Cottage Grove, Minnesota

featuring decorated trees where people could take Christmas selfies and held a drive-thru holiday light tour. “I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Levitt confesses. “The Mayor is affectionately known as ‘Mayor Christmas’ around here, so we couldn’t let the holiday cheer not be spread last year.” And the spirit building didn’t stop with the holidays. During warmer months, they held a park scavenger hunt, where they hid a medallion in one of their many parks and had people search for it. “It was a great way to discover Cottage Grove and discover our parks,” Bailey says. “Even though we did this as part of COVID, I think we are going to continue doing something like that because I’ve heard from our community that they didn’t realize how awesome and intertwined or parks and trail systems are. It got people out of being stuck in their homes, got them out on the trails and experiencing our parks and trail system, which is really amazing.”