Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Happy Trails

Just across the street from our house is one of the many walking trails that the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government is creating all around the city. For the last few months the section that runs south to downtown has only been a roughed in gravel pathway that goes about a mile and a half around the outer part of our subdivision on its way to Alexandria Drive. Yesterday at about 5:00pm that section was paved and Thomas Wyatt and I took our first walk on it this morning.

As I hope these pictures will show the trail is fantastic. It meanders in and around enormous oak and sycamore trees and follows an old tree lined fence row that has probably been there since the late 1700's. Everywhere you look there are wildflowers in bloom and all sorts of wildlife. I've seen several rabbits, the occasional raccoon, and from time to time, there's even a red tail hawk perched and ready for a meal of Hossenfeffer.

Over the course of the next few years the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government has plans to link this trail to downtown Lexington via a route that will follow old Forbes road. Along the way the trail will link to McConnel's Spring Park. I can't wait to be able to ride a bike from my house to the farmer's market downtown, not to mention have a safe place for kids to run, play and ride bikes.

I suppose the best thing about the trail is the sense of seclusion and distance from urban noises. The section that I walked today was far enough removed from houses and cars that you could actually hear birdsong and insects. As you can see in the shot below the little man was certainly enjoying it...
Anyone interested in learning more about this project should click here...

http://www.townbranch.org/index.php

There are maps and photos documenting the progress so far as well as information about completion times.

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