If you live within walking distance of Bde Maka Ska, Lake Harriet, or Lake of the Isles, you already know October means detours. What you might not know is that the two biggest disruptions this year land exactly eight days apart, and the gap between them is quietly the best stretch of the whole season to actually use the lakes you live next to.
The Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon runs on Sunday, October 4, and the brand-new City of Lakes Art Fair takes over a stretch of Bde Maka Ska the following weekend, October 10 and 11. Both events are worth knowing about for reasons that have nothing to do with whether you're running or shopping for pottery. Together they bracket a short, specific window when the parkways are clear, the color is close to peak, and the whole neighborhood is easier to move through than it will be on either Saturday or Sunday flanking it.
Two Sundays, Eight Days Apart
The marathon is the bigger event by far. It's often called the most beautiful urban marathon in the country because the course loops Lake of the Isles, Bde Maka Ska, and Lake Harriet before following the Mississippi River Parkway toward Minnehaha Park and crossing into St. Paul for the finish at the State Capitol. For neighbors, that means a real morning of rerouted walks and closed parkway segments, but a contained one. According to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board's own closure schedule, the race runs from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m., which means your Sunday afternoon is untouched even if your Sunday morning coffee walk isn't.
| Event | Date | Time | Parkways Closed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon | Sun, Oct 4 | 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. | Lake Harriet Pkwy, William Berry Pkwy, Bde Maka Ska Pkwy, Kenwood Pkwy, Minnehaha Pkwy, Godfrey Pkwy, West River Pkwy, Lake of the Isles Pkwy, Nokomis Pkwy |
| City of Lakes Art Fair | Sat-Sun, Oct 10-11 | All day | Bde Maka Ska Pkwy, Rose Ln to W Lake St only |
The art fair, by contrast, is smaller in geographic footprint but new to the calendar entirely. This is its first year, staged around Bde Maka Ska with more than 140 artists, food trucks, and live music, and Meet Minneapolis has it listed as one of the season's headline additions. Because the closure only affects the Rose Lane to West Lake Street segment of the parkway, residents on Harriet or the Isles won't feel it the way they'll feel the marathon. If you live closer to Bde Maka Ska itself, plan around both Saturday and Sunday that weekend rather than assuming it clears by afternoon the way the race does.
The Window Between Them
Here's the part that doesn't show up in most fall event roundups. Between the marathon's Sunday morning closures and the art fair's weekend takeover sits a five-day stretch, Monday the 5th through Friday the 9th, when neither event is touching the parkways at all. That's not a coincidence worth planning around so much as one worth noticing, because it happens to line up with when the color is actually good.
Fall foliage along the Chain of Lakes and the Mississippi River gorge tends to peak in the middle of the month, and the average first freeze date for the Twin Cities lands around October 18. That means the color show and the event calendar are both compressed into roughly the same two and a half weeks, and the cleanest days to actually walk the full loop around Harriet or the Isles without a road closure or a race crowd are those five weekdays in between. If your schedule gives you any flexibility that week, that's the stretch to take it.
There's also a reason this particular arrangement is worth catching this year specifically. Marathon organizers announced this past July that starting in 2027, the race will shift later in the fall, moving into an October 10 to 17 window to avoid the kind of heat that has caused problems in past years. That means 2026 is the last time the race falls on its traditional first-weekend-of-October date. Whatever rhythm follows next year, this exact spacing between the marathon and the art fair, and the quiet week it leaves behind, is specific to this fall.
What's Actually Open While You Walk
None of this matters much if there's nowhere to stop along the way. The lakes have a handful of seasonal spots that have been part of the routine for years now, not new openings, but worth naming because they're the reason a lake walk in early October is worth the detour in the first place.
- Lola's on the Lake, at the Bde Maka Ska refectory, took over the space long occupied by Tin Fish and has held a five-year lease with the Park Board since it opened.
- Pimento Kitchen and Pimento Market, in the newer pavilion building on the south end of Bde Maka Ska, run a grab-and-go cafe alongside a market stocked with goods from local makers.
- Bread and Pickle, at Lake Harriet, remains one of the more reliable seasonal stops on that side of the chain.
- Sandcastle, over at Lake Nokomis, is a bit further afield but a familiar name if your walk extends that direction.
If you're out on marathon morning itself, a few neighborhood spots sit close enough to the course to double as a spectating stop. Meet Minneapolis points runners and their families toward Martina and Tilia near Lake Harriet's mile six marker, and Naviya's Thai Kitchen in the same stretch, all of which stay open and busy while the race passes.
Why the Timing Matters More Than the Weekend
The instinct with any big local event is to treat it as something to either attend or avoid entirely. For a marathon that closes nine different parkways, avoidance feels like the obvious move. But the closures here are short, well defined, and over by early afternoon on race day, and the art fair's footprint is narrow enough that most of the Chain of Lakes never feels it. The bigger planning question isn't which weekend to dodge. It's recognizing that the good week for actually being outside here, before the freeze line moves in and the color goes, is sitting in plain sight between two events that get all the attention.
That's the kind of detail that only shows up when you look at the parkway schedule and the foliage timing side by side, which is exactly the kind of local pattern-reading I try to bring to every neighborhood guide I write for clients and neighbors alike. Living well in a place like this means knowing when the crowds thin out as much as knowing where the good restaurants are.
If you're weighing a move to the lakes, or thinking about what your own home near the Chain is worth heading into a season like this one, Renée Wilson has spent more than three decades reading exactly this kind of neighborhood rhythm across the Minneapolis metro. Reach out to schedule a conversation or request a personal home valuation whenever you're ready to talk it through.
