If you’ve ever visited Kids Together Park in Cary, you probably had no idea it was designed back in the mid-1990s as a handicap-accessible park. There are no signs touting the park’s handicap-accessible features, no special section with specially designed equipment. That, says one of the adults responsible for the park’s existence, is by design.
Category Archives: Fun stuff
Let Mother Earth move you this weekend
While fitness and health experts would like you to get an hour’s exercise a day, they’ll tell you that, above all, the key thing is to just move. With that in mind, here are a number of Earth Day “just move” events this weekend. (Yes, technically Earth Day isn’t until Thursday. But Thursday doesn’t fall on a weekend, this Saturday and Sunday happen to.)
The wild adventures of Roland Smith
In a society suffering from what Richard Louv has labeled a “nature deficit disorder,” author Roland Smith creates a dilemma. Louv’s “Last Child in the Woods” has created a movement since it came out in 2007 to get our electronically-anchored kids off the couch, out the door and into nature. Roland Smith’s adventure-based novels would do just that — if you could put them down. Smith’s novels have young explorers going on engaging adventures, be it climbing Mt. Everest (“Peak”), falling out of a jet at 18,000 feet and into the Congo (“Cryptid Hunters”) or trying to protect a parent who has become Big Foot obsessed (“Sasquatch”).
It’s Easter weekend — must we egg you on?
Things I might be doing this Easter weekend if my nose wasn’t running like a Delta Tau Chi keg from spring allergies.
1. Paddle at Merchant’s Millpond
Merchant’s Millpond may be man made, but after 190 years the millpond has shed most signs of its civilized past. Today, the 760-acre millpond is much more coastal swamp than center of commerce. The pond’s dark, acidic waters meander through a forest of bald cypress and tupelo gums dripping with Spanish moss. Cooters, snapping turtles. water snakes and a host of vocal frogs add to this aquatic adventure, which is as easy as plunking down $5 for a canoe (for the first hour, $3 each additional hour). Easy paddling, no previous experience in a boat required.
Rolesville grows a park — and more
Lately, I’ve had a gift for divining cool, off-the-radar municipal parks. First, there was the new White Deer Park in Garner (off the radar, perhaps, only because it only opened in November). A week later I rediscovered Cedarock Park in Alamance County. This past Saturday: Main Street Park in Rolesville.