Prairie Village Parks- Part 3

Here is the exciting conclusion of our our tour of Prairie Village's twelve parks!  (Here are part 1 and part 2) We found out that some "parks" aren't really parks.  Brenizer Park, named for PV's first mayor, was really just a pile of rocks and a picnic table.  So we could just take a picture with the sign and go to the next park, right?  Wrong.  "Mama, we can stay and play with the nature!"  So I can't even drag them away from parks that aren't real parks.

Prairie Park was a little better.  It at least had some swings and picnic tables. 

And it has this statue of scary prairie people.

Schliffke Park was the worst.  It was pretty much just the sign.  Maybe the "ing lot" was left off the sign by mistake?  Because it was just a parking lot by Brush Creek.  Since all the parks are named after mayors, I feel bad for Mr. Schliffke.  Of course the girls tried to play here too by collecting nature.

Finally we get to a real park!  Bennett Park was actually under construction earlier in the summer and it just opened up with new trails, sand box, and stumps.  It has some neat playground equipment.  Hannah loved the spinning pole and giant monkey bars.  Olive liked the play helicopter.  I liked the teeter-totter...although it pales in comparison to the teeter-totters of my childhood, I was still happy to see one.  I guess they are "dangerous" and they aren't on playgrounds anymore.

And lastly our favorite park, which also happens to be the biggest AND closest to our house, Franklin Park.  It has the longest trails for biking (notice the bike helmets in the pictures).  It was the first park to be redone with a natural playplace with stumps and logs to climb on.  The nature area includes a running stream!  It has a huge sand box with lots of toys that people have donated.  And best of all it has lots of trees and SHADE.  It also has real bathrooms (not porta potty), which is always nice.

The stream is awesome.  This day we put a boat by the waterfall and watched it get carried along.

I love these trees.

This is the park of my daughters' childhood.  So many memories.  I remember thinking Hannah would be seven by the time she would be able to walk on the stumps by herself...then she did at age three.  I remember Olive going down a slide for the first time.  And pushing both girls in the baby swings when they were little.  And then watching them build sandcastles with kindergarten friends last year.

Olive climbed this for the first time without any help.

Did I mention we love trees?