Wednesday, November 9, 2011

White Pickup Trucks, Cars & Tires Today On The Quanah Parker Park Trail

White Pickup Truck Rapidly Heading Towards Me
On The Quanah Parker Park Trail
Today, on my way to Town Talk, I parked at Quanah Parker Park so that I could walk on the Quanah Parker Park Trail to check out a new section of Quanah Parker Park Trail that has had me a bit perplexed as I have observed its construction as I passed by on Randol Mill Road.

I had myself an encounter with a white pickup truck on the Quanah Parker Park Trail today.

If I remember right I have previously mentioned my encounters with white pickup trucks on trail in Fort Worth parks.

Today's white pickup truck encounter did not seem as sinister as some of my previous white pickup truck encounters.

There has been some upgrading going on in Quanah Parker Park in the past couple months. The fixing of the flood damaged entry road. New signage. Many added park benches.

New Trail To The Right, Old Trail To The Left
And then a month or so ago, at the point where the paved trail makes a long oxbow, following a bend in the Trinity River, bulldozers graded a path that ran parallel to Randol Mill Road.

I figured this was preparation for the laying of yet one more Barnett Shale Natural Gas Pipeline.

Instead this turned out to be a new section of paved trail, sort of making a detour around the oxbow.

Why would the City of Fort Worth spend money building this new paved trail, an addition to a trail that is not very heavily used, when there are so many places in Fort Worth that really could use a sidewalk?

The long long long term plan for the Dallas/Fort Worth towns, through with the Trinity River passes, is to connect Dallas with Fort Worth, and the towns in between, via paved biking, pedestrian trails. Fort Worth, Dallas and Arlington have all done a very good job building paved trails along the Trinity River.

But, there are a lot of gaps in the paved trail in Fort Worth. For instance the Quanah Parker Trail does not connect with the Gateway Park Trail and thus connect to the Trinity Trails. The Quanah Parker Trail is the furthest east that the Fort Worth paved trails travel.

There is maybe a 10 or 12 mile gap before you get to the Trinity River Trail that runs through River Legacy Park, in Arlington, almost all the way to Highway 360. And then another gap of maybe 15 miles before you get to the Dallas paved trails.

Methinks it really should be some sort of priority to fill in these gaps. Me also thinks if a paved bike/pedestrian trail extended from Fort Worth to Dallas that it would be very popular. Maybe not Burke Gilman in Seattle level of popular, with bike shops and places to eat along the way, but still popular. And who knows, maybe a snack bar and coffee shop might spring up along the route.

Crazy Man Driving Down The Quanah Parker Trail
In addition to the white pickup truck heading towards me today there were a couple other strange things that happened.

When I stopped to take the picture of the new trail that you see above, behind me was yet another white pickup truck. And behind that white pickup truck there was a car parked. As I snapped a picture the car started its engine and began driving down the oxbow section of the paved trail.

I found this to be very bizarre.

And then after I snapped a picture of the car careening down the oxbow section of the Quanah Parker Park Trail I turned around to see something I've been seeing in another park that I frequent.

Quanah Parker Park Tires
The Tandy Hills Natural Area.

Where in the past couple months 3 mysterious tires have appeared in an isolated area of the park, with two of them being BIG heavy tires.

And now today I find all these tires laying on the ground next to the Quanah Parker Park Trail?

Who put them there? And why?

Are they lined up waiting to be moved to the Tandy Hills?

I tell you, there needs to be some investigating into the goings on that go on in some of Fort Worth's parks.

It is all very perplexing.

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