Friday Shoot-Out: Park landscapes

The idea of the My Town Shoot-Out is to post photos of your local community every Friday. This week's assignment was chosen by JarieLyn from Nevada.

All photos taken in or near Corvallis, Oregon

Corvallis is blessed with a huge amount of public space, one of my favorite things about living here. Much of it is somewhat wild, and laced with trails. If you walk out of our back door, in exactly 4 minutes, you will find yourself on a mixture of private and public land perfect for walking your dog/biking/birdwatching:

The grass, bushes and trees there are so full of color, as rich as an oil painting.

In in about 10 minutes the path that you are on will take you to Martin Luther King Park, formerly known as Walnut Park. There's a nice little playground there, so safely constructed that it seems unlikely that any child could get hurt. The sand makes for a soft landing should you somehow get around the handrails everywhere.

This sign in the playground seems like it is poorly placed. Wouldn't you be reading it a split second too late?

Last weekend we drove a few minutes south of town to the Finley Wildlife Refuge, in hopes of seeing some migrating birds. There were thousands of ducks and geese, plus a bald eagle, and several Great Blue Herons.

There is an observation deck with a scope.

With the scope you can look out onto this little lake.

Two weeks ago we headed an hour west to go to one of our favorite places, the Oregon coast. Access to the Oregon coast is made easy by the amazing number of state and county parks. There are almost no restricted areas along this rugged, gorgeous coastline; there is public access all over the place.

Dawn breaking on Nye Beach, Newport Oregon.

Sometimes you can have it all to yourself.