I Go For The Parking

Our local county library is only about 5 minutes from our house. I must admit I was rather spoiled in Ohio with the superb library system we lived near, so this one is rather disappointing. It's kinda small, they have an almost non-existent DVD collection, and worst of all.. they lump all their fiction and sci-fi/fantasy together (HORROR!). They also don't actually enter a large portion of their paperbacks into the system by name.. they are listed as PAPERBACK ADULT. So.. if I check something out and can't remember the name of it come time to bring it back.. I'm digging through my shelves of paperbacks trying to find it without knowing the name. What a pain. I'm sure it's because of state funding to libraries. Too expensive to take the time and energy to catalog stuff that falls apart too easily. Have said all that, it's better than NO library.

And there's the parking lot.

I'm a country girl at heart. Big city, the smell of asphalt in the morning, sky scrapers.. doesn't do it for me. I want grass, and nature, and trees. While I may find the library itself somewhat lacking, I'd go there if for no other reason than to sit outside in the parking lot.

I can quite confidently say, that this is BY FAR, the coolest, most impractical parking lot I have ever seen in my life. Apparently there must have been a forest on this parcel of land, and rather than raze down all the impossibly tall gorgeous trees as any normal big developer would do, they decided to leave as many as possible, and build the library building and parking lot *around* them. It's awesome.

Here's the front of the library:



Already you can see, there's trees practically HUGGING it.. they go all the way around it front/sides/back.. and they are like 70-100 feet tall, mostly conifers.

Here's a pic just as you come out of the library, looking towards the parking lot:



TREES!

Now, not only are there trees all over the place, they built the parking spots AROUND them. Which means, the parking lot twists and winds around them, and there are all sorts of weird parking spots that are only 1 or 2 wide. COMPLETELY impractical in a state where usually parking is a premium and I love it.

Case in point:



One spot. ONE. And look.. there's a canopy of trees there which make it almost like a little secret fort parking space. Pure WIN. Who wouldn't want to park in their own single space, where no one can ding your car, and you can totally pretend you're the VIP of the forest with reserved special parking??

Another example:



They have lots of single parking spots, and you can't see it, but my van on the left is in a 2-wide parking space. It's ridiculously cool!

See? They're all catywhompus and crazy and awesome:



The only downside to this is that a lot of them are labeled "Compact" probably because they didn't have enough room between the trees to make a full regular parking space. So worth it.

Some local hooligans that felt the need to play in the trees (well, one of them did, anyway):



Library: 0 Parking Lot: 1

Del