so much should spend some time with Iron Mike. That's the brand of pitching machine used at Mac-N-Seitz Baseball & Softball, a spacious batting space owned by former Royals Mike Macfarlane and Kevin Seitzer. Iron Mike can bring it close to 90... More >>
• Best Place to Climb the Walls
  Ibex Climbing Gym Inc.
  Nowhere is getting high as easy as it is at Ibex, an indoor climbing gym in Blue Springs that allows flatlanders to wall-crawl all year long without road-tripping to find peaks or freezing to death in winter. The gym has more than 65 routes plastered to 33-foot-high walls and can accommodate... More >>
• Best Yoga Studio
  Yoga Gallery
  Trying to find a yoga studio that meets one's needs is a Goldilocksean task. The place near our home is always too crowded, and the one near work has classes at times that are too inconvenient, and the hot yoga studio is just too ... hot. But Yoga Gallery offers a mix of classes to please any... More >>
• Best Pilates Teacher
  Jennifer Blakeley
  The explosion of Pilates, the core-focused workout developed by Joseph Pilates almost 100 years ago, has its upsides (Pilates for the people!) as well as its downsides (every cover of the Pilates Style magazine has us convinced that practitioners must be a size 2 or smaller). Somewhere between... More >>
• Best Dojo (1 Comment)
  Choon Lee's Academy
  A ninth-degree black belt, Choon Soo Lee grew up in Pusan, South Korea, and served in his country's army. After his discharge, he decided to teach tae kwon do, eventually emigrating to the United States in the mid-1960s. Now 66 years old, Lee is a colossal figure on the Kansas City martial-arts... More >>
• Best Bowling Alley
  Lunar Bowl
  We love the spaced-out Lunar Bowl. It beats the heck out of the usual run-down Big Lebowski bowling-alley vibe, and its score consoles are even this decade's model. This place is light-years ahead economically, too: On weekends, the lights dim and a lunar-themed backdrop blinks while speakers... More >>
• Best Mini Golf
  Cool Crest Family Fun Center
  When it comes to miniature golf, we want the works. We want windmills, moving mechanical objects and water hazards with a depth of 4 inches dotting our Lilli putian AstroTurf fairways. Fortunately for us, Cool Crest, an eastern Jackson County institution, has provided generations of Kansas... More >>
• Best Disc Golf Course
  Water Works
  Among Kansas City's disc golf courses, Water Works is the best workout and by far the most scenic. (During the winter, high tees afford a clear view of downtown.) Its serenity, however, is what makes it difficult. Rolling hills spotted with 120-year-old trees make for tight fairways and a forest... More >>
• Best Golf Course Over $50
  Iron Horse Golf Club
  Over its ten years in existence, the Iron Horse Golf Club has firmly established itself as the premier public golf course in the Kansas City area. At $70 for a weekend round, it is pricey, but that keeps the crowds down and allows golfers to better enjoy the challenge presented by the course's... More >>
• Best Golf Course Under $50
  Paradise Pointe Golf Complex
  Next to giant Smithville Lake, the Paradise Pointe Golf Complex offers golfers a shoreline feel that's rare in the middle of the country. And it can be had for the remarkably affordable weekend rate of $28, which makes it the Kansas City area's best budget day of golf. The facility has two... More >>
• Best Driving Range
  Iron Horse Golf Club
  Along with the city's finest golf course, the Leawood-owned Iron Horse Golf Club has a first-rate driving range and practice facility. For $5, golfers can tee up a bucket of balls on real grass and whack away a couple of hours. The course offers two chipping areas with fluffy sand traps, along... More >>
• Best Way to Score
  American Singles Golf Association, Kansas City chapter
  We're over picking up potential mates on the Internet. Speed dating scares us. And bars? Don't get us started on bars. The Kansas City Chapter of the American Singles Golf Association (www.kansascity.sin glesgolf.com, 816-228-1059), now in its fifth year, feels our pain. Besides providing... More >>
• Best Easy Hike
  Burr Oak Woods Conservation Nature Center
  Hiking shouldn't have to involve special boots, water-purification tablets and gorp. Fortunately, Burr Oak Woods Conservation Nature Center has several trails that allow outdoor enjoyment with a minimum of equipment. The Missouri Department of Conservation purchased this 1,100-acre property... More >>
• Best Way to Get Wet
  Kansas Whitewater Association
  If you like to kayak, Shawn Tolivar will find you. When the central Missouri native, who's now president of the Kansas Whitewater Association, bought his first kayak after moving to the KC area, he realized he'd forgotten something: where to use the damned thing. "I followed people with kayak... More >>
• Best Park
  English Landing Park
  Simpsons matriarch Marge Simpson once checked her stressed-out self into Rancho Relaxo to convalesce after a nervous breakdown. We don't have to be ready for the straitjacket before heading to English Landing Park, but the place does clear our cloudy heads. It has the usual park amenities:... More >>
• Best Pickup Basketball Game
  Weltner Park
  Pickup players should show up at Weltner Park around 9 a.m. on summer Saturdays and Sundays, not only to beat the heat but also to conquer the crowds. By midafternoon, losers must sit out an hour, stuck on the bulging waiting list, but early-morning defeats can be avenged immediately. It's best... More >>
• Best Poker Tournament
  The Poker Pub Inc.
  The Poker Pub's games play out in more than a dozen bars and taverns on both sides of the state line. With facial expressions that managed to be stoney yet somehow welcoming, players at a recent Texas hold-'em tournament at Johnny's Tavern in Overland Park told us that the games are a beery,... More >>
• Best Pool Hall
  The Brass Rail
  The Brass Rail is one classy pool hall. There are no bored drunks watching pretty women play from atop distant bar stools, no cheap jukeboxes playing tired tunes. Instead, a van Gogh billiards-scene print hangs under its 16-foot brass ceilings. Other amenities include plasma televisions and a... More >>
• Best Recreation Center
  Gregg/Klice Recreation Center
  No songs have been written about 17th Terrace and Vine, probably because practicality doesn't often inspire music. But the Gregg/Klice Recreation Center, which has a pool, a sauna, a hot tub, a basketball court, a fitness room and a computer lab, is an unsung but essential piece of the 18th and... More >>
• Best Skate Park
  Prairie Village's Harmon Park
  We made a lot of fun of the preliminary, phallic sketches of the Prairie Village skate park designed by Seattle-based Grindline, whose bowl had a certain twig-and-berries cast. But at ground level, the park looks like nothing of the sort. (Bob Pryzby, director of Prairie Village Public Works,... More >>
• Best Softball Field
  Mid-America Sports Complex
  A 70-acre complex with ten softball fields, a ten-stall batting cage and a pro shop, the Mid-America Sports Complex has been designed to accommodate both players and fans. It's the only spot in the metro with AstroTurf fields, which shortens rain delays and gives ground balls that extra bounce.... More >>
• Best Urban Bike Ride
  Monday night ride from the Trek Store
  For the past year and a half, Mark Thomas, a writer for Kansas City's online racing-news page (see www.localcycling.com), has been grabbing a set of walkie-talkies and rallying his semi-pro racing buds to lead a fun, well-organized ride that leaves from the Trek Store in Shawnee (10412 Shawnee... More >>
• Best Place to Mountain Bike in the Metro
  Minor Park on
  Finding off-road trails close to home has always been difficult for metro mountain bikers -- or it was, until word spread that the crew riding the trails on Tuesday nights at Minor Park had conducted its own city planning session, cutting and cleaning 20 miles of single track routes into... More >>
• Best New Fitness Craze
  Hydroriding
  When Xtreme Fitness opened its new aquatics center in March, it started offering classes in what may be the next fitness revolution. Hydroriding is basically a cross between spinning and swimming: riding a stationary exercise bike in waist-high water. The water element means there's zero impact... More >>