Bisset Park, Radford, VA: A chilly farewell

I'm taking things a bit out of order here. It was actually our last day in Virginia that we visited Bisset Park, but since this is Wednesday and @mrsbozz and I took a walk through the park, I thought I should share it as a #wednesdaywalk post sponsored by @tattoodjay.

I'd actually had different plans for our last morning in Radford, I was going to drive us to some of the nearby mountains to check out some of the scenic lookouts that surround the area. The problem is, in many parts of Virginia, you are in the mountains, so getting from point A to point B isn't always as straight of a shot as you might think. It was going to be about 50 minutes in the car one way to get to the scenic lookouts.

Given the fact that we were planning on sitting for a softball doubleheader later in the day, then another five hours in the car to get back to Ohio, I thought it might be a better move to take a walk, which is what led me to Bisset Park.

Bisset Park sits on the shores of the New River and has a trail system that connects to pretty much the rest of the town along the waterfront. It's pretty cool and if I lived in this area, I would likely be spending a lot of time down here. What I didn't realize was just how cold it would be this morning. There was a 12 mile an hour wind coming out of the North, and a weather front had just moved through the night before which made it a brisk 34 degrees Fahrenheit on this sunny Saturday morning.

They have a nice little war memorial at one end of the park, but the majority of this space is taken up by playgrounds, athletic fields, and pavilions you can rent for parties and things like that. It's pretty typical of most parks in the US. The thing that really made this park great was the walking trail along the perimeter of the park. We ended up walking the whole thing which was about 1.57 miles. We did the circuit in 28.5 minutes, and according to my Garmin app, my max heart rate was 88 bpm and I burned 238 calories.

I took quite a few shots of the river as we were walking by. I actually didn't stop to take any of these, so I am surprised they came out so clear. I expected half of them to be all blurry due to my bouncing around while walking. Props to my Pixel 8 Pro for doing such a good job with them.

There were actually quite a few more people out at the park than I expected given how cold it was. 34 degrees isn't too bad up in Michigan, but down in Virginia it's absolutely frigid for them. We saw a group of kids out having soccer practice before we got back in the car to leave.

The new river splits the town of Radford into two basic areas. There is the old town side where the majority of Radford sits on the same side as Bisset Park. Then there is the more commercial side of the river where the big box stores like Walmart and Kroger sit along with all the fast food places like Bojangles and Cook Out (more on those in another post!).

The bridge in the photos above is one of the main roads that connects those two parts of town.

Meanwhile, a bit further down (or maybe up) river, there is an old railway bridge and some stone pilings that clearly used to support another bridge at one time.

The even had a pretty substantial Pickleball area with something like ten courts for people to play on. The only thing I would be worried about is the amount of wind that follows the river through the area. It seems like it might make it difficult to control the whiffle style ball they use in the sport. I've never played though, so I don't really know.

Anyway, despite the cold, our last morning in Virginia started off pretty well and little did we know things would only get better from there. One thing I loved about Spring down south is how green everything is already. We are still a few weeks away from that kind of veredence up in Michigan.

I wouldn't hesitate to come back to this park for a little bit of exercise next time I am down in Radford visiting.

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