Holy moly, I took these pictures a few days over 8 years ago. I never intended to stop this blog but as it does, life got in the way. Next thing you know, like Floyd sang, "And one day you'll find/Ten years has got behind you". I had uploaded these on April Fools Day 2015, the day I took them, or thereabouts, but just got around to commenting on them 4/17/23.
Located just southeast of the shady area of James & E Main, Barnett Rd appears to be far enough away that I didn't feel uncomfortable walking around at the time. I don't there'd be any chance I'd check out this bar however. Just out of curiosity I just looked up if they were still in business since the pandemic wiped out some Mom & Pop places. Seems like they made it through.
Nice sunny day. Can't remember what the temperature was like 8 years ago. I remember it was nice enough at least to have a picnic of bologna sandwiches.
Walking around the rec center.
Picnic spot. I've always been a sucker for pine trees.
Man, these mostly boarded up apartment buildings looked dodgy. They get a whopping 1.8 stars out of 5 on google reviews. NBC4 from a year ago gives a good summary of the place shortly after it went into receivership https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/columbus/colonial-village-the-big-flip/
Loop trail around the park.
When I visit a park with a rec center, I do want to go inside to take pics. But inevitably it would be full of people; I'd feel strange taking pictures of total strangers - at the least it would feel awkward, at most an invasion of privacy. It's one thing to take a picture from afar of a few pavilions of folks grilling out or something. I think the only time I'd feel alright taking pictures of strangers is if I was next to them at a fantastic concert and chatting with them the whole show having a blast.
The local library branch in the area of the park. CBus libraries have rebuilt a bunch of their branches, but looks like in 2023 this one is same as it ever was. So one of the Ten Commandments of this blog was always that I never look up any details of the next park I'd be photographing besides the name. Battelle Darby Metropark, our largest at over 7000 acres, was the one alphabetically after Barnett. I had been to B-D a few times in the '90s and knew it would take maybe a whole week to photograph the whole park. That's another reason I started dragging my feet on this blog, knowing how much walking it would take since I don't have a car. Well, in the last couple years they added a pretty cool very primitive backpacking camping trail which I've camped at twice. So I finally decided to tackle going out there. I decided since the map of B-D lists differently named areas of the park, I would visit an area at a time to make it more manageable. Thus the next entry...
