Fuquay-Varina converts former golf course into a much-needed town park

While reading the local metro daily newspaper one day about a year after moving to North Carolina, I found interesting a story about how the Wake County Commissioners had purchased the property of the former Crooked Creek Golf Club, an 18-hole golf course near the town of Fuquay-Varina in the southern portion of the county. 

In the months afterward, there was discussion about what Wake County — where Raleigh also is located — would do with the land. One idea floated was to develop the land for much-needed housing in the fast-growing area of the state. But there also was interest by Fuquay-Varina to take possession of the land and make it a largely open-air park.

The latter idea eventually won out, and in late October 2022, I got around to checking out Hilltop-Needmore Town Park. And by “checking out,” I mean I took photographs of it. I only recently discovered that for some reason, I never did a blog post on that shoot.

So here I am, some three plus years later, correcting my neglect of doing a post from that shoot. 

My visit was timed wonderfully in the sense that I was able to capture my landscape images while autumn colors were still vivid in the area. It might seem odd to present a post of autumn landscapes in the throes of winter, but given how North Carolina recently experienced two uncharacteristic winter storms (Fern and Gianna) a week apart, maybe it’s something that can help boost spirits and morale.

While perusing these photos, take note of the rolling hills and winding paths, characteristic of challenging golf courses. To view a larger and sharper version of a photo, simply click on the image. To view a full gallery of images from this shoot, follow the link in this sentence. 

Blue sky, blue heron, weird tree and root shapes and more at ... well, where else?

I hadn’t even planned on doing a post about one day’s worth of pictures when I went to Yates Mill Pond Park for a walk back on Jan. 5. But I was so taken by what I encountered in the forest there that day that I came back for three more picture outings in less than a week. 

So a dilemma struck me after yet another visit to Yates Mill on Jan. 17, when I started taking iPhone pictures because of compositions I was seeing thanks to a rich blue sky that then transformed into heavy clouds 15 minutes into my stroll. 

The question I struggled with afterward: Dare I create a fifth post of Yates Mill pictures in such a short time? I’d never done such a thing involving one specific locale, unless I had planned a series ahead of time. So, I figured now would be a good time to introduce another first here.

You can see the sky I was talking about in the leadoff photo, a sky complemented by some white clouds hovering over the primary pedestrian bridge over the pond. The clouds would thicken and concentrate in a very short time frame — I’d say within 15 minutes — after this photo was taken. 

The first half-dozen or so forest interior photos below I made early in my stroll, and as you can see, the quality of blue in the sky started to fade before going away entirely. I devoted the remainder of the shoot mostly to shape oddities I encountered, whether it was among the trees (dead or alive) along the path or on the path itself, usually because of the interesting above-ground root patterns.

Near the end, I strayed from the path to capture the “new” (well, new to this blog, anyway) building shots on the agricultural land owned by North Carolina State University (even though this land is far removed from the school’s actual campus). 

And at the very end, I spied the blue heron from a distance as I started my recession on the pedestrian bridge. The heron was in the same area of the small pond section shoreline where I had seen it on Jan. 11, and I was excited that maybe I could get close enough from the bridge to get a tight shot of it with my iPhone zoom without distorting the pixelation. 

But alas, as I reached the halfway point on the bridge, a man who had been fishing with a pole in the water on the opposite side of the bridge, turned around and cast his line into the small section, and that was enough to frighten the heron away. 

I really wasn’t able to reach the point I’d been hoping to reach to get sharp photos, but I took some anyway of the heron in flight. The penultimate picture below shows the heron just as it began its escape to the far north end of the pond. The last shot was taken just as it was landing. I took a few shots afterward as it waded in the shallow water, but it was too far away to secure sharpness. 

To view a full gallery of images from this shoot, follow the link in this sentence.     

Above and first two photos below: Three perspectives of the same tree.