Sloan's Lake Park

We had a lot of fun at Sloan's Lake! It's 2.6 miles around the entire lake. There are plenty of grassy areas to play ball, but make sure you're on the grass areas away from the lake since we very quickly threw our football onto the lake. Luckily it was frozen and Cainen was willing to walk out on the ice to go get it for us. There are two playgrounds, both were packed so the kids didn't get to try them out. Even though it's still winter time, there were a ton of people out doing all kinds of things. It looks like in nicer weather you can take boats and maybe even rent paddle boats too. We would definitely recommend coming here. I also read that the sunset is really beautiful from the Eastern side of the park, so you can get a better view, but it was too cloudy for us to see that this time around. It's also really flat, so great for running too.

Overland Pond Park & S. Platte River

Overland Pond Park was nicer than Habitat and Vanderbilt (previous two posts). As we walked along the S. Platte River Trail we got a little bit further away from the freeway, but still in a highly trafficked area. There's a small pond with an overlook. There are some seating areas around the pond and also information about the animals, trees, and plants that can be found there. The signs talked about it being educational, so maybe part of the park's purpose. You can tell with this park that it's much prettier when it's green and probably with everything lush and alive, you probably wouldn't see so much of the urban area around it. It's near the Overland Gold Course on one side and across the street is another large park. There is also another trail nearby. I wouldn't go out of my way to visit this park. There's no playground or place to play sports or anything. The kids and I also weren't too impressed in general with this whole area. We will need to come back to this area for some of the other parks though.

Vanderbilt Park & S. Platte River Trail

As I already explained in the previous post for Habitat Park, this wasn't the best area. It's surrounded by busy roads, the freeway, and industrial buildings. Especially right now in winter, you don't even get any trees to cover up some of this enough to make it nice to look at. The river is really nice and pleasant to listen to, if you can hear it over the cars. This particular park is surrounded on three sides and has slightly rolling grassy hills so it's not even a place I would want to play at. We mostly walked along the trail to see what else there was. It was noisy from the sound of cars and was making us a little sick to breathe in so much exhaust. Not recommended.

Cactus Christmas Tree!!!

Habitat Park

Habitat Park is a tiny little piece of land, called a park near Santa Fe and Kalamath, off I-25, right along the South Platte River and Trail. It looks like there's a building right there which is maybe a recreation center? The kids and I walked along the South Platte River Trail from Habitat Park down to Overland Park and we were not too impressed. There is no playground. There's not really a great place to play ball since you're surrounded by either the river or busy streets. It's not really great to look at since it's a heavy industrial neighborhood. And, upon reading the sign, this area is home to the largest rubber making company and the land used to be heavily polluted but was cleaned up in the 1990's. I mean, it's great for effort. It is a great trail that goes through if you're on a bike and go through really fast. But as far as walking, running, or playing, or bringing kids, I wouldn't ever come back. All you hear are cars, from the very busy side where all the industrial buildings are and then the other side by the freeway. It's not peaceful at all. It might be prettier to look at in the spring when trees are covering everything, but it was a big eyesore today. I wouldn't recommend coming here and the only reason we're going to be back in this neighborhood/area again is because there are a few other parks around here.