Volcano Slide

This morning we made a repeat trip to a park we'd visited only once before. It's about a 20 minute drive from our house, but well worth the travel time because of its size and its unique play structures: a huge rope jungle gym, two climbing walls, and two immense rubber "volcanoes" to climb. It reminds us a lot of the amazing European parks we frequented when we lived in Germany.

One of the volcanoes includes a slide, which one can zoom down super-fast by sitting on a piece of cardboard or paper bag. I had a lot of fun using the "sports" setting on my camera to take series' of the kids sliding from top to bottom, and capturing the real-time movement of their limbs and even better, their joyful expressions! Today's blip is a close-up of A coming off the end of the slide, all smiles.

This park also has a fantastic water feature, and truth be told, this was more of the draw for us on this hot September day! Upon arrival with swimsuits, towels, and sunscreen in tow, however, we learned that the water feature was turned off for the season on Labor Day. (Note to city officials in the Pacific Northwest: Memorial Day to Labor Day might be the standard "summer" months of operation in this country, but it's really not appropriate for this region, where our nicest weather is in August and September. How about July 1st to October 1st?) Nevertheless, we had fun enjoying the park's other attractions, and skedaddled when the heat got to us, to enjoy some lazy time at home.