Fred N. Thomas Memorial Park

This isn't too far from us so we came here to let Cainen play basketball while me and Madison ran a lap around. It's a nice park with a trail to walk/run, plenty of grass, basketball court, etc, but we had a bad experience here. While Cainen was playing basketball two kids approached him. He invited one to play with him. They were his age. This kid then threatened to beat Cainen up and steal his shoes. I saw Cainen crying and went over to the basketball court where the kid started walking away, but not without flipping me off and grabbing his crotch. The kids were both upset about this and couldn't believe a young boy would do that to an adult woman. I'm sure it's a fine park but I doubt we'll come here again.

Asbury & Tejon Park

This park says it's "Unnamed" on the Denver Parks and Rec site, so maybe they just named it after the streets it's on. This is a terrible little park. I guess it would be an okay neighborhood park, but even if I lived here, there's not much I like about it. It does have a playground. Across the street there's a little walking lap trail. I guess it's not the worst and it's nice they have a park here. But, eh. None of us liked it here and we'd never go back. And as you can see by the one picture, the little stream was totally filthy, filled with trash, and smelled bad.

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.

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. 

John W. Barnes Green

This is not a park! It's not even on the Denver Parks and Rec map, but it does have the same sign as all the Denver parks. It's called "Green" though which is literally just because it's a strip of grass on the side of the road. They have a sign for a strip of grass on the side of the road!

So we had to take a picture of it and include it in our project. Even though right now it's just a strip of snow with bare trees.

Quality Hill Park

We were going to the Civic Center Park and saw this on the way. Basically though, it's a tiny corner of a block with some grass and benches. There really wasn't anything to it at all. It's not anything that I think kids would like to play at. It did look pretty popular for homeless guys. As you can see from the pics- that is about what you get at this park.

Cranmer Park

Cranmer Park is a neighborhood park and is fairly big. It seems to be mostly fields for sporting events. That's what was happening when we went too. The place was packed. There is no playground or place to walk around or anything. It did have some sort of Chinese Dial, which was cool, but that was about the only thing we had any interest in when we were here.

Hutchinson Park

We actually got lost and happened upon this park. It's a very tiny neighborhood park. It has two baby swings and a few climbing statues/structures. It's not large enough to walk laps or have enough of a grass area to really play sports. It seems built for very young children, although skinny-minnie Mad did manage to get herself in the swings, but needed help to get back out. The statues were cool, but we only stayed a little bit because there wasn't much to do.