We got a “Best of Otis” album and I’m trying to help him make a connection between his favorite statue and the musical genius it honors.

Trey loves to ride his bike along the path and Heidi and I enjoy the exercise we get chasing after him (he’s getting fast).

Here are some photos from two recent visits we took to the trail.

What it does have is Macon’s only handicap accesible playground; which was great for my brother Philip. Philip was able to enjoy the swing set and even get to the slides.

Trey spent the entire time playing with his newly acquired remote control cars. Not just driving them around the playground but down the slides where they would crash and roll at the bottom (to his squeals of delight).

Despite the heat, the kids had fun on the great playground at that park. After the festivities several of us headed over to Pho Saigon, Macon’s best (and only) Vietnamese restaurant. We’ve become friends with the owner/chef Bruce and his daughter Suri and Trey are buddies too. Suri, her dad, and baby sister even joined us earlier at the park.

The park is basically just a small playground but that is all a 3-year-old needs. We ran around and played and I got to experiment a bit more with my off-camera flash tricks.

Trey really enjoyed watching the parade – the highlight of the parade were our sister cities’ floats – Ulyanovsk, Russia and Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Our visit to the fairgrounds was a bit of a disappointment because they were no longer selling the Unlimited Rides passes. The money we had “budgeted” for Trey to enjoy got him about 7 rides instead of the infinite number we had hoped for. Nonetheless, we spread the rides out and he enjoyed them just as much.

Later in the afternoon I had to attend a reception at City Hall so Trey stayed at Causey’s house. Causey’s dad Adam took them to another nearby park to watch the annual Cherry Blossom lawnmower race. Only in Georgia!

Performing on this fine day was The Ralph Roddenbery Band. Ralph is a local singer/songwriter whose music is a mix of country, rock, blues, and Americana. Trey danced a bit to the music but was most interested in running around and playing in the little streams and ponds throughout Washington Park.

Special thanks to Marike Carrier for sharing the photo to the right!

Today was our first time to attend and we had a blast. The weather was still warm and Trey loved playing in the water. Performing were local artists Molly Stevens and Shane Bridges.

After playing for a while we walked over to the baseball fields and watched some little league games. Trey was really into it – “He’s running, he’s running!”, “Catch that ball guy!”, and “He’s swinging a baseball bat!?!” As much as Trey looked like he would enjoy it, my concerns about competitive sports at young ages were confirmed by a coach who was screaming at a 7-8 year old who let a runner steal 2nd base. Ridiculous.

Henry Burns is nice, little park with not only a playground but a tennis court, and dirt, basketball half-court. There’s plenty of open space to run around and little yellow flowers were blooming all over the grass.

With all the rain we’ve had (and with more on the way), the skies were pretty cloudy. This always makes for nice photo ops and I got quite a few “cute’ns” of Trey.

I had never been to this part of town and it was very obvious that the neighborhoods were struggling. There were lots of abandoned, boarded up homes and lots of people loitering on street corners and in driveways. The park is in an open area behind a circle of homes about 1/3rd of which were abandoned. There was also evidence that an arsonist must live in the neighborhood. A nearby vinyl fence had a massive hole burnt in it and some of the playground slides showed evidence that fires had been started on them. But hey, even if it is in a shady part of town a playground is a playground… right?

Not quite. After we’d been there about 10 minutes a group of young men who had been hanging out & smoking on the other side of the park approached us. One of them asked me if I smoked – he had cigarettes to sell. I said no and mentioned that it isn’t good for your health. His follow up question was if I smoked “green” – apparently they hadn’t noticed the “Drug Free Zone” sign at the entrance of the park. I pointed out I was just there to let my boy play on the playground and not interested in purchasing anything. As they walked off, Trey called out to them: “Big boys come back! Come play!”. They ignored him.

I let Trey play a little longer but finally drew the line when he held up a broken beer bottle he found under the playground set. I started to look closely at the mulch around us and realized it was full of shards of glass (being from brown beer bottles it blended in quite well). We left and I took Trey to Chick-fil-a where he had a great, safe time and the only drug pushed was delicious soft-serve ice cream.

Watch this video in HD on Vimeo.

After lunch and the race, we headed down to Central City Park to the fair. Trey was very excited to get to ride a couple rides. He and Allister rode a car together first and later in the afternoon they rode on a boat. Allister was pretty tired at that point and didn’t have as much fun. The cutest moment of the day was when Trey tried to console Allister by patting her on the back as she cried on the ride.

Other highlights included sea lions, a doggie disc catching competition, a dog fashion show, and lots of big motorcycles with big riders and their big partners.

Trey and I attended the opening ceremonies today and check out the fair grounds. Trey is now at the age where he is really interested in the rides – when we return tomorrow I’m going to have to take some cash to let him ride a couple.

All the local dignitaries at the ceremony were wearing bright pink sports jacket. Even the festival’s mascot – a poodle – was neon pink. The Georgia state governor Sonny Perdue was in attendance as well as Ichiro Fujisaki, the Japanese ambassador to the US. Japan is well-known for its prized cherry trees and I guess Macon has bonded with them over that.

We will be heading back tomorrow with our friends the Lowerys. Unfortunately Heidi has to work on of her 30+ hour shifts all day and all night so she won’t get to join us.

In the middle of the rundown brick garden is a plaque with in honor of J. Clay Murphey. He was a very successful and charitable businessman who donated the park to the city in 1949. He was also very active in the Macon Rotary Club and United Way of Central Georgia.

Trey spent most of his time playing with the cones setup for soccer games. He would line them up and make up games to play around them. We leapfrog’d the cones, ran around the cones, ran over the cones, zigzag’d through the cones, and on and on.

This evening we met Heidi at the hospital and got to tour her work area – the office, the lounge, etc… Trey enjoyed playing with her phone at her desk. Then we headed over to Macon Arts where Michael Williams, a camera club colleague, was exhibiting 33 photos in a series entitled “Paris, Italy, and Home Again.” It was nice to meet up with several other camera clubbers and talk camera geek for a while.

We ended the evening with a stroll through downtown to the Creme-de-la-Creme ice cream shop where we each got a cone of Blue Bell ice cream. Mmm, mmm.

According to the trailhead sign we walked about 2 1/2 miles. However, unless carrying Trey on so many hikes has made me really fit and speedy there is NO way we walked that far in 45 minutes (at least 20 of which were spent throwing rocks into the creek). Overall, it’s a nice trail but is rather steep in parts and could really use some signage to point  you in the right direction (at one point I wandered out of the woods into an apartment complex… whoops, wrong turn).