150. Go Bananas, North Vancouver

The weather these days has been really, really terrible.  I'm all for getting outside to play and get some fresh air, but this weather is totally inhumane!  I was told there is a good free playground in Capilano Mall, and given that we have just spent an awful lot of money on our beloved Theo, "free" was good.  Well, we went upstairs to the Go Bananas and it wasn't free at all, but I didn't have the heart to dangle this amazing playground in front of Charlotte and then tell her she was out of luck.

The guy at the counter had a little more spark to him than employees at these types of places usually have.  He had Charlotte excited to go and play - but once we got in there, she was disenchanted by the loud noise and the rambunctious older kids.  I convinced her to go play and I tried to read, but it was no place to sit back and relax.  Charlotte emerged from the playground on a regular basis and I kept coaxing her back to play.  Finally, I gave up and we left - $12 I'll never get back.  At least we didn't get rained on.  Go Bananas is located in Capilano Mall at 935 Marine Drive, North Vancouver and is point no. 150 on the map at the bottom of home page.

145. Lower Lougheed Park, Coquitlam

I first discovered this tiny neighbourhood park long before Charlotte was born; I was looking for a place to hide a geocache and found this tiny little green triangle on a map.  The cache didn't run all that long before it was muggled and there is no cache in the park at the moment.  Perhaps I should re-hide something smaller and trickier - the old one was a large cache hidden under a bridge.  We were in the area today and so we stopped off so that Charlotte could see the park too.  She played for a bit and took Owlie for a ride on the back of her airplane.  There were no other kids there and it's a noisy place as it's right next to the highway, so we didn't stay for very long.  The playground is located at N 49.14.355 W 122.53.215 and is point no. 145 on the map at the bottom of home page.