At first glance, Serra Park seemed like it was a perfect park. Fenced off from the road, swings and playground equipment, a pretend town and steamship, sprinklers and even a little creek to play in. Plenty of shade, but enough sun as well. But then as we played there I realized that this park was designed by someone who had heard of how to have fun as a kid, but never actually done so.
The giant steamship and pretend town has nothing going for it. You can walk up the one set stairs and then walk on the top deck. Yippee. No slides, only one wheel to turn, no pulleys or a million other things that you could put on the equipment for the kids to actually do. Yes, I know the whole "Kids have lots of imagination so you only need to supply the place" argument. But it obviously didn't work. My girls walked up there maybe once, looked around and came back down to play in the sand. In fact, I saw hardly any kids playing on the big steamship except the older kids who took over the playground with their nerf war.
The playground equipment they do have is small, but its better than nothing. Except the slide is metal (ouch, burn). And for some reason all the swings swing crooked no matter how hard you try to get them to go straight.
And this was my biggest pet peeve. The cutest little creek with stepping stones and just the right height of water to play in without fear of your kids drowning. But what does the sign say? No Wading. Good grief. Why have a little creek if you're not going to let kids wade in it?
The sprinklers were fine, if a little weak. And there were lots of shaded, pretty paths to walk. But that was about all this park had going for it. And it had sand. You can't go wrong with sand.
739 The Dalles Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA
1 comment:
uh actually you can go wrong with sand- cat poo! at the really cool park they recently built out by us i saw poo in the sandbox. arghhh!
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