Cornelis Bol Park

"The Neighborhood Park Time Forgot"

This park was a happy accidental discovery.  I found it while wheeling my way down the bike path that goes from Gunn High School to the corporate park ringing Hansen and Page Mill Road. Named for Dr. Cornelius Bol, a Stanford professor who invented the high-intensity mercury vapor lamp, this park is tucked inside a neighborhood that time seems to have forgotten.  The residents have stables, large gardens and fields --- I imagine this is actually what most of Palo Alto looked like at one time. It was so cool to see horses, donkeys and other signs of rural life on the edges of Bol Park within a stone's throw of the corporate institutions like Hewlett-Packard!  I do enjoy it when the famous neighborhood donkeys are walked around this area and allowed to graze on the grass in this park.  You can always tell which kids have grown up with these magnificent creatures because they treat them as if they are another park fixture while those new to park and playground are transfixed on them.  It's a great scene and one so rare in this area.

The park is beautiful, nicely shaded and well kept.  It includes a  jogging path, a plush lawn area, wood benches, a large climbing structure, beautiful undeveloped meadows and of course, that one-mile bicycle path that led me here ---- you can pick it behind Gunn High School on Arastradero Road.