Fast forward to 2020, where we have doubled the sons in our family, and COVID has caused a re-discovering of the wonderful park system in Lexington. Over the summer (and continuing now), I've taken pictures by the signs with our 8, 6, 2, and 1 year olds. The main difference besides the number of boys is that we have not touched a single piece of playground equipment during each of our visits. In the early days of COVID, the playgrounds were actually closed. There was so much unknown about the virus that every surface, every person, and every encounter was considered a threat. The playgrounds have now re-opened with the now-normal cautions of social distancing and mask-wearing. We've decided to just avoid them altogether. It makes it easier to explain to the 2-year-old.
What we've found is that there's so much more to love about our parks than just the playgrounds. One case in point would be Veterans Park, which has a dinky little playground, so we never really went there much...but the mountain bike trails are incredible! So many choices, so many pathways...There was even a time we finally saw some fellow hikers, and I asked them to point us back to civilization.
In the spring, we mostly walked to the five parks within walking distance -- Southland, Hill-n-Dale, Wellington, Stonewall, and Shillito. In the summer, I started posing the four boys in front of the iconic signs (although there are a couple parks that don't have the sign! We've literally searched all the possible spots). I plan on hitting up a few more parks before the end of the calendar year, but we've been to about 32 so far.
I LOVE that the boys have learned to play with grass and sticks and creeks and paths and leaves and their own imaginations. There have been many times when the park didn't seem that impressive, but Calvin remarks, "I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!!"
[1-4-21 update. In mid-December, we decided that it was okay to play on the playgrounds if no other kids were playing there. This way, we don't have to fiddle with masks or social distancing. Our first playground in nine months(!) was Castlewood.]
[3-3-21 update. On Friday, February 26, we visited our final park (Hisle Farm Park). Whew! What a journey!]
Here are some of our parks from our Covid year:
[3-8-21 update. Since I have pictures of all the parks we've visited, I thought I would write blog posts about our experiences. These are not meant to be exhaustive "reviews" -- more a record of our experiences. I didn't start with the goal of visiting all the parks in Lexington; at first, I just wanted to go to all the parks with paved paths so the big boys could ride their bikes/scooters. Then it expanded to all the parks in "safe neighborhoods." By that time, we were playing on playgrounds again, and I figured we might as well just go to all of them. Each park name is a hyperlink to my blog post about our experience there. You can also click on the address to view it on the map. There's a user-friendly park map and list on the LFUCG website. Let me know if any of my links are inaccurate--this has been a labor of love!]
Grateful to our city for creating and maintaining such an awesome parks system!
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