Price Park is located very near Guilford College, off of New Garden Road, Hobbs Road, and Jefferson Road. Its official address is 1420 Price Park Drive. The first time I went to Price Park was in the fall of 2016, when I was a first year at Guilford. I knew essentially nothing about the park at the time, and I honestly don’t remember what drew me there to begin with. I stayed for maybe thirty minutes as I walked up and down what I thought was the only path there, and I left disappointed in how small I thought the space was.
I was never inclined to return to the park until this past summer (2018), when the Kathleen Clay Edwards Library was the only branch in Greensboro that held The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest. The library (pictured in the bottom right hand corner of the map), lies further back on the park’s space, which I had initially accessed coming from New Garden, and after I got the book and headed back towards my car, I realized there are actually many paths near the library that are a part of Price Park (my first time there I thought the park ended where the library began, when in fact they are entwined). So, book in hand, I headed down a trail surrounded by forestry and found a bench to sit and read, as at the time I was more interested in beginning my book than exploring the park. When I left for the second time ever, though, I made a mental note to return and further explore what the space had to offer.
Alas, I didn’t return to Price Park (except once to go on a short walk) until the beginning of this semester, when I learned about this blogging assignment. I suppose I got too caught up with school and work that I completely forgot about my desire to get back to exploring Price Park. When I did return, though, I was with a friend who was as eager to explore as I was. With this newfound knowledge of what lay beyond the gazebo and butterfly garden (closest to New Garden and running along a creek, somewhat behind Jefferson Elementary), I set out on the trails. It was getting dark, so once more I was left wanting more to explore, but this time I at least walked for about and hour and was able to use a flashlight to read about the wildlife, plant life, and history within the park (more about that in a later post). However, once there was little to no light left I settled down on a bench and enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather.
Finally, I will get to the most recent and best experience I have had at Price Park. After multiple times returning with the same friend, I got increasingly more familiar with the space. So, when I had a friend come to visit, I took him to the park in my new favorite way of getting there. Rather than driving down New Garden Road, as I thought was the most accessible entrance point from where I live, I found that if I walk through the Guilford Woods (entering on the gated path, and taking a left, then a right) the trail spits straight into a neighborhood’s road, which leads straight to the depths of the woods at Price Park. From there, you can go straight on a trail, and choose a number of different paths which will all leave you walking for a good bit, until you decide to return to the heart of the park, which I consider to be the gazebo. On this particular walk I saw three female deer, an owl (near its owl box), and hoped to see bats, as there are three bat boxes in a field, but they were all empty. All in all, I feel as though every time I return to Price Park I explore something new, or discover another thing about what it has to offer, and that is a lot of what draws me to it every time. Respectfully, each experience I have had there has been better than the last, though most all of them have been good.
I imagine that my map will grow as my experiences at Price Park develop, and I continue to discover more parts of the space.
