Ashby Park

A heat wave has hit Des Moines! I sound very excited, but I'm very not. It's currently in the 90s, but feels like 109 degrees with the heat index. There are heat advisories throughout the county, and Des Moines has put out signs for their "cooling centers" that welcome people to come to various community centers and other municipal buildings to cool down. I tried to be optimistic about the day and took the kids to a new-to-us splash park: Ashby Park, located in Beaverdale.

The spray features weren't working, so it was really a regular wading pool today. And it was busy! Apparently, lots of parents had the same idea.

The kids had fun splashing and staying cool. There was actually a lot of shade available for parents on the side of the pool, but it was still too hot for me. After a few minutes, I started to feel queasy from the heat and realized what a bad idea it was to be out in those temperatures. Jo must have thought the same thing because she came out of the pool after 10 minutes and asked to go back home!

Oliver could have kept on playing, and he's usually my kiddo who hates the heat. He was dunking and splashing and keeping cool! He would have liked to stay longer. I gave him a 5 minute warning, and then we headed back to the car after a grand total of 15 minutes at the wading pool.

One trick to know about Ashby Park is that its angled parking lot on 38th can really only be reached by southbound traffic. We were coming from south of the park, so we took Beaver Avenue up to Amick Avenue, and then turned right on 38th so we could park at Ashby without a big headache.

As we walked back to our car, I was already dripping with sweat, but I snapped a few pictures of the playground areas on our way back to the car. There are two different playground areas, and there's an outdoor shelter with picnic tables as well as bathrooms with flushing toilets.

None of the equipment looked particularly exciting, although my kids liked the bridge on the smaller playground. I think the wading pool is really the best feature of this park--good for a hot day, just not this hot.

Stay cool, Des Moines!