Parks
This year, I'm challenging myself to work remotely from every park in Lower Salford Township. My goal is to explore new environments, enjoy the outdoors, and see how each space supports focused and productive digital work. I’m documenting each visit with a simple log of conditions, gear, and observations below.
Briarwyck Park
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Address | 315 Sturgis Road, Harleysville, PA 19438 |
| Driving Time | 3 minutes |
| Walking Time | 6 minutes |
| Date | Friday 2025-04-18 |
| Duration | 12:10 to 16:10 (4 hours) |
| Conditions | 68-72°F mostly sunny 33% RH |
| Cell Signal | Verizon 5G 2/4 bars |
| Seating | Folding camp chair |
| Features | Stocked fishing pond, playground, isolated |
| Productivity | Great |
Visited this park on April 18 and found a semi-shaded spot halfway between the dock and the end of the lake on my own camping chair. There are two uncovered park benches on the dock but I didn't use them since families like to fish from there and I wanted some solitude.
My phone and laptop lasted the whole four hour duration with no issues starting with a fully charged battery and 37 watt hour power pack. If I had needed power there wouldn't have been any available. Took several quiet online meetings, wrote an architectural review document, and configured a Jira project permission schema. Listened to chocolate rain: a political awakening from Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) on very low volume.
Fellow park goers were quiet and friendly, mostly solitary fishers or walkers. Soundscape was mostly nature for the first half but turned to lawn tools from the local houses towards the end. It's a bit of a walk from the parking to the pond carrying backpack and gear.
Heckler Plains Farmstead
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Address | 237 Landis Road (Morris Rd & Creekview Dr), Harleysville, PA 19438 |
| Driving Time | 8 minutes |
| Walking Time | 0 minutes |
| Date | Tuesday 2025-04-22 |
| Duration | 10:40 to 13:20 (2 hours 40 minutes) |
| Conditions | 68-75°F mostly sunny 11 mph 61-41% RH |
| Cell Signal | Verizon 4G 2/4 bars |
| Seating | Picnic table under pavilion |
| Features | Pavilion, playground, porta-bathrooms |
| Productivity | Great |
| Dog | Present |
Visited this park on April 22 and set up right on a picnic bench and table under the pavilion a few steps from where I parked my car. Although most of the area near the pavilion is several paved parking areas, it is also set near two historic buildings and older trees that are nice to look at. There is electric run to the pavilion but it is locked behind a console for event use only and to feed the security cameras and lampposts in the park area.
My phone and laptop lasted the whole duration with no issues starting with a fully charged battery and my power pack. Participated in the morning meeting and worked on monitoring systems and general documentation while listening to the Knowledge Fight podcast. Good productive time although the winds made it hard to write cleanly on my clipboard at times.
Fellow park goers were distant, one small family with a child on the playground and some folks using the local trails for exercise. Contractors working out of their company trucks and vans found the lot and bathrooms convenient, their peaking traffic around noon to eat lunch in their trucks. Soundscape was quiet for being situated so close to the road, and I spotted a woodpecker after hearing it search a tree about ten yards away.
Groff's Mill Park
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Address | 740 Salfordville Road (Groffs Mill Rd & Haldeman Rd), Harleysville, PA 19438 |
| Biking Time | 20 minutes garage to creek-side |
| Date | Monday 2025-08-25 |
| Duration | 13:00 to 16:00 (3 hours) |
| Conditions | 81°F, dew point 57°F, clear |
| Cell Signal | LTE 2/4 bars |
| Seating | Park bench (slightly broken) |
| Features | Trail, wildlife, clear water, bench |
| Productivity | Good |
| Wildlife | Garter snake, caterpillars, hummingbirds, heron (overhead), dragonflies |
Today was lovely and overcast so I took my gear on my bike and mostly empty mid-day roads to make my way from the northwest corner of town to this park in the middle-west about 2.5 miles away. Navigation said the trip should take about 15 minutes and maybe with an e-Bike it would but with my old Bridgestone and old legs it was a little longer.
Quickly found a nice park bench off the foot trail. The path itself is closed to cars so I was glad I brought my bike because its about as far out from the parking lot as Briarwyck Park. The bench was installed by the Souderton-Telford Rotary in the 90s and is starting to show some age. On arrival, I encountered a garter snake sunning itself under the bench, and within minutes, fuzzy caterpillars attached themselves to my bag. The water nearby was clear and shallow, though only one or two small fish were visible.
Took a audio meeting with a screen share and the other folks on the call said my screen share was lagging but eventually caught up. Leaving the phone on the bench next to me got 1 bar LTE but up on the side pillar was two and good signal. Got a few Python scripts to prove out a concept and felt good about the work done. The cloudy skies saved the day, otherwise I might have had to find a different place to work.
Three visitors let their moderately well-behaved dogs off leash in the park to splash in the creek or poop unsupervised. Only encountered two or three joggers either alone or in pairs and four young kids coming back from tubing on the creek who sounded like they whispered "stranger danger" to each other (not the best feeling, that). Overall, a good spot for wildlife observation and remote work.
Alvin C. Alderfer Park
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Address | 420 Oak Drive (between Maple and Main Street), Harleysville, PA 19438 |
| Driving Time | 8 minutes |
| Walking Time | 0 minutes |
| Date | Monday 2025-09-08 |
| Duration | 9:00 to 11:25 (2.5 hours) |
| Conditions | 59°F, dew point 57°F, clear |
| Cell Signal | 5G 2/4 bars |
| Seating | Picnic tables, covered and uncovered |
| Features | Paved trails, lots of parking, portable bathrooms |
| Productivity | Great |
I was already familiar with Alderfer Park because its a frequent place for my daughter's softball games but all of the time I'd spent here was next to one field or another. For this trip I decided to try out the picnic benches and covered pavilion near the parking area and the paved trails.
The temperature and wind were a bit odd today and after the sun chased me under the pavilion the shade made things somewhat chilly but not too much to leave. The morning was some Terraform configuration work followed by a few video calls. The video calls went well because I had a 5G signal but they drained my laptop battery super quick.
While I was there a dozen people came and went walking their dogs around the park on the trails or pushing strollers with their kids, and everybody was quiet and polite. The playground was in use by at least one or two kids for an hour while I was there. A group of three visitors got out of their car and sat in the grass for an impromptu picnic for a while before walking around and joining me at the pavilion. It's a sports and walking park by design so not a lot of nature this time.
The portable restrooms were super clean and close by, and when other people were sitting in the pavilion I felt safe enough to leave most of my gear on the picnic table to walk to them and take a break. Would have stayed longer but had a few more meetings and not enough battery or access to power there so I had to leave earlier than I would have liked.
Bergey Park
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Address | 675 Bergey Mill Road, Harleysville, PA 19438 |
| Driving Time | 8 minutes |
| Walking Time | 0 minutes |
| Date | Tuesday 2025-09-09 |
| Duration | 13:00 to 16:00 (3 hours) |
| Conditions | 73°F, dew point 57°F, clear |
| Cell Signal | 5G 3/4 bars |
| Seating | Folding camp chair |
| Features | Solitude, amazing view |
| Productivity | Great |
This is the most interesting and scenic park so far. I drove here in the afternoon and was confused by both the park entrances and the construction currently happening on the bridge on Bergey's Mill Road over the Perkiomen Creek that connects Cross Road and Haldeman Road. Ultimately I checked some of the trail and sidewalk maps from the township and the county GIS on my phone to verify I was on park property because the park makes a 'C' shape around several private lots.
I drove to the bottom of the hill by the creek-side but did not want to get any closer to the construction and think I missed the entrance that would bring me to the Bergey Mill Farmstead. Instead I turned around and parked in the lot at the intersection of Cross Road next to a sign that said BERGEYS MILL and PARK SYSTEM and set up my camp chair under a tall tree on the other side of a guardrail looking towards Spring Mountain.
Got 3/4 bar 5G signal from being at the top of the hill, hardly different in performance than my WiFi at home. Worked for a while on configuring WSL2 instance on my laptop and pulled down a 1.2 GB image in just a few minutes. Took a video meeting where I turned off my incoming video to save bandwidth and battery and worked on some more Terraform configuration and made a few new Jira tickets for next sprint. There was no electric or bathrooms where I set up, but with the power pack my phone and laptop lasted the whole time.
Except for a utility contractor taking a phone call in the gravel lot when I first arrived, I was alone for almost all of the three hours I was there. Cross Road can be a little busy so there was noise from trucks and school busses that was hard to ignore, a few planes overhead, and some territorial dogs in the properties nearby barking at any car that dared to pass by. Only nature I saw was a few hawks and one or two tiger mosquitos.
Dan Roth Park
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Address | 312 Maple Avenue (Between Maple & Alumni Avenue), Harleysville, PA 19438 |
| Driving Time | 3 minutes |
| Walking Time | 0 minutes |
| Date | Tuesday 2025-09-16 |
| Duration | 9:30 to 11:45 (2.25 hours) |
| Conditions | 71°F, dew point 60°F, cloudy |
| Cell Signal | 5G 3/4 bars |
| Seating | Picnic tables under a pavilion |
| Features | Portable restroom, Upset goose noises |
| Wildlife | Eight ducks, sixty geese |
| Productivity | Poor |
Today was a spur of the moment park. My son forgot his clarinet at home as he ran out the door for the bus so I had to drive to the school briefly to drop it off for him and on a whim I threw my laptop bag into the car with me and on the way back decided to work from here.
My laptop was only half charged when I got there but with the power pack I was able to work for over two hours and take a video call. The first thing I noticed at this park was a loud alarm that sounded like an angry goose going off every 8 minutes or so. After a quick web search I realized it was actually a recording of a goose alarm call intended to discourage Canada Geese from hanging around the pond.
The township public works department was re-striping the parking lot with gas powered equipment and between the loud goose sounds large walnuts would drop from the trees above with a thump loud enough to break my concentration. A local friend who lives nearby walked over with a cup of coffee to briefly catch up, which was nice.
In spite of prominent notices by the township about not feeding the local duck population a woman came by around 10 a.m. with a reusable shopping bag filled with the equivalent of a whole loaf of bread. This visitor must do this a lot because the ducks knew her by sight and all left the water at once for this terrible meal.
Initially I didn't mind the goose speaker because I figured it was doing a good job keeping geese away but around 10:45 a.m. a group of about sixty geese arrived all at once from the southwest and took over the whole pond. The next time the loudspeaker went off they could not have cared less about the sound and maybe one or two turned a head for a brief moment.
A few minutes later the siren for Harleysville Station 89 sounded dispatching them out to a Hazmat response for a bag marked with skulls and crossbones found in bushes outside Walmart. I lasted about another hour before the combination of low battery and constant distraction sent me back home to finish the Python code I was working on. I left with 24% remaining on my power pack, 22% on laptop battery and 60% on my phone.
Maybe other days will be better but I'm not going to pick this park for anything that requires deep focus again.
Kulp Road Pond Park
170 Kulp Road (Corner of Gruber & Kulp), Harleysville, PA 19438
Charles L. Reed Memorial Park
155 Clemens Road (Corner of Yoder Rd), Harleysville, PA 19438
Jacob Reiff Park
775 Quarry Road (Corner of Upper Mainland Road), Harleysville, PA 19438
Robert Clemens Bucher Park
411 School Lane, Harleysville, PA 19438
Ted Dannerth Memorial Park
370 Broad Street, Harleysville, PA 19438
Wawa Park
599 Camp Wawa Road, Harleysville, PA 19438
Park List with Links
| Park Name | Address |
|---|---|
| Alvin C. Alderfer Park | 420 Oak Drive (between Maple and Main Street) |
| Bergey Park | 675 Bergey Mill Road |
| Kulp Road Pond Park | 170 Kulp Road (Corner of Gruber & Kulp) |
| Charles L. Reed Memorial Park | 155 Clemens Road (Corner of Yoder Rd) |
| Jacob Reiff Park | 775 Quarry Road (Corner of Upper Mainland Road) |
| Dan Roth Park | 312 Maple Ave. (Between Maple & Alumni Avenue) |
| Briarwyck Park | 315 Sturgis Road |
| Robert Clemens Bucher Park | 411 School Lane |
| Ted Dannerth Memorial Park | 370 Broad Street |
| Groff's Mill Park | 740 Salfordville Road (Groffs Mill Rd & Haldeman Rd) |
| Heckler Plains Farmstead | 237 Landis Road (Morris Rd & Creekview Dr) |
| Wawa Park | 599 Camp Wawa Road |