Postman's Rest

This park is great! It's very small, but probably the best small park we've seen.

Postman’s Rest Park is a small city lot that remains neatly wooded at the corner of Vinewood and Wayne. It features a concrete walk, sandbox, picnic table and a bench swing.

Wow, what a terrible description of such a lovely little park! Sure, it's small, but it is quiet and barely noticeable. It would be a hard park to find for someone who wasn't aware of its existence. Mike keeps calling it "postman's hideaway" because it's so secluded. I must confess that I love the name of this park as well. It would be a nice spot to rest for someone delivering mail on foot. If I lived in the area of Postman's Rest, I could see myself sitting on the bench swing, reading a book and just enjoying the quiet beauty.

Gallup Park

We visited Gallup Park on July 4, 2008, which turned out to be a beautiful Independence Day. The park was crowded, and we were there early in the afternoon. As we left, the parking lot was completely packed.

Gallup Park is probably a favorite park in Ann Arbor. There is a lot to do there, and it is one of the parks on the Huron River, which means that there is fishing and canoes and paddle boats. According to the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation website:

Gallup Park is a 69-acre park and is Ann Arbor’s most popular recreation area. It is located along the Huron River and Geddes Pond with scenic walkways that traverse small islands with bucolic pedestrian bridges. The park contains two playgrounds, a canoe livery, picnic areas and grills scattered throughout the park, two picnic shelters, open field for play, and over three miles of asphalt trails that are popular for biking, rollerblading, walking and running. Two drinking fountains and many benches allow the park user to take respite from their recreational activities. There are four parking areas: one at the main entrance off Fuller Road, two within the park along the park drive, and one further southeast on Geddes Road.

So, yeah, there's all that stuff. We can confirm that it is there.

We were particularly interested in paths, and there were some great paths to walk. Most of them followed the river and provided a great deal of nice scenery (although according to the park map, the paths actually circle something called Geddes Pond which is in the middle of the river). There were a couple of cool islands in the middle of the river/pond linked by bridges which keyed into my enjoyment of feeling like I'm exploring.

The park connects to Furstenberg, which is even more fun to walk in, but that is a story for another time.

Mushroom Park

We loved Mushroom Park! For a small park, it has a lot to offer.

Mushroom Park is a 1.54-acre neighborhood park located between Waltham and Saxon off of Scio Church Rd. The playground is nestled among berms, and among the berms are a few small concrete mushrooms. There is also a picnic table and benches.

Indeed, there are concrete mushrooms, as well as mushrooms made of some other (unknown) material. The mushrooms serve no real purpose, and one could make the case for the lack of safety of children playing on large concrete objects; however, they certainly make this park unique and give the park its name. Besides the mushrooms, the park is quite nice. There's a hill that would be great for sitting on to read and relax, and play equipment that looks fun and fairly new. There are also trees to provide shade. It's definitely one of the better smallish neighborhood parks that we've seen and is great for families.

South Maple Park

South Maple park seemed very boring at first. We approached by car on Liberty and parked in an empty parking lot. Our first impression of the park was the sight of a plain-looking maintenance building and a handicapped parking space next to the stairs that were the only way to enter the park other than crawling up a steep hill.

As it turned out, there were more amenities. According to the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation website:

South Maple Park is a 7.83 acre park with entrances on Liberty and Russell, off S. Maple. The park contains tennis courts, play area, neighborhood softball field, open fields, a drinking fountain, a wooded area separating the two portions of the park. An accessible asphalt trail connects to the park from the subdivision to the South of the park and East. Parking is located at the Liberty entrance.

We found the tennis court and then the great big open field, and thought that South Maple Park was very disappointing. Then we found a break in the trees. It turned out there was a cool bridge through a wooded area leading to another portion of the park with a playground and picnic area. This new area of the park wasn't thrilling, but it was an improvement over a tennis court and an open field.

Nonetheless, this was a very noisy park. It was filled with the sounds of nearby I-94. As usual the park was empty when we visited it.

Douglas Park

Douglas Park: a boring triangle on Washtenaw. According to the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation website:

Douglas Park is 2.5 acres in size and located at the Washtenaw, Baldwin and Cambridge triangle. This park has an open lawn area perfect for frisbee, touch football, small gatherings and studying for students. It is shaded by a perimeter of trees and has a small seating area, established as a memorial.

Yep, it's a great big open area. Hope that your Frisbee brand flying discs or footballs do not go flying out onto Washtenaw. It's really not such a bad park, if a big lawn is what you need, but the constant sound of traffic was annoying.

Churchill Downs

Churchill Downs wins for weirdest approach in a park we've visited so far. We almost drove past it. As it turns out, the park is behind someone's house, instead of right on the street. One gets to the park by walking down a narrow path between a couple of people's houses.

The park itself is kind of bland. From the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation website:

Churchill Downs Park is a 1.18-acre neighborhood park tucked away between houses and I-94 with an accessible concrete walk entry from Steeplechase Drive. There is a play area, with benches, a half basketball court, open fields with small soccer goals, a drinking fountain, picnic table and grill.

We didn't realize that there was a soccer field in the park. Perhaps we just didn't notice the goals. The field didn't seem very conducive to soccer-playing, either. It was kind of unlevel and and broken up with trees.

The sound of the freeway, despite the Eisenhower greenbelt, was nearly deafening. I'd hate to live in one of the adjacent houses. Nonetheless, the worst thing about this park is that it appeared to just merge with someone's backyard--there was no fence separating the two. One just has to guess, apparently.

There was somer playground equipment there, but as we've come to expect, it was empty.

Hollywood Park

Hollywood Park was nice. Actually, the description in the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation website makes it sound pretty cool:

Hollywood Park is a 3 acre park, adjacent to Abbott School along Sequoia Parkway. Access to the park is from Sequoia Parkway, and parking is available along the road.

Although small, Hollywood Park contains a high-quality woodland, with abundant wildflowers in the spring. A path through the woods allows the casual hiker to view one of richest displays of spring wildflowers in the city. The remainder of the park is a grassy mowed area, the perfect spot for a spring picnic surrounded by wildflowers. This nature area is undergoing restoration efforts by the staff and volunteers of the Natural Area Preservation Division, including removal of non-native invasive plants.

We must have gone at just the wrong time of year, because it wasn't very flowery. Mostly just low-growthy. It was certainly very pleasant, especially as we got deeper into the park and couldn't see the surrounding streets and houses anymore.

I'm always kind of disappointed when paths don't really go anywhere. This was kind of one such path--it terminated in an elementary school. So, even though it went somewhere, it didn't feel right to continue on into the elementary school grounds. Actually, it seems vaguely dangerous to have these woods right on the edge of the school grounds.