The Practical Guide To Entertaining The Cigarillo #6

Devonian Fossil Gorge
It's like Jurassic Park, but without any live dinosaurs

Warmer weather means that finally, at long last, we can get outside with The Cigarillo and have some fun. Last summer's tour of Iowa City's bounty of playgrounds was fun, but what better place for a 2 year old to have fun and run wild- not to mention have some science and critters thrown at him than the Devonian Fossil Gorge out at the Res.

I've always loved the Fossil Gorge.  It reminds me a lot of a vacation we took to the Badlands in South Dakota when I was a kid- I had a blast climbing all over the rock formations there and the Devonian Fossil Gorge- while less vertical and considerably more horizontal offers much the same level of fun.  Rocks to run and climb over, the occasional fossil- water, the occasional frog and snake to find.  The Cigarillo, being 2 years old, loved it.  He especially loved the two guys steering their remote control cars over the rocks and, as always, the occasional encounter with a puppy was especially fascinating.  If you want to shake things up a little bit and do something different, it's worth the drive.

Willow Creek/Kiwanis Park
Two times the fun in the Hidden Oasis of the West Side...

When it got warmer, The Cigarillo continued to want to go to his go-to destination, The Playplace at The Coral Ridge Mall but what with the warmer temperatures, the last thing I wanted to do was be inside, so I started to get creative and we launched our park hunt!  I hadn't actually been to Willow Creek Park before, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that technically, there's two times the fun as Kiwanis Park is right on the south end of Willow Creek Park.

Playground-wise, Willow Creek was awesome.  It wasn't too high, height-wise for The Cigarillo, he loved the slide, he loved the swings and he loved the park.  We went for a walk over the creek and he loved the little waterfall under the bridge and we made our way down to Kiwanis Park  The playground there was fascinating, actually.  This is going to sound a little weird, but the playground was actually integrated into the landscape.  It resembles a rock garden with slides.

The Cigarillo, in short, had a blast- and I don't know whether it was just this particular day or the time of day but there was a ton of sunlight and it made everything seem so green, vivid and bright.  Seems like the perfect place to come for a picnic (something we might have to do one of these days!)  And, as an added bonus- the playground is on the flight path for planes taking off the airport and The Cigarillo is all about planes these days- he waves and says 'bye-bye' to every single one of them.