Great Parks

Even though we didn't get the sticker on our car until a couple weeks ago, one of the best Christmas gifts we received last year was a one-year pass to the Great Parks of Hamilton County. Now that we consider ourselves officially "settled" we have begun exploring the 17 parks throughout Cincinnati and Hamilton County to which that pass provides free admission.

Our first park visit was to Glenwood Gardens. It was an overdue visit, as the entrance to this park is next door to one of the Kroger supermarkets that we frequent--the one closest to my sister's house where I stayed before we got our own place, and the Kroger still between our house and hers. Although we had driven by the entrance numerous times, we had never explored it, so we did a couple weeks ago. In between some lovely gardens, a lake, and well-maintained walkways, we found an exquisite gift shop. Fortunately, it was about to close for the day, so the only thing we picked up that time was a superb booklet with descriptions and maps of all the parks in the system. Winton Woods and Sharon Woods are names familiar to me and not far from where we live; Johannes and I took my father on a paddle boat tour around a lake in Winton Woods one summer in the past. Miami Whitewater Forest is another known name; though farther away, I remember a family bike ride there while I was visiting several years ago--the last time my father was on a bike. Now I look forward to exploring the other parks all over the city and county.

This morning we headed off to another park--not part of the Great Parks of Hamilton County system. I had my eye set on the VOA Park, northeast of Cincinnati in the West Chester/Mason area. I had heard about the Voice of America museum and park earlier this summer at a lecture that was part of the summer session of the University of Cincinnati's lifelong learning program. This morning seemed like a good time to explore, and after a short drive of about 20 minutes, over to and then up I-75, we found ourselves at the entrance to the VOA Park. There I discovered another system of municipal parks, though these were not part of the Great Parks system. We had crossed from Hamilton into Butler county, and now we were entering one of the MetroParks of Butler County. MetroParks uses the same membership model as Great Parks: you pay a modest fee ($10 per year) and affix a sticker to your car's windshield, and you get free entrance to the entire (county) system of parks until the end of the calendar year. So we now have two stickers on our front windshield (Hamilton on the left, Butler on the right) and also ten more parks to explore through the end of 2014.

Unfortunately I had not re-read my notes from the Voice of America lecture. The museum--a forthcoming museum at that--is not in the park itself. Nor is it yet open on a regular basis. But we found it, and we will return again some time when it is open--the next time being Saturday, September 20.