A friend purchased my book, Blue Spirit, today, and was excited about the part he’d read about Holliday Park, since he’d been there. He went so far as to say he wanted to trace the characters’ steps through the park and find all the places described.
I’ll admit, I’ve done that before myself, just to see if I got it right. One of the trails has been rerouted for habitat reconstruction by Indy Parks, but overall, I didn’t do so bad.
Here’s Chapter 5 of the novel, Skye’s first visit to the park, if you want to read how I used these places for the story.
- Holliday Park Bus Stop
Not glamorous, but the IndyGo bus system is how our heroine Skye gets around town. This becomes very important very quickly, as she gets help from the whimsical Transit King.
Bus line 28, as it happens, also goes fairly near my home.
- Ruins
These artistic but fake ruins are the centerpiece of the park. Who could look upon this and not speculate on what sort of fanciful building might have stood here if this had once been a real building? It’s part of the magic of the park that led me to set a modern fairy tale in Indianapolis, and why Skye visited here in the book.
- Trails
This is the switch-backed trail that Skye and Annabelle follow down into the depths of the park’s forests. This landscaping hints at the fantastic terrain ahead. The trails have been rerouted for habitat restoration by Indy Parks since Blue Spirit was written, so some of the directions aren’t quite right, but if you follow this trail, you’ll certainly get to the frogmen’s boggy pool at the bottom, you can’t miss it.
- Smelly and partially stagnant, this mosquito breeding ground is where Skye and her friend first encounter Queenie’s comical but deadly frogmen footmen.
There’s also a geocache centered near this spot called “The Forbidden Pool”, named for place in Tolkien’s The Two Towers. I found the cache, too.
- In 2003, this looked a little different. It was more as described by Skye: “Just as in the dream, several paths converged at the top of the hill, each marked with a stone, and inside that ring of stones was a smaller ring of stones, each big enough to sit on as a lumpy natural seat.” It was this place I brought Amy when I proposed. She said, “you’re joking” first, but then accepted.
These days, the outer circle isn’t so circular, and the inner circle is just a huddle of stones, but it’s still a magical place.
Holliday Park appears in a few more chapters throughout the book, and is the most visual of the locales Skye visits. I’m fortunate to live near the park, and it was fun to retrace Skye’s steps tonight to take you for a virtual tour.
If you want to visit the park in person, check out www.hollidaypark.org. Watch out for the invisible frogmen!
E. Chris Garrison 
Pingback: Following Skye through Holliday Park « Red Tash
SWEET! I’ve never been to that park, so it is doubly awesome to see pics of the places mentioned. 😀
I want to visit this park – and look up more info on your book!
Happy Coffin Hopping,
-aniko
Okay, after reading the blurb on your novels page, I just snagged a copy of Blue Spirit for my Kindle on Amazon! 🙂
Thanks!
-aniko
Aniko, I’m glad you liked the post enough to check out Blue Spirit! Enjoy!
The Holliday Park site seems to be defunct. Here’s the IndyParks page for it:
http://www.indy.gov/eGov/City/DPR/Parks/List/Pages/HollidayPark.aspx
…and the Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Holliday-Park/142676649096880