Coffman Park: Taking a Stroll

This past weekend my wife and I went down to Ohio to visit some family that lives down there. We used to spend our nights at their house, but now that they have a new little one, space is at a premium, so we have started staying at local hotels during our stay. In case you haven't noticed, hotels are crazy expensive these days, so it isn't quite as easy to find a good deal on a room as it used to be.

Add to that the fact that the number 1 ranked Texas Longhorns were facing the number 3 defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, and pretty much all hotels in the general area of Columbus were booked solid.

I was lucky enough to find a hotel that was relatively close to their house, but also just across major highway 270 from Coffman Park is a 105 acre park in the center of Dublin, Ohio with an amphitheater, 19th century home, playground, and other features.

Probably the most notable fact about Coffman Park is the fact that every year they hold the Irish Festival there. As you can imagine with a name like Dublin, the city leans heavily into its Irish roots. In fact the main street through the downtown area is also called Bridge Street and there are many other sections of the city that get their names from places in Ireland.

I've only ever been to the Irish Festival once and details are a bit sketchy from that trip (as you might imagine), but I do remember it was a good time. They always have some amazing music and entertainment. It's a pretty big draw for the whole city of Columbus.

Our round trip walk ended up being close to two miles, so I am definitely including this as a #wednesdaywalk post sponsored by @tattoodjay. Down in Ohio and Kentucky, you often find fences like the one in the photo above. They aren't usually very high and I'm not really sure if they serve much of a purpose beside breaking up the landscape. It's not like it would keep anyone out or keep horses from jumping over them, but they are still pretty cool.

When I was down visiting Kentucky a long time ago my brother in law told me that the method of making these fences is a bit of an art and they were starting to get worried that the skill was no longer being passed down to new generations.

Here's an article if you want to read a bit more about it

As you can see from the photo above, the Irish Festival has been going strong for close to 40 years now. As I said, I have only been there once, but that is still impressive.

There are various art pieces spread throughout the park like the sculpture above. I didn't want to get my feet all wet due to the morning dew still being on the grass, so I had to take a photo from a bit far away. As you can see it is a traditional harp or lyre celebrating the traditional music history of Ireland and the Irish Festival.

There was a gaggle of geese hanging out in one of the fields and as we got further up the paved path I was getting worried that they might attack us. I have heard that geese can be pretty ill tempered though I have never been on the wrong end of it. A large group of them crossed the path just before we made our way up there and after the fact I was kicking myself that I didn't get any photos of their wet footprints on the asphalt. It would have been a really cool photo.

There are a couple nice stone bridges throughout the park that cross the south fork of Indian Run, but this was the only one that we crossed over on our walk. Once we got to the end of the path, we headed through the parking lot and then found a sidewalk that ran along the road and started heading back towards our hotel.

The park is actually pretty big and I have a feeling we probably only covered about a quarter of it on our walk. Maybe a third if I am being generous.

I snagged a photo of this fountain outside of one of the buildings near the park, and then one final image of the wide open spaces that the park offers as we were heading back to our hotel. As you can see, there are plenty of room for them to set up stages, tents, vendors, and all that sort of stuff for the festival. From what I remember, this place is absolutely packed during the festival. I hope I can maybe get back to it one more time. I think they usually have it either the last weekend in July or the first weekend in August.

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