Urbandale Parks Challenge: Sunflower Park (30 Parks Down, 2 to go!)

Sunflower Park is a forested area north of Douglas Ave, off of 92nd Drive, and it has a trail that follows along North Walnut Creek. You can find the trail head near the dead end of 92nd Dr. 

We took a funny picture by the warning sign at the trail head. I asked the kids to look scared! But even though we were playing around, the warning was serious. More on that in a second!

It's clear that you can't access the creek on the waterfall side. I tried to get a picture to show the creek after the little waterfall (below). It does look shallow and slow, but there are fallen trees all over the place. So, this might not be the best park to use for creek access.

We walked up to the first bend of the trail, and I started to hear a creaking noise.

I looked over, and there was a tree that had roots pulled from the ground a bit. It was leaning, and I worried it could fall. With all the trees that had fallen over the creek, the warning side at the trail head made sense! I didn't take a picture of the tree (maybe I should have). Instead, I just told the kiddos we were ready to move on to our next park.

Urbandale Parks Challenge: Colby Woods Open Space

I thought Colby Woods Open Space was a stunning area, though we never actually did find the playground! It was difficult to find access to the open space, and so we parked at Creekside Church on 82nd Place in Urbandale. There was a trail that ran on the east side of the parking lot and into the woods.

I recognized this statue from the Urbandale Parks and Rec website, so I knew we were in the right area.

A little free library!

We went left at the fork in the road by the statue and wandered down the shady trail. It was peaceful, but all of a sudden I heard a loud noise and something jumped out of the bushes! I jumped about ten feet in the air and laughed at myself when I saw it was a fawn. So cute!

We crossed the bridge over North Walnut Creek and came to another fork in the trail. We turned left and wandered a bit but didn't see the playground. I worried I would lose my way back--I guess I should have brought breadcrumbs to leave a trail ;-) I'm wondering if we'd gone a little farther on that trail, if we might have found it. Oh well! We went back to the statue. On the way, I passed a woman walking her dog and asked if there was a playground in the area. She said she was only familiar with the playground equipment at the church.

We wandered on the trail, past the statue, for just a few more minutes. When we didn't see the playground equipment around the bend, we decided to just head back to the car and drive to another park on our Urbandale Parks Challenge list.

So, we didn't find the Colby Woods Open Space playground, but we did enjoy our time wandering the trails!

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: