Urbandale Parks Challenge: Golfview West Park

We've officially visited a lot of parks in the Des Moines area! I would say that the park we visited this evening, Golfview West Park, is among my favorite parks for kids to play. It's surrounded by shade, but enough people are walking, jogging, and playing basketball that it still felt safe and busy! The playground is designed to look like a fort, which works well with the forested area and little creek.

There's also a neat and slightly challenging rope bridge for the kids to cross, and Jo liked playing in the fort area below.

The kids played for a good while. I enjoyed all the birds singing and flying low under the tree canopy. Seriously, great park. We all enjoyed ourselves!

Urbandale Parks Challenge: Golfview Park

After checking out Cross Creek Park, we walked over to nearby Golfview Park. It's park #13 for us. 19 more to go in our Urbandale Parks Challenge!

The trails made for an easy walk. As we got close to Golfview Park, the area became forested and we could see the creek in the ravine below. From where we stood, it looked like the creek was small enough for kids to play in. I even spotted a bike nearby and heard some kids in the distance, so I think it could be a place to let kids play in the creek. However, we didn't venture down there, so I can't vouch for how deep the water was or how fast it was moving.

Here's the path we took:

Oliver started complaining about the hike near the end, and I started to wonder if we'd made a wrong turn. I told him we'd walk for 100 more steps, and if we didn't see the park, we'd turn around. It didn't take long for us to round a bend and spot this playground:

Greenwood Park Splash Pad!

Today was opening day of the new splash pad at Greenwood/Ashworth Park. It's official name is the "Dan and Mary Kelly Family Sprayground." I think it's gorgeous! The kids had the best time.

The ground looked like it would be slippery, but I didn't see any kids slip. In fact, Jo kept climbing on rocks and jumping down without any problems. It must be well textured (I didn't venture in to find out), but I'd probably be a little more cautious with younger kids.

When we first moved here, I thought this park was kind of hard to find. So in case you're not familiar with it, you turn south on 45th Street from Grand, almost as if you're going to the Art Center, but don't turn into the Art Center's parking lot. Keep heading south. You'll drive through a bit of forest and reach a big pond. As soon as you're at the pond, turn left and head east. It's a small road that winds up to the park, shelter, and new splash pad. I circled the spot in blue where it's located:

It's easy to turn on the splash pad. There's a stand right in the middle with a big, yellow button on it. When the kids pushed the button, it seemed to last about 10-15 minutes before everything turned off, and they needed to push it again.

More pictures of the kids having fun at the splash pad:

In the background of this next picture, you can see the shelter house. During the school year, they hosted a lot of after school activities for kids there, like bird classes and even snowshoe hikes.

There are plenty of picnic tables, made in the same design as the splash pad structures. They aren't shaded, and neither is the splash pad. However, in the background you can see the playground area does have a lot of shade--which is why it's one of my favorite parks! There's also a picnic shelter for shade, too.

This playground was already one of my favorites, but now that they've added in this new splash pad, I think it's going to be our go-to park this summer. It's just so lovely, and the kids had a ball playing there. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

For more details and pictures of the playground area, see this post from 2014.