February 12 2024 in a local park

Falls Park in Sioux Falls, SD

Experience Sioux Fallshttps://www.experiencesiouxfalls.com › falls-parkThe park is comprised of over 128-acres and located just north of downtown, along the Big Sioux River.

My job is at a local park 🙂

Some of your local parks look absolutely enormous! I wonder if the definition of a park is different? All my local parks are urban spaces in the city within walking distance. They're not big areas and they're not natural landscapes.

Floral, my photo is of Glenmore Park in the city of Calgary. It was taken from my mother’s hospital room in 2017. It is in a very urban area and has been there since I was a child. The Rocky Mountains are in the distance. I think North America just has more open spaces. Neighbourhoods surround the entire park.

floral, things in the US are different in that many of us live in suburban areas. When I was in the UK, a long time ago, I noticed a lack of suburban areas. Seemed like it went from urban right to rural with little in between. Then there'd be all this agricultural area and then a small village and then back to agriculture. I think that has to do with how much geography grew up around autos vs. horses and the distances in between. (I think of LA's sprawl and FL's gold coast which grew with autos.) But the odd thing for me was everything in the UK seemed to be "owned" and "managed" with few "wild" spaces. Even the public trails seemed to cross lots of private property, managed fields, grazing animals and such. Here there are large areas of "wild spaces" that are not managed, except maybe for trails. The park picture I posted was on 48 acres. We have another park nearby which is more of a land preserve that is over 300 acres. One town over is another preserve that's over 1,700 acres. Yet we are in the middle of the megalopolis known as "BosWash" ... the multiple metro areas that sprawl together from Boston through NY and Philadelphia to Baltimore and Washington DC. So while there are many smaller parks in urban areas (NYC's central park at over 800 acres may be an exception) access to wild spaces in the US is fairly common.

The view from Thomas Jefferson Memorial last Monday.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK.....We have little, one block by one block, parks in urban areas, then we have bigger pieces of acreage set aside, often left wild. I run in THIS park that borders a river with a dirt trail next to the river. It/the dirt trail following the river, actually spans "towns", going on for maybe a 100 miles each direction.

In the park that I like to run in the Winter months. They plow the trail.

Note: There's an Olympic training center nearby. Competing athletes....run here...to train.

Pickeral Rush in New York's "local" Central Park.

Preston Park

Y

Wissahickon Valley Park in Philadelphia about 20 minutes from me. Great hiking trails and historic sights.

My neighborhood where I grew up has a 1500 acre forest that is a park. I once got to ride a friend's horse in there for 6 hours! I was in heaven.

My picture is from a little preserve right off the interstate, not far from my home.

Unimaginatively name Fields Bridge park. Picture of the Tualatin River

Floral_uk, the park I posted is in the city of Lexington, where my daughter lives. It's 216 acres. It's in the city limits but on the outskirts of town. I had heard about it many times but when my daughter and I walked around it on the day the picture was taken, I had no idea how massive it was until I saw it.

I live in a small town. We have two parks, one right in the middle of town and is tiny. It has a small walk path that goes around in a circle and a small playground, not much else. The other, county park, is quite a bit bigger but newer and has fewer trees. It's awful to walk that path in the summer months since there is no shade. There are also a lot of playing fields, baseball, soccer, a hardscape skating area, playground, etc... Most people have to drive to it because it's on the outskirts of the town. There are some homes on Main street that are within walking distance of some of the park, though.

There are very few homes near the park in Lexington but there are plenty of parks in that city that are smaller and in neighborhoods. I've rarely walked to my closest park because there are no sidewalks in some of the neighborhoods I have to go through to get to it. My kids and my exchange students used to walk to it all the time, though.

Indian Vista Scenic Overlook, Mount San Jacinto State Park

Our park is in surrounded on 3 sides by a suburban neighborhood, and 1 side faces an industrial park. There are 2 playgrounds, tennis courts, a pool, multiple soccer & baseball fields, and a lake system that's actually man made and a filter for storm runoff - along with the recreation center and gym where I'm located

Our city was fortunate to have a mayor, generations ago, who wanted every child in city limits to have a park within walking distance. There are large parks and small, with many recreation opportunities all around the city and suburbs.