Last week we hiked in Little Mulberry Park as part of our preparation for El Camino de Santiago in the fall.  The park is really nice.  Here's the link if you care to learn more about it yourself:
Gwinnett County: LittleMulberryPark

What is it that makes for a "really nice" park?

• Being CLEAN is important.  I saw 3 pieces of trash during our walk, and I brought 2 of those out with me.
• Being user-friendly is important.  There are miles of walking paths through the park and most of them are paved with asphalt or concrete like the one in this picture.  Some are not paved - which also has benefits - but even the dirt paths are well maintained.  You're not walking through  weeds.
• Being scenic gives this park special attraction.  There are paths through the woods, through meadows and around the lakes and ponds.

Parks like this are one of the great benefits of living in Gwinnett County.  A few blocks from our home is Collins Hill park.  It's much smaller than Little Mulberry, but still beautiful and well used.  Nearby is Rock Springs park which is set right on the watershed divide between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.  If you spit to the north, it will eventually make its way to the Chattahoochee river and then down through the pan-handle of Florida into the Gulf.  Spit to the south and it will go to the creek that feeds the lakes in the Richland subdivision (where we live) or the spit will go to the creek that goes through Collins Hill park.  These creeks come together by the tennis courts in Richland and as Little Suwanee Creek, they join the Yellow River.  Just for the record, I need to go on to say that the Yellow River joins with the Alcovy to form the Ocmulgee River.  This eventually joins with the Oconee River to form the Altamaha River which empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Darien, Georgia.

The summit of this hill is the highest point in the area.  The meadow is a big contrast to the thick woods throughout most of the rest of the park.

We hiked 12.37 km on that day.  This is about equivalent to what I expect we will hike on our third day on El Camino.

• I think our first day we will go from St. Jean Pied de Port to Orisson (still in France).  
• The second day we will cross the border and spend the night in Roncesvalles.  
• And on the third day we will hike 11.8 km to Viskarreta.  If you know the difference between kilometers and miles, you can tell we will be taking it easy at the beginning.  By the time we get passed Burgos, near the end of this trip to Spain, I expect we will be hiking 20 km a day.