Westlands Park

Sadly, Westlands Park is not a part of Denver Parks and Rec, but is actually in Greenwood Village and a part of their park system. It's right off the freeway off Belleview. It isn't too far from where I shop and go to church so Cainen and I went to explore. It's a beautiful park. It has a ton of trails connected to it, rolling hills, open space, a super cool playground, climbing equipment, ponds, an ice skating rink, and probably some other things as well if we had explored more. I would definitely recommend taking time out to check out this park. You could spend a half-day here easy, exploring and having a picnic. Just maybe when it's not so cold! We'll probably be back here eventually.

Crescent Park

This is a large park with lots of things to do: playground, walking trail, huge grass area, stone paths and walls to climb on, and a cool amphitheater type seating up on a hill. It's fairly close to the library we go to a lot so we might come back here sometime. We had fun looking around and I would recommend coming here if you're in the area, and jealous if you happen to live nearby.

Montclair Park

I might give this park a 5/5, but Cainen wanted to give it a 3/5, so I compromised. I don't know why I liked this park so much but I got a really good vibe from it. It's in a nice, quiet neighborhood. It's a medium sized park with a tennis court, playground, grassy area, Civic Center building, and a lot of really nice trees. I liked the landscaping a lot. There's a really nice building there, which I found was the Montclair Civic Building and it looks like you can rent out the space for gatherings. It has a kitchen and a large space for events, which seems really cool to me. If you're in the neighborhood definitely check it out. It's not the fanciest park we've been to, but there's something about it that feels really inviting.

Creepy duck!

Denison Park

Denison Park is a decent neighborhood park. It has a playground, a grass area, a basketball court, and a quiet neighborhood you could go walking around. If I lived in the neighborhood I would enjoy this park a lot more, but it's not quite a park I would go to if I was nearby or anything. Nice enough though.

Lookout Mountain

I didn't know anything about Lookout Mountain except it was a place I should go and visit. I'd been wanting to visit for about a year, so when I finally got the opportunity because a friend lives across the street from it, I thought it would be great to go. I thought we could walk there, and then I pointed out a couple of parking lots at the base of the mountain, asking if that was it. No it wasn't it.

We started driving up the mountain, which is when I realized that this was actually a mountain! I've had a phobia of cliffs since I was little, particularly driving on cliffs, driving up and down mountains with windy roads that lookout at an expanse of nothingness that you can fall down and die in the most frightening and terrible way!

I guess I should have known from the name- Lookout *Mountain,* but as I explained to my friend I go to lots of parks all the time that are named all sorts of things that actually have nothing at all to do with what's actually at the park. I really did not put any more thought into it than it was a place I wanted to go. I started freaking out a little and crying a little too, but we pulled off and he drove instead. It was still super intense, but it was really beautiful.

There's a ton of stuff to do at the top including the Buffalo Bill Museum, the lookout itself, a Nature Center, park, trails, etc. I think you should definitely check it out at least once. If you're terrified of heights and cliffs, like I am, then you can also take the I-70 route to get up there which isn't bad at all.

City of Karmiel Park

City of Karmiel Park is part of Denver's Sister Cities project where they designate a park here after cities, internationally. Karmiel is named after a city in Israel. We share with the city of Karmiel being urban and mountainous. They are also known for their cleanliness.

The park here is along the Cherry Creek Trail so I'm sure if we were on the trails a lot or biking then we'd have visited this park earlier. As it is though, it's tricky to get to. We had to park at the Cherry Creek Mall, and actually had to park in a specific parking lot at the mall, to get here. It was a pain and we'd probably never have gone here because it's so inconvenient to come here intentionally. We walked around a bit and the main part of it is it's access to the trail. We did have fun on this trip just because there was the stream, bridge, ducks, and stuff to climb on.

Bonnie Brae Park

Bonnie Park is right down the street from Veteran's Park. It's a cute, circular neighborhood park. It's small, but sort of quaint. Even though there wasn't a playground or anything to do there, it had a better feel to it. There were benches, some stone walls, a walking path around it, and landscaping. We wouldn't come here again or go out of our way at all but it's cute enough and I'd visit it a lot of we lived near here.

Veterans Park

I thought that because this was a Veteran's park that it was going to be way cooler and more involved. It's off University, which is a major street and when you park on the side of the road, you then walk up a hill to see what's there *anticipation building.* But then there's just . . . nothing. It's a baseball field and that's about it. Maybe they have a lot of games there and it gets really exciting, but we weren't very impressed. Plus, it's right near the freeway, which you can see and hear. We'll never come here again, unless there's an off-chance we make friends with someone who plays baseball and then has a game here.

Not likely.

This is it.