21st-century playgrounds

Like many, many things that have changed since I was a kid, playgrounds....wow!

the blogger on unsafe jungle gym
circa. 1955

It's one (of the many) perk of having grandchildren: you get to explore these fantastic (and much safer) play spaces. And I've gotten to see many variations over the past seven years or so. 

But the playground at Austin's Walnut Creek Park is one of the most amazing, in my admittedly limited experience. The super treehouse you see at the top of the post is the centerpiece, and, no, I did not go down the incredibly long and twisting tunnel slide. But I did let my four-year-old granddaughter talk me in to climbing up to the top platform. Which is not straightforward; there are steps for a short while, but then you have to climb up short climbing walls to the next stages. Whew! It was a workout!

Here is a closer look at the top sections:

And that's not all that was unusual about this place. The swings, admittedly, aren't that odd, although there is a two-seater of a design new to me. Unfortunately, old-age middle-ear issues didn't let me go as high as my two-year-old partner wanted to.

But this is a merry-go-round setup that I hadn't seen before. Much safer than those engines of terror that I remember from girlhood, but still subject to issues when little kids are pushed faster than they like by bigger ones. An interesting concept, though:

You might notice that neither of my sensibly cautious grandchildren are in this picture, which is one of frightened tears waiting to happen.

There is a less intense area for smaller kids, and we did spend some time there, but I have no photos, sorry.

However, I have one more cool, and possibly unique, feature of this place to show you.

A more rustic (and closer to the ground) version of the big treehouse is this fun structure. In the picture excited granddaughters (who have been here before with their nanny) are leading Mom and Gramma. The colorful roof is made out of smashed cans...a wonderful example of upcycling:

The park as a whole (as you can see in the link above) is enormous and has miles of hiking and biking trails (some of which are—much to my daughter's disapproval—dogs-off-leash areas) and some sports fields. But the playground provided enough entertainment for our morning. And a stellar addition to my growing collection of up-to-date playgrounds I have experienced.

A little more creekside history

 

You might remember my post from the end of last year, when I talked about returning to my volunteer "job" at Texas Public Radio and my stroll from their headquarters down (or rather, up-stream) the new San Pedro Creek Cultural Park. There is one important site along the creek that I didn't mention then, and you can see it above here.

A few years ago, when work began on the creek development, the city made a surprising discovery: they found the old foundation of an early African-American church building. The St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church is still active in town (as you can see from the link), but its original location was downtown. Right next door, as it happens, to the new TPR building! Appropriately enough, you can hear an edition of the station's local news call-in show that can give you more information about the discovery (as well as show you how the site shown above looked in 2020, soon after the discovery). 

After my volunteer stint the other day, I took a quick look at the site, which outlines the foundation of the church building. There's also an informative sign and—would you believe it!—a lovely bit of tile art. You can see a close-up of that just above, and see how it's situated in the site here, complete with lovely blooming redbud:

Another look, as seen from the windows of my receptionist's station, gives an even better idea of what the whole area looks like; the creek is in between the church site and the TPR building:

And while I was looking out these nice windows, my glance moved a bit south and caught this grand panorama of important San Antonio structures: the Hemisfair Tower of the Americas, the Tower Life Building, and the upper part of our super-photogenic courthouse (see what it looks like decorated for the holidays here):

There is a little more of the cultural park that I haven't seen, downstream from the radio station. I hope to take a walk down that way soon and will show you what I find.

Wordless Wednesday: sometimes even weeds are pretty

 

Wordless Wednesday: sad anniversary coming up

 

Wordless Wednesday: wash those windows!

 

Ice consequences

Every street I drove down in Austin last week had piles like this, although not all were as massive...

This was the aftermath of the big ice storm that hit A-town, cracking tree limbs all over town and keeping some folks in the dark and cold for as long as days. Sally's family only lost power for four hours, one of the lucky ones, but she said the house got pretty cold.

Fortunately for us, the temperatures where we live never quite got below freezing (plus we didn't have as much rain to freeze). But some folks in Austin got hit hard.

Here's what's left of a really big tree that just came up out of the ground in the Rosedale neighborhood, and had to be dismembered:

Playgrounds weren't spared either; so glad school was cancelled so that no kiddos were standing in the wrong place at the wrong time!

And I expect I'll still see effects of this nasty weather when I go back next week. But I hope they will have taken care of the huge limb hanging by a thread that you can see in the red box here:

You don't want to be anywhere near when that big boy comes down!

Finally, some white stuff!

 

When you go to spend a late Christmas just after new year's in Maine, of all places, you assume there will be snow everywhere. And you just hope the roads won't be icy when you go to the sledding hill or the skating rink. Right?

Well, because of climate change, or just the luck of the draw, we only saw the white stuff a couple of days before we left. And the poor Austin family didn't get to see any at all!

There wasn't too much for us, either, as you can see above, where an Adorable Granddaughter is waiting on the deck for everyone else to get suited up to come out and play.

Now they do have snow-making equipment up there, and everyone got to enjoy the man-made stuff at a tubing hill. Although some of the party just found the tubes to be comfy places to nap...

But the natural stuff waited until we were almost ready to go home to make an appearance. 

Even the little bit we got was enough to make for lovely coatings of bare tree limbs, one of my favorite winter photo subjects...

That last photo was actually taken from the car window as we headed mountain-ward. Yes, the two oldest Maine grandkids are taking skiing lessons at Lost Valley [and in the few weeks since we saw the first lesson they're already up on the big kid slopes and probably skiing faster than Gramma could keep up]...

Of course they have snow-making capability there, but they've been getting a lot of natural stuff since we left as well. Maybe our next winter visit will be with a more typical New England ambience.