Legacy Park
Overall Rating: 🍑🍑🍑🍑🍑
Distance: 4ish miles
Hilliness: Medium
Crowdedness: Peaceful
Surface Type: Dirt and gravel trails; sidewalk
Root Rating: Keep an eye on your feet! You might also want to avoid running after a big rain. It was pretty muddy and slick at points!
Dog-Friendliness: Wagging tails all around
Cost: Free!
Parking: Available at Legacy Park
Hours: 7am-30 minutes after sunset
Directions
You can take the bus, bike, or walk from the Avondale MARTA station on the PATH (0.5 miles). You can also park at Legacy Park in one of the many parking lots.
Review
Even having lived in Decatur for quite a few years, we had never explored this park. What an amazing place! Legacy Park was purchased by the City of Decatur who is in the process of confirming the strategic plan for its development. It used to be the site of an orphanage and a farm many years ago and now is a lovely and interesting place to walk (or run!) around.
We started at the Postal Pond Trailhead and ran through the trails, by the garden, around the pond, and enjoyed all the beautiful paths. You can really see the history of the area and experience some less tamed nature in this park. After circling the pond, we ran up past a beautiful refurbished barn and up to the parking lot to run around the paved part of the park a bit. We crossed over Columbia Drive and made our way to the Columbia Theological Seminary campus.
A quick run through the beautiful buildings of the campus brought us down to the soccer field and community garden. Continue on the sidewalk and across to the apartment complex and run until you hit Inman Drive. Once you hang a right, you'll come up to another trail entrance. This lovely gravel trail will take you back to campus. We ran back through and admired the architecture before crossing back over Columbia to get to the PATH trail on Katie Kerr. There are a few entrances back to the park from the PATH.
Entering back into the park, we ran back around the pond and up to the parking lot to end the run. This run was really fun and interesting and reminded me to appreciate the way that this region preserves nature and ensures our ability to explore it.
One note: A lot of the trails are dirt paths so beware after a big rain that the mud is a bit slick. The hills were also a bit rough in really high humidity!
