Banana Plants and Redwood Trees: Further Thoughts About Mill Creek Park
I needed to write this post to make amends for a minor FaceBook feud
I had with some locals who were trying to get people to vote in some popularity contest run by Coca-Cola
for the park to win a grant from the beverage giant. I felt that if
Coke wanted to support metroparks around the country, they should just
quietly give the money and get some good publicity for doing it,
instead of running an online "Hunger Games" contest for parks that truly
need the funds. And that the total they were giving was nothing
compared to the PR and free advertizing they gain from this, not to
mention that the sign up to vote involved e-mail and addresses for
everyone to participate, an advertising coup of unknown worth. I stand
by my criticism, but I went to the site to try to vote anyway (the local
park deserves and needs the help), and found the whole thing too
involved, complex, and down-right maddening. The voting is over, the
results are not yet tabulated, and I hope we did well. Coke still sucks,
and their profits from just selling water in plastic bottles, and what
that entails for the planet is unforgivable, not to mention their
other...well...crimes, etc....but that's a whole other topic.
Our journey into Mill Creek Park (Youngstown, Ohio) the other day was quite an eye-opener. I've played golf at both their courses back in the day, maybe 15 years ago or more. I've driven through what I thought was most of what was to see there.
Turns out that I never even scratched the surface. It's an amazing jewel for a city and region the size of ours.
Suziema told me that she heard it was bigger than Central Park. I thought she was nuts (she's not often the best source for info). New York's crown jewel must outrank our little town's rec area. Turns out, she was right. Not just a little right. Mill Creek Park is over 5 times the size of New York's Central Park. 4400 acres to 840. It's not on this list, for some reason, but if it were, it would rank 17th in the largest city parks in the country.
We started out in Fellows Riverside Gardens for a sandwich that was far better than I expected.
I always thought of our area as kind of flat and nondescript, but the park winds through hills and forest so that a drive through it is a surprise on every turn. We got lost (somewhat purposefully) and kept thinking we were going to see a familiar road, but every bend was a new vista. That "hidden surprise" around every corner starts on a smaller scale on a walk through the Gardens, where exotic plants, creative gardening, and art galleries spring out at you at every turn.
It was mid summer and they had banana plants out in the main yard. And a lot of other what I would have thought of impossibly tropical plants. And there are a pair of redwood trees that seem to be doing well planted right next to the main building. Not babies. They seem to have been growing there for a long time. Redwoods and bananas in Ohio. (The banana trees are transplanted each year during the summer, and taken into a hothouse off-season, and I doubt have ever born fruit. But they survive.)
The drive through the rest of the park (which, I think, I still have some to do) takes you through three lakes, several ponds, past several creeks and rills, all through heavy forest. Rock walls left from the glacial ice ages pop up here and there.
We kept stumbling across different hidden recreational sites, picnic grounds, ball parks, and cabins that are rented out for private functions. And we never even got around to the part of the park that had the Mill Creek Golf Courses. Not the mill for which it was named. And, from the website, we need to take a closer look at a lot of other sites.
A friend told me that the lakes and streams were favorite swimming holes for the locals in the olden days, but industrial waste had put an end to that.
Anyway, I was in my 50's before I ever got around to visiting Washington, D.C., and I'm just finding out that our little backwater of a valley has a few more interesting facets to it than I would have guessed.
Live and learn.
I'm looking forward to getting back soon.
After pushing the "publish" button, I stumbled over these YouTube videos. A picture is worth a thousand words, and video so much more if done well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpe3SqMUAC8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLP288XwjBI
Our journey into Mill Creek Park (Youngstown, Ohio) the other day was quite an eye-opener. I've played golf at both their courses back in the day, maybe 15 years ago or more. I've driven through what I thought was most of what was to see there.
Turns out that I never even scratched the surface. It's an amazing jewel for a city and region the size of ours.
Suziema told me that she heard it was bigger than Central Park. I thought she was nuts (she's not often the best source for info). New York's crown jewel must outrank our little town's rec area. Turns out, she was right. Not just a little right. Mill Creek Park is over 5 times the size of New York's Central Park. 4400 acres to 840. It's not on this list, for some reason, but if it were, it would rank 17th in the largest city parks in the country.
We started out in Fellows Riverside Gardens for a sandwich that was far better than I expected.
I always thought of our area as kind of flat and nondescript, but the park winds through hills and forest so that a drive through it is a surprise on every turn. We got lost (somewhat purposefully) and kept thinking we were going to see a familiar road, but every bend was a new vista. That "hidden surprise" around every corner starts on a smaller scale on a walk through the Gardens, where exotic plants, creative gardening, and art galleries spring out at you at every turn.
It was mid summer and they had banana plants out in the main yard. And a lot of other what I would have thought of impossibly tropical plants. And there are a pair of redwood trees that seem to be doing well planted right next to the main building. Not babies. They seem to have been growing there for a long time. Redwoods and bananas in Ohio. (The banana trees are transplanted each year during the summer, and taken into a hothouse off-season, and I doubt have ever born fruit. But they survive.)
The drive through the rest of the park (which, I think, I still have some to do) takes you through three lakes, several ponds, past several creeks and rills, all through heavy forest. Rock walls left from the glacial ice ages pop up here and there.
We kept stumbling across different hidden recreational sites, picnic grounds, ball parks, and cabins that are rented out for private functions. And we never even got around to the part of the park that had the Mill Creek Golf Courses. Not the mill for which it was named. And, from the website, we need to take a closer look at a lot of other sites.
A friend told me that the lakes and streams were favorite swimming holes for the locals in the olden days, but industrial waste had put an end to that.
Anyway, I was in my 50's before I ever got around to visiting Washington, D.C., and I'm just finding out that our little backwater of a valley has a few more interesting facets to it than I would have guessed.
Live and learn.
I'm looking forward to getting back soon.
After pushing the "publish" button, I stumbled over these YouTube videos. A picture is worth a thousand words, and video so much more if done well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpe3SqMUAC8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLP288XwjBI
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