Ever find yourself looking for a new place to go but don’t want to spend any money? Getting a little tired of going to the same parks and playgrounds? If yes, you have to check out OC Play Parks! An awesome web guide to parks for playful families in Orange County. I love checking out this site, and finding new parks to try out. You can click on parks by city and there are slide shows and pictures of the parks featured. Even better, for each park, she lists the highlights, cautions, and checklist of amentities that you need to know (is there a bathroom? how’s parking? etc.) It’s a community website, where everyone can submit their favorite parks to share. The process to submit a park is super easy, a one page form. So, if you go on the site and don’t see one of your favorites, click here to submit yours! Many families will benefit from you taking the time to do this!
A couple comments from Michele, the founder of the website:
“I’m especially looking for families in Anaheim, Brea, Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Cypress, Fountain Valley, Fullerton, Garden Grove, La Habra, La Palma, Los Alamitos/Rossmoor, Orange, Placentia, Santa Ana, Seal Beach, Stanton, Villa Park, Westminster and Yorba Linda (basically north county and inland) to recommend some great parks in their areas by submitting it on this simple form (only the park name and address are required – filling out the other info is optional). I only post info from the LOCAL experts – either from the form or I interview families at play when I take pics. No ones knows their neighborhood park better than the families who frequent it. Consider it community service. I can’t think of anything better than the imagination explosion when kids explore a new playground.”
Happy exploring!
One often missed museum and exploration opportunity, especially for older kids in the 9-12 group is Clark Regional Park on Rosecrans Ave. East of Beach Blvd. This park has a small but well stocked natural history museum covering the creatures and plants living in the OC for the last 200 million years as OC went through periods of being marshlands and undersea (that’s right, it was all under shallow seas). But the outdoor gems are across the street in the Coyote Hills preserve area where young explorers can discover actual marine life fossils in the hilly terrain.