GO ON, BLUE

2 Open Space Neighborhood Parks: Britishwoods & Three Meadows

2009-07-30T07:23:00.007-04:00

Britishwoods Park

Some years ago, my old roommate Emily R. had a housesitting job in the British Woods neighborhood and she invited her housemates over to swim in the pool. So we did. That was the first time I'd ever been in that neighborhood even though I'd passed the sign with it's Ye Olde English-like lettering many times.

British Woods is a neighborhood that sits just off Battleground between Westridge and New Garden roads. It's true: there are woods, the houses sitting in them. Britishwoods Park is a fairly good size park with lots of open space. There's a playground, which means kids, so you want to take that into consideration if your dog hates them. But there seems to be enough room to steer clear of them where you can walk your dog through a lot of that open space.

This, however, is one of the neighborhood parks so it's mostly for the folks who live there and can walk down to it. It's not the kind of place you can park and walk to, as I've said before about similar places. I'd feel conspicuous pulling into park in front of someone's house. It's great if you live there but, again, I wish more parts of the city had these kinds of parks that are plentiful in the northwest quadrant of town.

Three Meadows Park

This is another neighborhood I'd never really been to except to drop off a family friend's kid. It's up off Lawndale and Lake Jeanette Road near the Natural Science Center.

Similar to Britishwoods, this park is mostly open space with a playground but it's larger and has more wooded areas (or "natural areas" as P & R calls them). Again, large and open enough to walk more ornery dogs but also for people who live there, not so much for parking and going to it.

GO ON, BLUE RATING:
For both: **** I like open space parks but these are only really for those who live within walking distance
Area of Town: Both Northwest Greensboro. Britishwoods: British Woods. Three Meadows: I don't know these names designated on the maps--they feel like names conjured up by a mega-builder from elsewhere--but Google maps indicates the nearby neighborhoods are Three Meadows and Country Park Acres.
Location: Britishwoods is off Battleground between Westridge and New Garden. Three Meadows -- from Lawndale, take Lake Jeanette Road to Pineburr to Miltwood; from Pisgah Church Road, take Pisgah Place which becomes Natchez Trace to Pheasant Run to Miltwood.

Park Land, Part Two

2009-07-16T07:18:00.008-04:00

On the southside of Country Park, along the road trail, you come across a sign for the entrance to Guilford Courthouse National Military Park (there are also various access points from the Country Park road trail all along its northern/western boundaries). GCNMP has a perimeter road trail, similar to Country Park, with various unpaved connecting trails throughout.

The GCNMP road trail runs in a loop for 2.25 miles and is also wide and long, shaded for much of the way, but there is often heavier people traffic than at Country Park. Especially around the area near the entrance -- the further away from it you get, the less crowded the trail is. I've never understood why this is unless people are just walking from their cars a little way and then walking back. The connecting unpaved trails take you across the various battlesites and these, unlike Country Park, have no mountain bikers.

Starting back at the entrance to Country Park, by Lewis Recreation Center, is the Bicentennial Greenway which runs, currently, for about 5 & 1/2 miles. The Trails of Greensboro guide says, "When complete, this trail will stretch from Country Park in Greensboro to the Piedmont Environmental Center in High Point. Currently, a 4.9 mile segment and a 0.7 mile segment of trail are completed in Greensboro and about 8 miles of trail are completed in High Point. The remaining segments, which will connect the parts into one continuous greenway, are pending at this time." I don't know how the recession as affected those pending segments.

I walked the BG with Severn last summer and when there was trail, we had a good time. There are a couple places where the trail disappeared even though the map made it look like it was right there. Normally I'm alright with disappearing trails and finding them on my own except at busy intersections with a dog who's freaking out about the traffic. The first disappearance was just past GCNMP at the road convergences/condo entrances around Cotswold and Lake Brandt Road -- at this point you're sort of following the sidewalk along Old Battleground. If you just keep going along Old Battleground and trust that it'll look like a trail again, you'll be fine. Keep going, feel like you're going to walk right on out of the county. You'll eventually see signs for the Nat Greene and Palmetto Trails on your right and after the Nat Greene but before the Palmetto, you'll cross Old Battleground to stay on the trail.

The next place where it gets nutty is when you come up out of the woods-behind-developments you've been walking along and suddenly there's Battleground Avenue. I bet fifteen years ago or so this wouldn't have been quite so shocking because it would've felt more like the 220 N, rural route Battleground eventually becomes but now there are turning lanes and a big shopping center you have to get yourself and your dog(s) across. The cars go fast. It is not so friendly to them on foot out there. Plus now you're back to what looks like sidewalk-along-shopping-center and there's some figuring out whether you're supposed to be on the right side or the left side of the road to stay on the trail. After you pass the shopping center, cross Drawbridge Parkway (that's the road you're now walking along) and walk along the left side. You'll do this for a ways, passing Wellspring Retirement Community on your right, but eventually the trail will drop off to the left, into the woods again.

This stretch is one of the most beautiful parts of the trail--this little patch that survived the subdivisions and shopping centers might move you to dingdang tears at what's lost.

Then the trail just ends, in a new neighborhood, and you're pretty much left to figure out a) where you are and b) how to get out. Severn and I just kept walking, looking suspicious and sweaty, until we reached the neighborhood entrance at Horse Pen Creek Road. I called my mom, and she rode out to pick us up. That's the thing with suburban distances -- from a car, they don't seem so long, like it's nothing to drive ten minutes to the grocery store. And I'm sure, for the folks who live out there, this isn't confusing at all. But on foot, it definitely feels like you're traversing the county (which you are) and it's one thing to set out to do that, to say, today I'm going to walk a good stretch of the northern part of Guilford County but it's a whole other thing to do that when you keep coming across scattered convenience stores and shopping centers and clusters of houses, like you've arrived at the next village, except you haven't and it's all part of the same town.

GO ON, BLUE RATING:
Guilford Courthouse National Military Park trails: ****
Bicentennial Greenway: **1/2 (for now -- I'll revisit at some point) (I feel bad giving it low scores because I love the idea of it but since I'm reviewing places for dog walks, you understand.)
Area of Town:
I don't know if it's called anything so I'll just say Northwest.
Location:
To access GCNMP, take Battleground north to Old Battleground. Right on Old Battleground to the parking lot at entrance. The park trails can also be accessed from numerous points -- consult the guide Trails of Greensboro (available for $5 from the city) and Park Land, Part One. For the Bicentennial Greenway, the beginning point starts at Lewis Recreation Center at the entrance to Country Park (or the Park Land complex), Pisgah Church Road. However, since the BG runs along Battleground/Old Battleground/Drawbridge Parkway, there are also numerous access points. Again, see Trails of Greensboro. (I do love that little book.)

Park Land, Part One

2009-07-15T07:35:00.009-04:00

At the corner of Battleground and Pisgah Church Road, at the Lowe's stoplight, you find the start of a massive park complex. This complex stretches to Lawndale on the eastern boundary and Lake Brandt Road on the northern boundary. When I was little and the school activity bus dropped us off there, I thought it was one big park land with a caged tiger, see-through anatomically correct woman who talked, a planetarium, paddleboats, a graveyard, tennis courts, soccer fields, a hidden pirate spinning ride, and a statue of Nathaniel Greene. With picnic shelters.

The area is actually a group of connected parks, municipal and federal. If you enter from Pisgah Church Road, you first come to Lewis Recreation Center and Lewis Park (at the fork in the road, veer left for parking behind LRC). This is more of a playground-type park which always makes me hesistant to take my big dog to. There are some picnic tables and lots of trees but it's mostly for people, especially wee people. Beyond Lewis Park is Forest Lawn, a city cemetery, and as tempting as it might be to take dogs there (all that wide open space!), no dogs are actually allowed.

Past Lewis Park (this is now if you veer right at the fork in the road) is an enormous parking lot bordering the J. Spencer Love Tennis Center (supposedly housing the NC Tennis Hall of Fame which I've never been to mostly because I've always been terrified of this section of the park as this was where all the mean, scary ass rich kids went to summer tennis camp), a lot of tennis courts, soccer fields, and a baseball diamond, all collectively known as Jaycee Park. This, however, is NO PLACE FOR DOGS unless your dog likes being leash-walked around the perimeter of parking lots. This is a place for people wielding rackets and balls.

However, on the northern edge of the parking lot, you'll spot a little pedestrian- and bicycle-only road (actually the park has, strangely, a tram which I've always thought was cool, like you're fixing to see some natural formation that might rival Yellowstone -- I've always wondered if the original park planners envisioned something more tram-worthy). This road is the entrance to Country Park. The road winds for about 1.5 miles throughout the park and is an excellent place to walk any dog. The road is big enough (as in long and wide) so that you don't feel like you're walking with the rest of Greensboro even though there's a good deal of people-traffic at the ole Country Park. Additionally, all throughout those woods that you're walking past are additional trails, themselves pretty good dog walking places. However, these are sort of hard to navigate, figure out where they go/end up, but there's a very helpful little guide, Trails of Greensboro, available for $5 from the city, that helps with this. (This guide, by the way, is helpful for navigating all the trails of Greensboro, not just Country Park.) The down side to walking dogs along these trails is the possibility of getting whirred by a mountain bike. Severn hates wheeled traffic of any kind.

Back when it was first built, within the last ten years I think, I was pretty excited about the Bark Park, located off the Country Park road, up a hill, on the western side of the park. A leash-free space for dogs to run, socialize, play frisbee, hotdog! I need to revisit this place to see if anything has changed for the better but I believe it's the perfect place for a ball-fetching, frisbee-catching dog who's both friendly (but mostly indifferent) to other dogs and mostly is "master"-centered. In other words, not Buddy and Severn. Buddy likes other dogs but what he really loves is their piles of poop so, each time I took him, he spent his time wandering off, following his nose from pile to pile. While he doesn't eat poop, he does investigate it pretty doggone thoroughly. He's a nose dog. Severn, on the other hand, likes dogs and is eager to play with them but only if they're female. If she comes across a strange male dog, she nips his heels, obsessively. This makes for a very stressful time at the Bark Park.

GO ON, BLUE RATING:
Lewis Park: *1/2 (again, for kids)
Jaycee Park: N/A
Jaycee Park parking lot: *** (when empty and not so hot outside)
Country Park road trail: ****1/2
Country Park wood trails: *** (mostly due to mountain bikes but if you can figure out a good way through these, email me)
Bark Park:
for "good" dogs: **** (not exactly a dog walk kind of place)
for all other dogs: **
Area of Town:
Is this Battle Forest? I don't know the neighborhoods around there so good.
Location:
On Pisgah Church Road just past stoplight at Battleground/Pisgah Church. However, the park(s) is so big you can access it from a number of places -- see Greensboro maps or the city guide Trails of Greensboro. Also, see Park Land, Part Two.

Gracewood Park & Guilford Hills Park

2008-06-30T12:42:00.004-04:00

There are many parks in Greensboro without parking areas and, like the natural areas, these are neighborhood parks--the ones with the maroon wood signs and yellow letters that usually say PARK CLOSES AT SUNSET. Again, these seem to be for folks who live there--you walk to these spaces. It's just a crime that so many of these are located in areas of town that are better off economically.

As for dogs, these little neighborhood parks make me nervous--swing sets and slides, you know. Maybe if your dog is indifferent to kids, it would be easier. Severn's not a mean dog--she just likes to nibble on little kids' ankles.

The Gracewood Park feels small--I felt sort of claustrophobic just looking at it. Definitely not the place for Severn although Buddy might do alright since he's smaller and could care less about a child. The Guilford Hills Park is BIG--well, long--the daggum thing runs from Pembroke to someplace all along Benjamin Parkway. This is awesome if your house backs up to it (you can almost see stars pretty clearly because it does get dark) but I don't know how much of a park it is--seems more like a natural area (see previous entry for definition) to me. I don't have more information to confirm this, however, because I felt strange getting out and creeping around folks' back yards. If you know different, though, or you live there and want to invite me to come see for myself, I'd love to.

GO ON, BLUE RATING:
Gracewood Park: *1/2 (a real nightmare for a big dog who wants to eat kids)
Guilford Hills Park: * (subject to change)
Area of Town: Guilford Hills/Garden Homes
Location: Gracewood Park is on Gracewood Drive between Holden Road and Benjamin Parkway. Guilford Hills Park is located off Pembroke east of Benjamin Parkway.

Alderman Natural Area

2008-06-30T12:02:00.005-04:00

You may not be familiar with what these so-called "natural areas" are because they aren't always marked but they show up on detailed maps of the city and if you're a geek like me who looks at maps, you'll spot them and wonder about them and go try to find them. I think these are areas that city planners designate so everybody can feel better about themselves for saving something that's been subdivided to hell. They are basically noise buffers or lots that are too undesirable or too awkward to develop. They become potato chip bag and coke bottle receptacles but they work nicely for real estate: BORDERS WOODED LOT!

Anyhow, the Alderman Natural Area is the strip between Benjamin Parkway and Northampton Drive. You can see/hear all the cars zooming by on the parkway below but if you live in that neighborhood, it's a cool place to do some road walking with your dog because there's not a whole lot of traffic and you don't have to feel weird about your dog stopping in front of somebody's house to do his/her business. (I try to pick up my dogs' poop wherever it is but I'm not a tyrant about it. People freak out about dog poop but all the other stuff like battery acid and gasoline in the watersheds and asphalt run-off, there ain't hardly a peep about.)

These natural areas, I've decided, aren't really for non-neighborhooders however because, I don't know, I'd feel weird driving to a road to walk my dogs down it.

More to come on some neighborhood parks in this area.

GO ON, BLUE RATING: *** (if you live there)
Area of Town: Green Valley.
Location: Alderman Natural Area is the strip of woods between Benjamin Parkway and Northampton.

Bicentennial Gardens/David Caldwell Park/Bog Garden

2008-06-30T11:40:00.008-04:00

Truthfully, none of these are very good dog walking spots. I mean maybe if your dog's the size of a teacup and poops only a thimble full. It's most definitely not a multiple-dog walking park. There are very precious flower beds all around. And little boys in sweater vests and brides getting their pictures taken all along the paths. But my mom loves to walk there because she has a lot of trouble with her balance so this is ideal for her. Or if you're in a wheelchair, these places are totally accessible. The only exception are the dirt paths in the Bog that go up on the hills above the pond--those are dirt trails with steps and everything.

The Bog is a little better for dogs than Bicentennial/Caldwell but the ducks are awfully fat and tempting and close.

Even up in "the woods" section of the Bog (which has security cameras and I'm not sure why--falls? mischief? dogs off leash?), the path is lined with split-rail fencing which every time Buddy wanders off the path he gets tangled up in.

As for the plants in Bicentennial Garden: I like the place but it's a little too neat for me. I like the terraced hillside (back, south end) a little better but I have come across many couples kissing back there and it's been awkward. Now every time I imagine a college-age couple kissing there and can't dissociate them from the azaleas (by the way, if you're an azalea freak, you might like it back in there when they're busting out). Not that I'm some kinda prude, but the kissers always look at me like I'm looking at them (which I am cause I come around the bend and there they are and then I pretend like they're not there)--I'd prefer it if they'd be more Frenchy-French about it and ignore the hell outta everybody and just go to town. My brother had this experience at Oka Hester Park--right off the trail a couple of folks were getting it on. I've always loved that they were doing it at Hester Park.

The Bog's a little cooler because it's not so manicured and, honestly, if you sit still long enough to blend in as much as possible, you might see some awesome birds. I dig birds--I don't really know shit about them (not like the Piedmont Bird club which is cool as hell and provides free handouts there for you in the bog--look for them) but I'm always learning.

GO ON, BLUE RATING:
Bicentennial Gardens--*
David Caldwell Park--**
The Bog--**1/2

Area of town: Green Valley
Location: Hobbs Road between Northline and Cornwallis, near Friendly Shopping Center. Bicentennial & Caldwell are on the west side of Hobbs. The Bog is on the east side.

why i've started in the northwest

2008-06-30T10:32:00.002-04:00

I was thinking maybe it was storms, how they always seem to roll in from the west, the southwest or the northwest, and how I somehow think that's where beginnings happen, even though the old atavistic yearning has been to go west, to move west, and here it's rolling east. Whatever. The truth is that my parents live with my sister in the WNW section of the city and I end up spending a lot of time in that area (I also work at Guilford College, so). I live on the opposite end of town in Glenwood. I say all this because the West & Northwest gets all the fancy stuff already anyway, and here I am highlighting it some more. The truth is it does have all the huge nice parks and trails and greenways and watersheds. The rest of the city is in desperate need of some of that kind of thing.

the beginning/why i'm writing these reviews

2007-11-02T18:06:00.000-04:00

I plan to write reviews of good places to walk with your dog(s) here at Go On, Blue. ( <--Do you know that song? "Old Dog Blue" by Jim Jackson? It's on Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music and you oughta hear it. If you love dogs, that song'll break your heart.)

To be honest, I don't know if anybody else in town (I'm in Greensboro, North Carolina, The United States of America) has done a site like this because I've done no research to find out. I'm doing this project for my own information (and yers if you find yerself here) and because I'm always looking for places to explore--even it it's some dumbass subdivision. Actually, one of my favorite places to walk Severn & Buddy Black (they're the dogs, they have names) is butt up against one of those rich subdivisions where the houses look like English country estates like you'd find in Derbyshire and called Hamilton Hall or something except these are cheaper versions, minus the countryside, where the neighbors are so close you could give each other Eskimo kisses from the second story window. I mean, so many places are rapidly being gobbled up by new corporate shit--strip malls & condos & retirement communities & office parks--that I get so dadblamed depressed. It's like there's no mystery anywhere anymore, nothing left to explore.

So writing these reviews is like an antidote, countering that depression, and exploring these places anyway. The way I see it is there's gotta eventually be something interesting that happens behind a Target/Harris Teeter/Starbucks complex. I'm also a fan of exploring anywhere and everywhere--so if you're out there in this city and you're doing the same thing as me, know I'm not trying to step on your toes. I'm trying to keep my head above water. Shoot, maybe we can explore someplace together--I've always wanted to take a canoe down Buffalo Creek & all its branches--even though I'd probably have to walk it most of the way--like that creekish thing that runs between Biscuitville on MLK and 29/85/40--I've always imagined canoeing that.