RV Travels With Huggy

When I first moved to Mount Vernon, WA in 2003 and started attending church at St. Paul's Episcopal Church I heard about the Kiwanis Park that was going to be built across the street from the church. Construction finally was started in Spring of last year and the City Parks Dept. held an opening ceremony Friday, July 11th. The park is on land that was purchased by three local Kiwanis clubs and those clubs have contributed over $100,000 to it's construction.


This is a scan of the program that we were given at the ceremony. I'll be honest and admit that we didn't stay for the talks by these important people. We went to dinner at the Olive Garden instead.


Our church parking area was used by the construction people and in exchange for that we have a newly paved parking lot. We also provided the kitchen facilities to prepare the goodies that were handed out at the ceremony and ladies from the church manned the tables handing them out. This photo has many from the church getting things ready.


I think some of the park was done by volunteer labor and it is not yet finished. In fact what has been finished occupies less than half of the space. One main thing that is in is a finished play yard with some pretty nice toys to climb and swing on. There is also a finished baseball field and a basketball court that is almost finished. There is going to be some sort of a water park on an area that right now is just in lawn, although that lawn is still growing so it really isn't very usable yet. The treed area in the back, which is over half of the property, will have walking trails, some on a board walk as it is considered a wet area.


I wish there were some of these kind of things when my kids were young! We did have some pretty nice climbing toys for them that were built of logs but nothing like these climbing rocks and walls and some of those fiberglas things are really nice.


The base of the whole play yard area is of something that does not give slivers like cedar bark and is soft & absorbent if a child falls. It is well designed. And there are things for the little ones as well as those a bit older.


My church can be seen in the background of this photo. I think that both of my grand daughters, even the 11 year old, will enjoy this place and I look forward to being able to take them there. The park is only about a mile away from our house.


This is an add on to the original post as I forgot to include it. This shows the setup for the opening ceremony but behind it is the baseball field. It is well designed and was about the first thing built so the grass is mature and can be played on now. Beyond the ball park is the basketball court. You can see Little Mountain to the left side of the photo in the background. Our house is located in a park at the base of Little Mountain. Well, it is really just a hill as it is only about 1500 feet tall and I guess it officially has to be over 2000 to call it a "mountain," but that is it's name. The whole of it is a city park and there are a couple of fabulous view points on top that give good views to the west and north. There is also a place for hang gliders to launch from but I don't think that is done very often from up there. It is probably a risk that the Park Dept. doesn't want to take on.

Labels: Events, Friends, Grandkids, Photos