Ask ten Highland Lakes residents where they take the kids on a Saturday morning and eight of them will say the neighborhood pool, the pond dock, or Patriots Park. That's not wrong. It's just incomplete. A few minutes east on Blanchard Woods Drive sits a park that most of those same residents have driven past without stopping, and the ones who do stop tend to leave surprised at how much is actually there.
That surprise is not a fluke. One recent visitor put it plainly in a review after years of living nearby: "This park is tucked away. I have lived in the area for years and didn't even know it was here." If you've lived in Evans for a while and still think of Blanchard Woods Park as just the soccer complex you drive past on the way to Grovetown, this is the update. It's not one park. It's closer to four different parks stacked on the same piece of ground, and the split between them is the actual story.
The Competition-Grade Side Most People Never See
Blanchard Woods Park was built with a specific purpose in mind, and it shows. According to Explore Georgia's park listing, the facility opened in September 2007 with four regulation soccer fields, an additional stadium soccer field, and a certified cross country course for high school and college competition. That's not casual rec-league infrastructure. The facility was designed to host state, regional, and national competitions, with the stadium field ranked among the premier soccer fields in the state, featuring high-quality turf, underground drainage, and a collegiate lighting system.
That last detail is worth sitting with for a second. A collegiate lighting system in a county park means this field was never meant to close at dusk. High school cross country meets, college-level soccer tournaments, and night games all run through the same acreage that most Highland Lakes households only associate with Saturday morning youth soccer. If your kids run cross country or play travel soccer, this is likely already on your radar. If they don't, it's the part of the park you've probably never had a reason to notice.
Two Disc Golf Courses, Not One
Here's the detail that actually changes how you'd use the place. Blanchard Woods doesn't have a disc golf course. It has two, and they're built for completely different players.
The first, called Owl, is not a beginner layout. It's designed for advanced players to enjoy shot shaping in the woods, and it's semi cart-friendly thanks to a decent amount of elevation. It runs the full 18 holes and is free to play, no membership or day pass required.
The second course, Hawk, sits alongside it with its own separate 18 holes. It offers 18 disc golf holes, restrooms, drinking water, cart-friendly paths, and pet-friendly areas, and like Owl, it's free to play.
Two full courses, both free, both accessible from the same park entrance, with one built for people who want a technical, wooded challenge and one built to be more approachable. That's a meaningfully different offering than "there's a disc golf course at the park," which is how most people who've heard of Blanchard Woods describe it if they mention it at all.
The BMX Track and the Trail Nobody Talks About
Then there's the part that catches even longtime visitors off guard. Columbia County's own facility listing for the park notes biking (BMX) among the amenities at 4600 Blanchard Woods Drive, and the same reviewer who admitted she'd missed the park entirely for years said she was surprised to see they have a BMX track as well.
There's also a hiking trail that doesn't get much attention next to the soccer complex and the disc golf courses. It's a marked trail, easy enough to follow, that gives the park a quieter side once you get past the fields. Put it together and you have a wooded hiking loop, a BMX track, two disc golf courses, and a collegiate-lit soccer stadium with a certified cross country course, all inside one park boundary in Evans.
Why the Distance Matters More Than the List
None of this changes anything about Highland Lakes itself. Your pond, your dock, your resort-style pool are still the closest amenities and still the ones you'll use most on an ordinary Tuesday. But Blanchard Woods sits close enough that it should be part of your weekend rotation rather than a place you vaguely know exists. Based on the neighborhood's own mapped location, the park is roughly two and a half miles away as the crow flies, which in practice means it's a short drive rather than a destination you'd plan a whole afternoon around getting to.
That distance is the reason this park is worth naming specifically instead of filing it under "there's stuff to do in Evans." A five-minute drive is the difference between a place you'll actually use on a random Saturday and a place you'll always mean to check out eventually. Blanchard Woods clears that bar.
A few practical notes if you haven't been:
- Go early or late in August. Georgia summer heat makes the wooded disc golf courses and the hiking trail far more comfortable before 10 a.m. or after 6 p.m., especially on the Owl course where the tree cover helps but the elevation still works you.
- Bring your own discs. Neither course rents equipment on site, so pack what you need before you leave the house.
- If you're new to disc golf, start on Hawk before you try Owl. The difficulty gap between the two courses is real, and Owl's wooded shot-shaping demands are built for players who already know what they're doing.
- Check field schedules before you show up expecting an empty soccer field. A stadium built for state and regional tournaments gets booked accordingly.
The Point of Driving Two and a Half Miles
The habit most Highland Lakes residents fall into isn't a bad one. The neighborhood's own amenities are genuinely good, and there's no reason to drive anywhere on a weeknight when the pond dock is a walk from your back porch. But the same instinct that keeps you close to home on a Tuesday can quietly turn into never checking out what's a few minutes further down the road, even when what's there is this specific.
Blanchard Woods Park isn't a hidden gem in the vague, marketing-brochure sense. It's a park with a certified cross country course built for college meets, a stadium field with the same lighting grade as a competitive venue, two full disc golf courses aimed at two different skill levels, and a BMX track that surprises even people who've lived nearby for years. That's not a rounding error in your mental map of the area. It's a real gap in it.
If you want more on what daily life actually looks like around the neighborhood, we've also written about everyday life by the water in Highland Lakes, covering the pond, the pool, and the rhythms that come with living inside the community itself. And if you're simply curious what else is nearby or considering what the Highland Lakes neighborhood has to offer beyond its own gates, that's worth a look too.
Ehrin Fairey lives and works in this part of Evans, which is exactly why posts like this one exist. Not every update about the neighborhood needs to be about market data. Sometimes it's just about making sure you know what's actually a few minutes from your own front door.
