Journey to 100 Parks #100 - Valley Place Park - Crystal, MN

We finally made it to 100 parks!  We had such a fun celebration tonight with lots of friends and family.  We chose this as our finale park because it's really close to home, in our hometown of Crystal, and was just remodeled this year.

Key Features

I made a few extras to bring along to this visit.  I got a small balloon bouquet and broke out my favorite chalk board.  I had everyone sign it so we could remember who was there.  A few neighborhood kids also added their names.

I made some commemorative shirts for the kids to wear with some of the key stats.

236 days (not including our winter break)

18 cities

1240 miles (round trip from home to each park)

I was chatting up all of our friends and family, so I didn't get to take all the pictures and videos I wanted, but snapped what I could.  Both kids loved all the great features and that so many people joined us.

My co-worker, Tony, moved to the area last year.  He brought his adorable daughter, Charlie, to play with us.  She is going to love growing up with this great playground nearby.

Esme's teacher from last year, Ms. Kelli, stopped by with her sons, Thomas and Travis.

Both sets of grandparents along with Jimmy's sister and niece were also in attendance. Chuck and Phyllis rom our church life group stopped by too.

Ms. Kara and Ms. Amy were in Esme's program last year as well as helping with the summer program.  Ms. Amy was paired up with parker most of the summer and they had so much fun together.  He was constantly asking us "where's Amy?"

This park truly combines just about all of Parker's favorite Park features.  It has multiple types of swings, roller slide, tons of spinning things, and a zipline.  We will be coming back here a lot in the future!

Chuck had emailed one of the local TV stations to tell them about our journey.  One of their camera operators came out and shot a little footage for a potential story.  There is a lot going in the world these days, so we will see if it ever airs.

Grandpa and Nana Buxton got a special cake for us, so we saved that for when we got back home.  Esme loved all the colors and sprinkles.

This is an easy 10!  All of the great features combined with a great location gives this one the tops rating!

So, what's next?  To be honest, we will probably take a brief park hiatus.  It's been a lot of fun, but also a lot of hard work holding up the blog side of things.  I have plans for some redo visits of parks that have been remodeled since our initial visits as well as patronizing some of favorites from this journey.  I will continue reviewing and sharing any new parks we visit too.  Thanks for joining us on this adventure!