Chutes & Ladders Park at Hyland Park Reserve

This afternoon, Caitlin & I took the kids (Isabel, Amelia & Gavin) to the Chutes & Ladders Park at the Hyland Park Reserve in Bloomington. We spent a good 3 hours there. We had lunch in one of the picnic areas outside recreation area. If we had not done that we would never have gotten the girls to eat what little food they did choose to eat. Then we got to playing.

Isabel is in some of the above pictures, but I mainly was just taking pictures of all the different areas to show others in MOMS Club and anyone else on the internet trying to find out more aboaut this park. I found some reviews & a few pictures of this park and a short video of one small area of the park, but other than that I didn't find much in the way of pictures and what I did find did not capture just how big this play area is and how many different areas it has.

I have to say that the best feature of the park (as a parent) was that there was only one entrance/exit and the tables & benches were right there, so there was no children able to escape as long as you stayed watch in that area.

The kids had a lot of fun. The girls loved the water sprinkler feature it had. Since I read baout it, I was prepared and had suits & towels for the girls. They started out on a smaller playground set but finally got up enough courage to climb the rope and go down bigger chutes. There is also a sand play area, but they didn't play in that too much (probably since they played in the sand at the picnic area we were at).

When we got there it was kind of overwhelming. It is very large with many areas and there were LOTS of kids there. There were many summer school programs there with kids and when they started to leave it was not so overwhelming and got quieter. I am willing to guess that once kids are back in school it will not be so busy and will be a great place to take a kid to play. They still had a lot of fun.

Another great feature is that the majority playground is built over this recycled rubbery mat. So, there was not wood chips or sand or stones getting in their shoes & you could let a little one crawl around w/o having to worry about them sticking as much stuff in their mouth and it was safe to crawl around on. There was a sand area & one area with wood chips, but it was pretty well separated.


And just for my blog readers, here is a collage of pictures of just Isabel from the day. I don't like to put all my pictures on Facebook. It's nice to say some just for my faithful readers here.