Fallon Park – a long, fine necklace in Raleigh’s greenway jewels

raleighnaturalist — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:41:58 +0000

Fallon Park, just northeast of Five Points, and sloping with its long narrow shape down to Crabtree Creek at Anderson Drive, is a long necklace in Raleigh’s park jewels. The remains of a small mill structure lend even more interest to a wonderful rockfall along the creek that defines the park. Fallon Creek is short : its headwaters gather right in the front yards of the very well appointed houses along White Oak Road off Anderson Drive. The long skinny park has an unpaved path that is heavily used by joggers, walkers and doggers. I never go on the weekend, but I have such fond memories of going there on weekday afternoons with my small children, chasing crawfish in the rockpools and climbing around the old mill structure. It is a clean, rock-filled creek with a wide range of trees and plants arranged around its slopes. There are small grass meadows at the top and bottom. It serves a surrounding community that maintains rich, semi-organic plantings in its large yards, and it drains steep wooded slopes with older houses and little construction. The creek’s quality reflects all of that.

Rockpools where Lily and Dori and I fished many times.

Rockfall and brick mill structure.

Fallon Park photo tour

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I posted at Raleigh Rambles about the Carolina Farm Stewardship’s farm tour. It was a fun couple of drives, and we saw plenty of nature to go along with the agriculture, as pictured below.

Above, a native plant area at the Piedmont Biofuel Lab Farm. Below a large bird, perhaps a raven , that swooped down toward the highway for some time in front of us. I suppose it’s probably a vulture, but it certainly didn’t act like one.

Crowder Park on Ten-ten

raleighnaturalist — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:39:25 +0000

State Road Number 1010 is a very old country road that runs from Highway 50 in Garner to Apex, east to west below Lake Wheeler. Southwest of Lake Wheeler on Ten-Ten is a relatively new county park. Doris Crowder donated land in 1992, but with a setback from Hurricane Fran, the facility did not open to the public until 1998. The public nature amenity seems slightly out of place in this relatively bucolic setting, but the houses are going up fast and it probably won’t be that way long. There are paved walkways around the 2.7 acre pond pictured above, and there are structures for picnics and summer programs. You really get the feeling looking out into the woods that if you struck out on your own, you would soon meet country dogs or perhaps a chicken house. Below are some cardinal flowers and other denizens of the pond.

Raleigh Nature » Rural Raleigh

Fallon Park – a long, fine necklace in Raleigh’s greenway jewels

Crowder Park on Ten-ten