Thursday, 15 May 2014

32. Draycott Park, North Vancouver

These days, Thursdays find Charlotte and I driving straight from work and daycare in Richmond to nana and grandad’s house in North Van, where we stay the night so that Charlotte can hang out with nana the next day while I’m at work. With the days so long at this time of year, we had plenty of time tonight to check out a nearby playground after dinner. We made a return visit to Draycott Park; we had discovered this little park in the woods last summer while looking for a geocache, “Whatev’s”. We had found that cache back then, so there was no caching for us tonight – we were just in it for the playground! This is one of the loveliest locations for a playground that I have seen so far; it’s completely surrounded by trees and there are several trails providing access from different directions. We parked near the main entrance, walked past the basketball court, collecting flowers and rocks as we went, rounded a bend in the trail, and there was the playground, nestled amongst towering evergreens. It’s a very futuristic playground with silver towers curving up to the sky!

The bucket swings were on a very short chain and so Charlotte soon pronounced them “boring” and wanted to go back to climbing. The slide here is a very fast one – she insisted on holding hands to go down and I had to slow her down a bit at the bottom to prevent her from shooting off the end! Some other kids came along, three more two-year-olds in fact, and they did the slide on dad’s lap. I am so against kids sliding down on an adult’s lap and here’s why: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/23/a-surprising-risk-for-toddlers-at-playground-slides/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0.
There was a piece of equipment on the playground that was new to us – a kind of twisting tube to climb up or down. I admit that the thought of Charlotte attempting it when she’s older was quite scary to me – but then I thought that that was a good thing – most of the playgrounds that we have seen have little in the way of challenge to the older kids. Another mum was there with her older kids; she wouldn’t let them go on it and said that it looked dangerous and that it had something “missing”. I hope that when Charlotte is old enough to try it, I will be brave enough to let her!

Charlotte got right into the wood chips, picking up handfuls and putting them in her hair. Agh! What to do – may as well just take a picture! But then she put them in my hair, so I had to tell her that was naughty and I didn’t want her to put wood chips in my hair. So she didn’t – but Owlie did! She told Owlie off for being naughty – and I had to tell her that no one was allowed to put wood chips in my hair, neither her nor Owlie! It was back to nana and grandad’s after that – we hadn’t planned a bath night, but one was necessary after this particular trip to the playground! The park is located at N 49.20.281 W 123.01.451:  https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z7IAXiVD2wGY.ke14vi-3MYtI&pli=1



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