Holiday: Empty streets; Lost in the Park

During a recent Spring holiday that lasted one week, many people took the opportunity to leave the city and go to the mountains to participate in their national past time:  picnicking.

It was a city-dwellers dream.

If you got to go to the mountains and enjoy the cool area and greenery.  Awesome.

If you had to stay in the city for certain activities still going on but not endure traffic.  Awesome.

No car in sight meant Kylie got a lot of driving practice in.  She's going to start driving more and more, and starting with the benefit of no other drivers was a huge plus.

One day during the break, Keira and I decided to go to the park and ride the train.  We walked for at least 3/4 mile, and we could never catch the train (it's hard to know where it stops and where you can get on).  Apparently, we'd gotten there right after they started their last run for the day.

However, in the meantime, we discovered a new playground which we had never seen before.  Of course, this is not hard to do.  This park is huge.

Used with permission from Google Earth

Honestly, there are so many hidden nooks and crannies in this place, you could discover something every day if you spent a lot of time there.

At the new playground, we ran into a girl from Keira's school.  Her mom and dad were there, so while Keira played with her friend, I spoke as best I could with her parents.  They were very nice, and they talked slow enough so that I could understand most of what they were saying.

When we realized we were never going to catch the train, we decided to find our way back to our car.  

All I knew to do was head for skyscrapers in the distance near the place where I remembered parking.

The good news:  We found ANOTHER fun playground on the way back to the car.

The bad news:  It took us an hour to find our way out of the park.  

I didn't tell Keira how nervous I was getting, but I was completely lost on all of the paths, and I was having trouble finding our parking area.  I don't know if people have ever felt like that in Central Park in NYC, but I also wondered how many people had to spend the night in this park because they couldn't find their way out in the dark.

Maybe it's just my over-active imagination.

Keira was very excited when we made it to the front of the park, and we took celebratory pictures in front of the fountains.