Written by Jim W. Harper

Here’s an easy New Year’s resolution to keep: Visit the best parks in town. Here and only here will you find the ultimate bucket list of which neighborhood parks deserve your patronage. Plan to visit one per month, or hit them all in less than two weeks. It’s your choice and these are your parks. You paid for them.

Miami-Dade County beats the City of Miami on this list, four parks to three, but there is also a hidden winner: the City of North Miami. Within a few miles of each other are three of the top five parks, including number one.

As the nation’s only professional local park critic, I have been honored (and paid) to visit and review a new park every month since March 2007. With more than 50 parks under my belt, I feel quite confident that these are the best parks in Biscayne Times territory -- northeast Miami-Dade.

All parks are rated four trees or above. This list centers on the mainland around the Biscayne Corridor and excludes Miami Beach. So from Biscayne Boulevard’s peak in Aventura to its terminus downtown at the Miami River, here are the best parks according to Park Patrol. In reverse order, and with a new nickname for each, they are:

10. Biscayne Bay Campus of Florida International University: “The Free Oleta.”

Although not technically a park, the campus is public property and used frequently by the public. Regular dog and human walkers know to avoid the buildings and head for the quiet trails at the end of 135th Street. A few years ago, these folks pressured the university to abandon plans to pave over the trails, but now FIU is at it again, saying it needs the trails for an access road. We’ll see about that.

The trails begin with an environmental preserve that leads into mangrove forests, over canals, and alongside one of the largest open stretches of glistening Biscayne Bay to be found anywhere. And unlike “the other” Oleta, its neighboring state park, this one is completely free.

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