I’ve been to Tacony Creek Park once, but I’ll be back. You see, I live in West Philly and it’s true what they say about us: we don’t really like to leave West Philly. Even still, I thought the Tacony Creek Trail was well worth a trip out.
Let me back up a bit. It’s actually not an accident that I found myself at Tacony Creek. I am something of a running advocate in Philly, organizing the West Philly Runners group, and currently working RunPhil.ly, a site devoted to centralizing resources like trail maps and running groups for runners in our fair city that I will launch in early 2014. So, here I am: a runner trying to tell other runners about the amazing parks and trails in the city. And yet, I’ve never even run many of these trails myself. I knew that if I wanted to make RunPhil.ly a reality, I needed to hit the trails!
Tacony Creek was the first trail I visited for RunPhil.ly. I drove to the trail head at Ramona Ave and I Street, an unassuming intersection in a residential neighborhood with the trail stretching ahead of me beyond a yellow barricade fence that I’ve come to associate with Philly’s hidden trail treasures. Fifty feet down the trail, the woods took me in and the city felt miles behind me. Not much further along, I was fascinated to find that someone had decided to drop a golf driving range along the path. Then this thought was wiped out of my mind as the trail began to curve and reveal centuries-old bridges and miles of green space.
Tacony Creek Trail is currently, sadly, bisected by the beast of the Northeast, Roosevelt Boulevard (a situation that I learned will soon change through the design and construction of a connection under the roadway).
The greatest testament to the beauty of Tacony Creek Trail is that this roadway crossing did nothing to mar my run experience, the 5.5 mile out and back felt bitterly short when I emerged from the trail at dusk.
