Today's bike ride was just for fun. A nice and easy stroll through a few neighborhoods on the east side of Durham. We were able to stop along our journey and play at 2 city parks that have great playground equipment.
The first stop was at Birchwood Park. This park is located off of Lynn Rd. There is no parking area for this park, so you either have to walk/bike into the park, or park along the gravel off Hursey St, but the shoulder is horrible - so getting into/out of the car with young children is difficult.
This park is truly a neighborhood park. If we lived in the neighborhood around the park, I imagine that this would be the area I'd let Eliza go run and play and get her energy out whenever she wanted. And when she was old enough, I'd allow her to walk to the park with a friend and enjoy the large open space of grass. But, since we don't live in that neighborhood, for now, Eliza and I will enjoy this park as a bike ride stop as part of a bigger neighborhood bike outing.
Here we are entering the park off Lynn Rd:
There's a nice basketball court right by Lynn Rd. A sidewalk into the park leads you first to an unmaintained baseball field. If you go around the baseball field fence, there's so much room to just run and play! It would be a great place to fly a kite on a windy day. Or play with our FoxTail. Or lay out an outdoor blanket and eat a picnic lunch. But the highlight of this park is the playground.
So, what's so great about this playground? I think a picture will answer that question:
Why, yes, that's a Merry-Go-Round! And it hasn't been dismantled by Parks and Recreation staff yet! It makes me wonder how many Durham children were almost be-headed from playing on this piece of historic playground equipment?
She likes it!
In addition to the Merry Go Round, there's a circa late-70's slide at this park. We're talking METAL slide here! The kind that burned your legs as a child. The kind we all would spit on and watch our spit slowly move like inchworms down to the bottom - the bigger, grosser kids would hawk these giant phlegm balls which would obviously "slide" down the slide faster than the spittle from the small kids...thus we would compete to see whose spit would slide the fastest. I know, gross!
Eliza really enjoyed this slide. She especially likes to climb up the slide, even though she doesn't get far without my help.
So, in addition to the slide and merry go round, there's 2 swing areas.
After playing for about 30 minutes, we decided to hit the road and bike to the next closest city park: C.R. Woods Park. We entered the park off of East End Avenue. It's not the official entrance anymore, but I think at one time it was. This entrance is only accessible by foot or bike. Here's a picture of us by the old entrance sign.
What's funny to me about that sign is the gross misinformation about what time the park closes in the summertime. 11pm? Really? Yikes! Sounds like the City was just asking for drug dealing and thug shenanigans to take place here! Note: all city parks close at dusk now, no matter what time of year it is.
We ride along past this sign, along another unmaintained baseball field (I wonder how many city of Durham parks have baseball fields? And how many of them are maintained and actively used for the purpose of baseball/softball?) and we see a brightly colored plastic playground up ahead! Slides, swings, twisty fire poles, tic-tac-toe game...you know, the typical modern playground set built in the 2000's. Here's some pictures of Eliza playing here.
That last picture is my favorite. She was trying to climb up it by herself, but since she's only 20 months old, she has no clue how to do it properly! So I gave her a helping hand. She did most of the work - I just guided her where to put her feet and hands!
As we were leaving, I stopped to take a picture of the "new" park entrance sign.
I find 2 odd things about this park sign: 1.) It says "historic site" under the name, and nowhere on the City of Durham government website does it say that C.R. Woods is a historic site, and 2.) the sign shows the symbol for canoeing at this park, yet, I didn't see any bodies of water while there. What's even stranger is that a Google map shows that there is a pond at this park, but when you see the satellite view of the park, there's no pond anywhere to be seen?
Anyway, we had a great day bike riding and playing at 2 local parks. On our way home, we rode from C.R. Woods park to Angier Ave, up to Driver St. We passed by a restaurant in an old converted gas station right by the railroad tracks on Angier near Hoover Rd. They weren't open, as I guess they have selective hours...and from the looks of it on the Yelp page for this place, they have awesome BBQ and fried chicken, too! I'll have to check it out sometime.
I want to experience Hot Dog Country! And then "frank" the owner for the yummy lunch!
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