This was an impromptu walk through a neighborhood close to home. I’ve walked through this area several times with my daughter; today she was home “sick” and it turned out to be a nice day for a walk, so I set off with the plan of picking a route based on how things went.
I’ve been intentionally biasing my route selection toward neighborhoods inside New Circle Road since I almost certainly won’t be able to finish all routes before we relocate to a new city, probably in the spring. So today’s was a rare recent trek through a relatively new neighborhood. I was pleasantly surprised that this area has some of the features that make older neighborhoods interesting to walk through but which new neighborhoods tend to lack–unique houses and unique landscaping. The first is funny–really the vast majority of houses here are very similar to one another. A two story ranch is repeated up and down these streets with minor variations. But there are occasional houses that are perhaps even more striking for breaking what is otherwise a fairly strict mold. The landscaping, again, was largely typical of suburban neighborhoods with expanses of grass interrupted only by driveways. But there was enough variation–a picket fence here, tall hedge there, to make a difference.
Today took me to another late 90’s suburban neighborhood, fairly similar to the Eastwood neighborhood I visited a few days ago. This area felt, structurally to be very similar–similar construction, similar era, similarly sized houses. Since I visited Eastwood quite recently, the differences were probably more striking than they would’ve been otherwise. For one thing, there were none of the creative things we saw in Eastwood (though it should be mentioned that those really awful manhole covers were not present here). Also note that while many of the houses here back up to the reservoir, these are not exactly waterfront views. The reservoir is screened from view (at street level, at least) by thick forest behind a chain-link fence.