152. Harwood Park, Burnaby

I park near this playground every day, so it's only fitting that I should one day bring Charlotte here to play!  There's not much going on here during the week, but on this Saturday morning, the place was packed with kids playing soccer on the nearby pitches and their younger brothers and sisters were all over at the playground.  All the parents were spinning the merry-go-round for the kids - who never tired of it and required a fresh supply of parents on a regular basis to keep the merry-go-round going!  The playground is located at N 49.15.147 W 122.59.187 and is point no. 152 on the map at the bottom of home page.

79. Redwood Park, Surrey

We went out to visit tío Gerardo, tía Gaby, Matías y Anna this weekend – we had asked them to take us to one or two of their favourite playgrounds in their area. We started off at Redwood Park – because it had the most geocaches in it and Matias was pretty excited to go find one! Charlotte had just woken up when we arrived at the park and was in need of some lunch, so we got off to a bit of a slow start, but once she got onto the merry-go-round, there was no stopping her! The kids all rode while the adults pushed, but we soon got pretty tired – or more to the point, we got dizzy!  Afterwards, we set off to find “Redwood Reading Room”, which was a nice big ammo can with lots of things in it, including some books. Matias was thrilled to have found it! Our plans to check out a second playground today fell through due to tired kids and iffy weather, but that just means that we will go back and play with our friends again one day soon! The playground is located at N 49.02.148 W 122.43.563 and is point #79 on the map at the bottom of home page.

72. Alberta Park, Portland, Oregon

We were on the second day of our vacation, waiting for nearby Podnah's to open for lunch.  Pete was excited to have some barbecue, Charlotte was excited to play and I was excited to find the nearby geocache, "Another Name for Depression is Van Buren".  No, I don't understand the title either!  There were lots of kids at the playground, though most of them were older than Charlotte.  One woman had nine kids with her - nine!  Charlotte is into swinging on anything she can find these days, so that was her main amusement.  She loved the merry-go-round too - a really old school one that it would be possible to fall off!  She played with a couple of other kids and the adults all took it in turns doing the spinning.  When I was off-duty, I was practicing my juggling - haven't done that for a while and I'm a little out of practice!

We continued on our way shortly after Podnah's opened - Pete loved his lunch and I made the best of it with my trout - all of the trout, except for the eyes.  Just the sockets!  Charlotte played with my GPS and deleted the waypoint, but it's point #72 on the map at the bottom of home page.

35. Unsworth Elementary School, Chilliwack

On an overcast Saturday morning, Charlotte and I set off for Chilliwack, on a mission to work on a geocaching challenge.  We grabbed a geocache that we both needed, then Charlotte was ready for the playground.  We discovered this one because of another nearby geocache - there is a whole series of geocaches devoted to playgrounds out in Chilliwack!  This one was called "Izzy's Parks and Playgrounds #8: Playground Lottery", and unfortunately we couldn't find it, even with some encouragement from a nearby store owner who knew about the cache.  I think it might have disappeared, but that will just give us reason to come back when the cache has been replaced!  I hung out at a picnic table while Charlotte played.  Playground lottery indeed - this was a great playground - three playgrounds in one, really.  Charlotte had a lot of fun hanging out on the small one, sliding repeatedly.  We checked out the big kids playgrounds too - there was a merry-go-round which you don't see often these days, but it was so safety-fied as to be quite boring.  I could barely get it going and there was no possibility of shooting off this cumbersome thing!  Some kids came by to play and they loved Theo, so he had a great time too, racing up and down with them.  A horse grazed nearby and though it felt like it could rain at any moment, it held off.  I broke out lunch and Charlotte paused for a while to eat.  When she went to play again, she took a strawberry and her cup with her and set a little picnic up for herself on a little ledge at the top of the playground and sat down to munch.  Sometimes I think that I am doing one thing really, really right when it comes to Charlotte - encouraging her to play on her own on the playground instead of shadowing her every move as many parents seem to do these days.  It made me happy to see her enjoying the little picnic that she had set up for herself, acting very independently and doing this without my involvement.  She's really getting to be a big girl!  The playground is located at N 49.06.300  W 121.59.897:  https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=z7IAXiVD2wGY.ke14vi-3MYtI&pli=1