Park #29: Ballantrae Community Park - Dublin

   Conveniently next door to Balgriffin Park is this place. It consists of a couple of ponds, huge fields and a really tricked-out kids splash area. I had seen this place a couple of months ago and it was raging with families having a killer time. Unfortunately the light was running low and at that time I had no bus pass and the ride back from Dublin to SE Columbus via bike was gonna be horrendous (it was). The 1st 3 pics are from that trip. This time around it was a grey cool day and the splash area had been dry since the end of summer, I guess. This was Monday and I wish when I was there it was really warm like today and yesterday.

   Gotta mention the rabbit statues :) They are by Sophie Ryder, who is known for her highly-textured animal sculptures. She has a few pieces in a park in Nashville which I had seen when I lived down there, so it was a nice suprise to see some of her work here in Ohio. The kids really like running around the wabbits!

 

Park #28: Balgriffin Park - Dublin

   Balgriffin Park is a nice park in the upper-middle class area of Dublin, OH. Not too much to it besides a walking trail, a pavillion and some play equipment.

   This place has a disc golf course which was an Eagle Scout project for a local boy. Its a pretty short/small 9-hole course so since I still play with actual Wham-O frisbees I could perhaps hang with the disc guys. Yeah, I'm old school. What can I say?

   All in all, a nice little place that is interconnected to the rest of Dublin via their very excellent bike trails, which are pretty much everywhere up there (Columbus, are you listening?).

Dublin's shelters are a bit nicer than the usual ones.

I know disc golf by its other titles "SHIT!!!!!" or "DAMMIT!!!!"

The fall colors are fading fast.

Park #27: Avery Park - Dublin

   This place is an absolute oasis for the soccer set. Dublin is far enough away from Columbus proper for big green spaces like this. Another thing Dublin has going for it is a quite well-done network of off-road paved bike paths which came in quite handy for me during the then-continuing COTA strike. I noticed later while looking at this place through Google Earth that the baseball fields are aligned in a clover formation; appropriate for Dublin Ohio.

Kinda funky looking playset.

I've got Big Balls

This place was really huge.

The artwork on this tower was really cool, depicting various sports.

This was such a trip to stumble upon. I'm guessing the storm that caused this was the crazy windstorm that caused much of Columbus to be without power for 3-7 days. This tree was beside the creek right by the water tower in case any of my ones of readers wants to check it out.

I should know what pepper is, being a lifelong diehard Reds fan, but I do not.

Groovy little (<5 acres) bit of woods basically left alone from the rest of the park.

A very friendly and cute hepcat.

Does a tree make a sound blah blah blah

Park #26: Audubon Park - Columbus

Not to be confused with Scioto Audubon Park (which is awesome, but gimme about 3 years to get to that one), this is an OK sized park not far from the Ohio State Fairgrounds. Just your basic ball fields and shelter sort of things. Good place to exercise your feet, although I wouldn't try it at night because the neighborhood is a bit dicey. The most notable thing about this park is that one of our police choppers landed here in what was the first of 3 emergency landings. The first & second, which occurred within 2 weeks of each other were minor. The third was not, involving all sorts of mayhem although everybody got out relatively OK.
 

This place has some really big-ol' trees.

Pretty scuzzy looking shelter. Typical non-usable toidys for good measure.