Starting December 19 and running through the end of the year, we’re suspending our normal programming so that we may help those of you with kids on winter break find stuff to do. Every day through year’s end we’ll throw out an idea intended to get you and the kids out of the house and have the kids exhausted upon your return. Consider it GetGoingNC.com’s gift to you.

Today: Go play in a parking lot

Today, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Cliffs of the Neuse State Park near Goldsboro invites you to come and play — in its parking lots. Located on a bluff overlooking the Neuse River, Cliffs of the Neuse is a marvelous outdoor playground with 892 acres of both Sandhills and Piedmont forest to romp through. Yet today, it’s their paved parking lots that the park touts — and the strategy is genius. “Does your child have a new bicycle, remote control car or boat, or another new toy that they want to play with but you don’t have the room?” asks the park, which notes that it will close its lots to traffic for the express purpose of letting your kids put their new toys through the paces. If you’re not in the area, you don’t need to drive to Cliffs of the Neuse to score an acre of empty macadam: Many large businesses close for the holidays and high school parking lots are barren as well, to site just two examples. Odds are there’s a vacant parking lot near you just waiting for a new skateboard to keep it company.

* * *

Previously in our Holiday Escapes series …

Dec. 19: Go paddling
Dec. 20: Hit your neighborhood park
Dec. 21: Climbing the walls
Dec. 22: Take a guided hike
Dec. 23: An educated walk