Challenge: Visit Every Local Park This Summer!

We don't have to tell a group of parents to go visit your local parks, as we're pretty sure it's safe to assume you all already are! It's a great way to be part of your community while getting out of the house without any upfront expense. But we think it's time to take your park adventures to the next level, by making this summer memorable and visiting every local park in your metropolitan area! Are you up to the challenge?

How many parks are in your area? When we looked up our local parks from our county parks and recreation department (most cities have them all listed online with directions these days!), we were amazed at the parks we didn't know about!

We've always had our favorites, ones with special slides or swings, or ones that have a nice cool shady space for moms and dads to sit, but there were literally 30+ parks that we'd never heard about, let alone visited!

So our family has made a plan to visit every park in the city this summer. We've started making a list of parks that are in close proximity together, so if one park is literally just a slide and a patch of grass, there's another one on the list that might be more thrilling to hang out at for awhile.

Sometimes we pack a lunch and sometimes we plan our outing in between meal times, so as to not weigh down our travels any. We've come across some parks that aren't as well maintained as others, so we've started bringing along a trash bag to help clean things up while the little ones play. Sticks work well to stab trash if you come across something you don't want to touch. We like to think we're helping to make some areas better than when we arrived and making it fabulous for the next person that comes along.

Are you up to the challenge? Do you think you could visit every park in your community this summer? We're going to give it a go and you should too! It's been a blast so far and a great way to spend time outdoors, while burning energy and having fun!!

(Image: Flickr Member Pink Sherbet Photography licensed for use under Creative Commons)

What a great challenge! We live in Ann Arbor, Michigan which is filled with parks. I just looked up a listing of them all - a whopping 157 of them! I don't think we can tackled all 157, but I'm going to make an effort to try a bunch of new ones as the nice one just down the street is an easy standby.

posted by aspenchick on July 7th 2009 at 2:42pm
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I may be motivated to do this, but I don't have time to count all the parks in the San Jose park directory right now. It's a lot, yes.

posted by stickyricemama on July 7th 2009 at 6:38pm
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Living in south Texas and the swine flu being a real scary thing...I have been avoiding public parks. We have alot of illegal immagrants with lots of little ones. My question is how germ free are playgrounds? Am I being overly protective. I would like to think that our 100 degree weather is baking the germs right off. But really, will my son get sick from other kids that have the swine flu virus? Posted on doctors offices "do not enter if you have any flu like symptoms".

posted by jackied302 on July 8th 2009 at 8:57am
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I'm normally car free as my husband takes our car to work and since we work opposite shifts I'm rarely home at the same time as him. This summer however he's taking classes two days a week and there's a bus that can take him to school. It worked out perfectly that a mom from my son's preschool organized a playdate at a different park every Thursday, which is one of the days I have the car. My son and I are really enjoying visiting a new park every week.

There is something to be said for having a park that's "yours" though. Our apartment is next door to a park and we tend to see the same people every time we go so we have his "park friends"

posted by Ariel on July 8th 2009 at 10:56am
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great challenge! we just moved to a new area sowe have already started checking out the areas parks to see which are best for toddlers hopefully by summers end we will have seen them all.

posted by erinpearce on July 9th 2009 at 10:46am
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We've been to three of the 5 parks in our small town.
Not that exciting.

posted by Angus on July 12th 2009 at 2:37am
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