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With the stay at home orders from Texas state government and Collin County Government have ordered non essential businesses to close down and stay at home whenever possible. Luckily the state allows us to get out and go walking, visit state parks, and national parks. After about of month of hanging out at the house and walking up down the county roads by the house I just had to get out and go for a hike. I decided to avoid parks and try to visit green spaces and state/national parks. To get back into hiking shape I decided to visit Parkhill Prairie Park Nature Trails in Collin County, Texas. Its a short distance from the house and its about a mile and half long trail.
Parkhill Prairie Park
Parkhill Prairie Park is a 436-acre park located in north east Collin County. It just a few minutes away from Hunt County and Fannin County. The county set aside 52 acres to be a relic of the Blackland tall-grass prairie with impressive views of growing countryside. The prairie looks much like the early settlers of the area would have seen a 100+ years ago.
During wildflower season the prairie will have Prairie Parsley, Wild Petunia, Indian Paintbrush, Winecup, Prairie Clover, Meadow Pinks, Purple Coneflower, Mexican Hat, Gay Feather, Azure Sage, Golden Rod and Asters.
In addition to the prairie, the park features several covered pavilions with cooking grills and restroom facilities (almost always closed). There also two small pounds separated by a levy and large shade trees shade parts of the ponds.
The park is gated and is for day use only and opens at sunrise and closes at sunset. No camping or fires except in the built in grills.
Parkhill Prairie Park is located at County Road 668 near Blue Ridge, Texas.
Parkhill Prairie Park Nature Trails
This is a great park but I wouldn’t make a trip in from Dallas. If you are in the area its worth a trip.. There isn’t much to the park. The nature trails are about 1.2 miles long between the two trails. The trails follow the terrain and is a mixture of hills and low areas. You will find the trails to be very muddy for several days after it rains. The trails are just a cut path in the field. Its only cut a few times a month. Not much shade and plenty of bugs. So make sure to wear sunscreen and bug spray. When the weather is hot bring plenty of water with you or at least have a bottle of water in the car. The closest place to get drinks in food is either in Celeste and Blue Ridge. Both towns are very small and only have one or two stores.
The short trail is about a half a mile and at the top of the hill you can see downtown Leonard, Anna, and the Top Flight Golf Netting in Allen. The second trail is about a mile long. At the end of the trail you will see stone walls about sitting height. This is the end of the trails and the top of hills were you will get views of the surrounding countryside.
After I completed the trails I wasn’t ready to call it a day so I followed the gravel road to the ponds and walked around them and then back to car. This added another mile to the trip.
Trails are clean and saw very little trash. The park was clean with plenty of trash cans near the tables and one of the ponds was clean but the other one was full of algae. I only saw a few wild flowers and very little wildlife. But I did visit mid morning. The best time for bird watching and wildlife is early morning. I did see several birds and was able to photograph one of them.
About the Images
See all the pictures and future pictures on Flickr –
The images were shot on a bright sunny mid morning using my Sony a6000 and my Sony SELP18105G E PZ 18-105mm F4 G OSS with a K&F Concept Circular Polarizer by hand. I then edited the images with Adobe Lightroom CC and Topaz Labs Denoise AI and Topaz Labs Sharpen AI and DXO NIK Collection to clean up the image, remove noise, and recover the lost details.
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