Playing at the local park

I am sure, all over America, cities small and large have local parks. Kids have been going to parks for many many years and I'm sure this tradition will continue on for the foreseeable future. We have a couple of parks in our city and we've visited them from time to time, but we definitely have a favorite park that we visit 90% of the time.

We found this park about 3 years ago and it's located 7 miles from our home. The park has 4 separate play areas. The main play area is a pirate ship with a set of swings. Not far from that is a jungle gym (with no benches for the parents). This playground doesn't get near the traffic that the pirate area does, but it butts up against a field of goats and horses and the kids love to try to woo them over to the fence. The third area is located about half a mile away (all within the big park) and is on the other side of a pavilion, so it's not noticeable from the road. This one RARELY has any traffic and is a small area with just a slide and some swings. Our favorite area is across the river on the least visited part of the park and it's a playground made of a wooden jungle gym with two slides. There's also two swing sets and two see-saws. Near the play area is a pavilion. In the 3 years we've visited this area, we have never once seen another child playing on this playground.

The area has many pine trees, so there are always a lot of dried pine needles on the ground, which the boys love to use for building forts. It's so wonderful to go there because they always have the entire area to themselves. We see people drive into the park and pass right by it to go to other areas, but no one ever stops to play here.

I took the boys there one day last week after school and we stayed for 2 hours until it got dark and had the most fun.

I hope no one else ever discovers our secret park :).