Where Should We Park It?

Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a sunny 52 degrees outside and I’m in my shorts and tee-shirt. Now I’m feeling the need for a road trip. Trouble is, the grass needs mowing and the flower beds need weeding. Guess I’ll have to be satisfied with taking Sam to the park for a walk.

There are some great parks in the Pacific Northwest. Rainier Vista Park where I usually take Sam is very nice. It has lots of grass for soccer and rugby games, baseball diamonds, sand volleyball courts, tennis courts, a pond for ducks and geese, a play area for kids and lots of picnic tables and barbecues.

But when I think of parks, I can’t help but reminisce about other parks I’ve enjoyed.

The first park I really became fond of was one in Cottage Grove, Oregon, less than a block from where my grandparents lived. It had tall shade trees, tennis courts and playground equipment for kids. The really cool thing about it was the fact that it was so close to my grandparents house that my mom - who usually wouldn’t let us kids 10 feet out her sight - didn’t mind letting us go to there by ourselves. On the way home we could pick blackberries from the bushes growing over the ditches lining the road.

Another park I loved as a kid was the city park in Paso Robles, California. I was in the fifth and sixth grades then. My mom used to take us to the park, to check books out of the library, which sat in the middle of the park. I always checked out a western featuring some hero cowboy and his trusty steed. That park seemed so big to me then. I didn’t remember much about it after we moved north, except that it had a cool gold fish pond and it seemed like you could run forever. When I visited Paso Robles as an adult on a road trip years later, I discovered that park was only a block square and the fish pond was dinky. But I still love it.

Another park I’ll always love is Boulevard Park in Bellingham, Washington. When I first moved to Bellingham, I used to walk the little black cockapoo I had in this area, which was down by the harbor. It had been used for years as a dump for old tires, broken concrete and other junk. When the city turned the area into a park, it was the best thing that ever happened to Bellingham. It is highly popular now - and rightly so - so popular it is almost loved to death by the locals. It is so cool to walk along the water there or just to sit on a bench and watch the sailboats go by. College kids from Western Washington University play Frisbee, football, and any other game they can think of at Boulevard Park or they just lie on the grass and make goo-goo eyes at each other.

Probably the most spectacular park I’ve ever been in though may be the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park located in the far north corner of California, about nine miles east of Crescent City on Highway 199. This park, along with Prairie Creek, Del Norte Coast, and the National Park Service's Redwood National Park, are managed cooperatively by the National Park Service and the California Department of Parks and Recreation. Together they contain about 45 percent of all the old-growth redwood forest remaining in California. The awesome trees and the vistas of the Pacific Ocean as you hike here are incredible. I wish I had pictures to show you.

But enough daydreaming. It’s time to go mow the lawn. Aw poop! Make that two bags of poop.