Waypoints

We took a road trip this week -- going home to see my family for Mother's Day. We had a difficult time finding playgrounds to stop at along the way, although we did find three eventually: one in Denton on the way there (no shade, and Jane got a small burn on some of the equipment!), a really nice shaded one in Mesquite on the way back and one in Shreveport on the way back that was partially shaded so she could only go down one of the five or six slides (we stopped at a non-playground park in Shreveport on the way there and tossed a ball around).

A friend told me about an app you can buy in the App Store for Mac, I think Ontheway or similar, but it's $5 and I don't have an iPhone/it wouldn't work without wifi on the road on my iPod. And I'm still "old fashioned" in liking to work things out on a big screen/use my keyboard and mouse. What a fossil, right? (I'm also CHEAP.)

I did find a website called Waypoints (which I'd never heard of as a term for places to stop along the way but which Shawn used in a non-website context), but the site was wonky and incomplete. I didn't get any useful information from that.

Anyway, Shawn did most of the work after I did some googling. He used satellite images to confirm which parks actually had playgrounds. We'll be making the trip again I'm sure, so we've saved the info and will hopefully find more to expand our options for places to stop that are kid friendly to get out the wiggles. Shawn's already spotted another park in Alexandria that has a splash pad of some sorts that could be really fun in the heat.

It just seems like it should be easier and that information should be available. I guess most people just stop at McDonald's and let their kids play there? I'm sure we would do that if it were raining or something.

I tried to pay attention to our surroundings while I drove, and I saw a water park in Canton, TX, that seems like it might be about halfway -- maybe my sister and I can meet there someday with our kids for a fun summer trip!