Today’s 90-Second Escape: A winter’s day in the park

Sunday, my daughter and an old childhood buddy decided to hang out for a while. “Hang out and do what?” I asked, pretty certain of her response, which is the answer I would have given as a high school senior.

“I don’t know. Just hang out.”

I was pleasantly surprised when she returned to learn that she and her friend had taken advantage of the springlike temperatures and spent the afternoon at a couple of parks, including one of my favorites in the Triangle, White Deer Park in Garner. As she related their day, I was reminded of how local parks are a great way to enjoy a winter afternoon. Walking trails, playgrounds, wide-open ball fields — a myriad of ways to have fun and keep warm.

I was also reminded of this 90 Second Escape to White Deer Park from a couple years back. I share it again in the hopes it inspires a visit to park near you.

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Today: Hit your neighborhood park.

Last year, a postage stamp of a park — 11 acres — opened within walking distance of our house. It’s got limited green space — 1.4 acres — but it’s more than enough for a game of catch, Frisbee, family flag football or Whiffleball. It’s got a short — 0.4 mile —  paved walking trail — but it’s got some swerve and is good for a training-wheeled biker, a skateboarder or an inline skater. It’s got a modernistic playground that I have yet to tire of. I mean, that the kids have yet to tire of. And it’s got a small creek and little nature nooks ideal for in-depth, in-dirt inspection. In short, it’s a great two-hour escape guaranteed to have the entire crew nap-ready upon returning home. Chances are, there’s a similar park not far from you.

To find the park nearest you, contact your local parks & rec department, which you can track down using this list compiled by the North Carolina Recreation & Park Association.

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“We feel we’ve achieved our goal if no one sees this as a park for kids with disabilities, but rather as just a park,” Marla Dorrel said early yesterday morning. “Our goal was to integrate, not separate.”

The “our” she refers to is Kids Together Inc., the non-profit formed in 1995 to make reality the vision of then 7-year-old Kristin Holcombe and 6-year-old Helen Rittelmeyer. Both had sisters with special needs, both wanted a playground where they could all play together. Thus was formed the non-profit Kids Together Inc., which raised $300,000 toward the construction of the popular playground near Cary Parkway and Tryon Road, which opened in 2000.

The urban park is popular with kids of all abilities (and ages) because of its innovation.  There’s Katal the dragon, who snakes his way through a hillside, extensive climbing structures, a variety of swings (from infant, to traditional to chair swings designed for kids with physical challenges), playhouses and your typical playground fare. The park is peppered with original sculpted art (“Botanical Benches” by Baltimore artist Rodney Carroll, Oracle and Dinosaur benches from Greensboro’s Jim Gallucci) and features a hand-picked array of plant life “specially chosen to be child-friendly, with a stimulating variety of colors, textures and fragrances.” Weaving it all together is a flowing path that provides easy access to the entire 16-acre park. It’s a design, created with the help of world-renowned park designer Robin Moore of N.C. State University, intended to let kids make their own adventures.

Those adventures can present themselves in curious ways.

Katal the dragon (pictured at top) bobs in and out of a hillside, it’s various serpentine sections exposed every 10 feet or so. Today, the surface around Katal is a fall-absorbing rubber but in the early days Katal was surrounded by earth. One day, Dorrell, who is Kids Together’s president, noticed a small boy with a pail and shovel determinedly digging at the base of Katal’s neck. Dorrell watched the boy for a couple minutes, then had to ask: “What are you looking for? He told me, ‘I know the rest of the dragon is under here; I’m trying to find him.”

Dorrel spoke about the park, which was since been renamed in her honor, Saturday morning prior to her nonprofit’s annual fundraiser, the Kids Together Family Fun and Fitness Walk. (The group continues to play an active role in the park, having raised an additional $15,000 over the past decade for various improvements. Currently, they’re raising funds to build a misting station opposite the dragon.)

The park is a parent’s dream: Kids can entertain themselves here for a morning, an afternoon, or both.

“We wanted to create the kind of environment that doesn’t tell a child what to do,” says Dorrel. “It’s free play. We want to encourage kids to explore.”

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Marla Dorrel / Kids Together Park: To get there, go here.

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The latter was perhaps the most surprising find. Marcy and I had set out to take in spring at the Franklin County Nature Preserve south of Louisburg. Along about Rolesville we detoured to Fantasy Lake, to see what was up at the scuba diving center of the Triangle. (People were diving — in 47-degree water, albeit with 30- to 40-foot visibility.) On the way back into town, we saw some Adirondack chairs outside a furniture store, stopped, and two hours later emerged with a new coffee table and dining room table. (Don’t ask.)

By now, the sun was thinking about calling it a day; We needed a smaller diversion than Allen de Hart’s lush nature preserve. On the drive into town we noticed a small park off US 401. A quick walk, we thought, maybe check out the playground. We didn’t expect Main Street Park’s small street-front presence to yield a 35.9-acre nature preserve with a mile and a half of paved trail.

“The park opened in two phases,” Rolesville P&R Director William Leonard told me later. The front part — the gazebo, the playground, the picnic area and a quarter mile of trail — opened in Spring 2005. The “back section” — with a mile and a quarter of paved walking trail meandering through the woods — opened recently.

What makes Main Street Park unique is the mile and a half of paved, 8- to 10-foot-wide greenway that winds through the woods. The “back” trail passes exposed rock face and under a maturing canopy of hardwoods and pine. There’s a funky pond (and funkier critters nearby), picnic rocks, a large picnic shelter (that could double as a rollerskating rink and, if you’re hankerin’ for a full-body workout, a retro par course. At times we had no idea where we were, then realized it didn’t matter since we couldn’t be more than a holler from civilization. I kinda like being lost when I know it’s not permanent.

Main Street Park excels for two user groups. It’s one of the best handicap-accessible trails around in terms of getting into the woods and not just close to them. And it’s perfect for little ones on trikes and small bikes: They get a sense of exploration and discovery on a smooth, tot-friendly surface.

The best thing about Main Street Park is that it’s part of little Rolesville’s (population 2,844 as of 2008) big Open Space and Greenways Master Plan. In a nutshell: parks director Leonard says the Main Street Greenway will link with a mile or so of existing greenway at a nearby park on Rogers Road and the new Heritage High School on Forestville Road. That, he says, will be as much as 5 miles of greenway, greenway that will connect with emerging greenway in nearby Wake Forest. Much of the Rolesville greenway is being funded by housing developments going up in the area. (The downside: with the recent economic slump and resulting housing slump, it’s hard to say when this greenway will be completed.)

Eventually, Leonard says the plan is for the Rolesville greenway to connect with Raleigh’s greenway system somewhere along the Neuse River corridor. Raleigh recently began construction on that 28-mile trail, which the city plans to have done by 2014.

But there’s no need to wait until Rolesville hooks into Wake Forest, Raleigh and the Triangle at large. Main Street Park offers plenty of escape now.

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“I oughta be doing that with you,” the moderately overweight mom who was watching her son yelled.

“We’re starting a class in April,” Polly Eslinger yelled back. “You’re welcome to join us.”

Eslinger’s response seemed to surprise the woman: We were on Cary’s Middle Creek Park Playground at the time, six grown-ups mixed among  kids cavorting on the equipment. A class in what, the woman probably wondered — playing on a playground?

Well, yes. More precisely, a class in how parents can take advantage of playground time to get in a workout while their kids wear themselves out being kids.

The idea for her Playground Boot Camp came to Eslinger when her two sons were younger. She’d take them to the playground and wonder why all the kids were playing and all the parents were sitting on benches talking, drinking coffee, reading the paper. Why aren’t they taking advantage of all this great exercise equipment? she wondered. Like the ultimate chin-up bar, the jungle gym. Or that monster abs machine, the swingset? Or that all-body workout, the slide?

You’ll get a good feel for the class by watching the accompanying video, in which Eslinger demonstrates a few of her favorite playground moves.

Those whys led Eslinger, a fitness trainer, to create Playground Boot Camp, a class designed to show parents that playground time can be mommy-and-daddy-getting-buff time.

“I’m very concerned about our youth and what they’re learning from their parents,” says Eslinger. “They see their parents being sedentary, it sends a message.”

So Eslinger took the boot camp class she teaches in local gyms and tweaked it for playground use. The monkey bars make a great strength training device, working from a plank position with your feet in the swingset’s seat makes for a killer abs workout, and climbing up a slide (“Don’t do what mommy does”) is a surprisingly good full-body workout that demands all your muscles chip in for a successful summit.

Eslinger’s boot camp runs 8 weeks (it begins April 9) and eases parents (and grandparents) into the playground-as-gym concept. The first two weeks (Phase 1) is a light mix of cardio and strength training. Phase 2 -weeks 3, 4 and 5 incorporates the playground equipment in a fast-paced circuit-training regimen that involves minute-long stretches of exercise divided by 15 second rest/recovery periods. Phase 3 -weeks 6, 7 and 8 puts parents through an obstacle course and doing team exercises. Each class runs 45 minutes. Parents are encouraged to bring their kids so the little ones will get used to the idea of mommy or daddy working out while they play.

Eslinger hopes the exercises parents learn during Playground Boot Camp will carry over to their regular visits to the playground.

Adds Eslinger: “A lot of parents say, ‘I just don’t have time to exercise.’ They’re bringing their kids to the playground anyway, now they have time.”

Playground Boot Camp
Where: Middle Creek Park Playground, 151 Middle Creek Park Ave., Cary. Here’s a map.
When: Friday mornings, 9:30-10:15, April 9-May 28.
Cost: $44 for Cary residents, $57 nonresidents.
To register: Call the Middle Creek Community Center at 771-1295, or visit www.townofcary.org.

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