Now That's A Big Slide!

Again my travels into the proverbial "middle of nowhere" have produced another wonderful find of Americana and tackiness. The Municipal Giant Slide in Rocky Ridge, Md is a huge out-of-the-ordinary sliding board that gives all other parks board envy. This huge wooden slide stands 35 feet tall and takes riders down 100 feet of bowling alley-like goodness. There's old burlap sacks that kids can ride down on for maximum speed or for the less adventurous (like my kids) a trip on your own bottom will provide a slightly less out of control experience. Instead of ending with a long flat portion of slide to slow down on, this extreme slide sends it's riders flying into a pit of sawdust. The craziest thing is: this super neat attraction isn't at an amusement park or family fun center...it's at a little tiny public park called Mount Tabor Park which sits along the side of a pretty laid back country road. Needless to say, my kids had a blast...

(Daddy took a few trips down the boards as well but no pictures were allowed!)

The park also has plenty of room for picnicking as well as some other playground equipment including this huge kid-powered merry-go-round which I think my kids liked even more than the slide...

Mount Tabor Park is also home to an outdoor church complete with a pavilion full of bright red church pews...
...that's worshiping in style!

And last but not least for your approval, a video of my guys on said Giant Slide:

This Used To Be My Playground

One day a few years ago, while wasting huge amounts of time on the internet, I stumbled across someone's blog entry about old playground equipment and how it was all disappearing and being replaced with new equipment. Something to do with lead paint and safety issues...blah, blah, blah. So, it got me to thinking about how cool some old playground equipment was and it propelled me to load up my kids in the car and go to a nearby playground that had a few neat old pieces. My feeling is kids don't get enough lead paint nowadays. So, I let my kids play on the old equipment and I snapped a few pics for the blog here. That was 2007 and I never used those pictures. Yesterday, we stopped by the same playground and just as the internets had predicted: all the old equipment was gone and replaced with shinny new stuff. So, I figured it would be a good time to dig up those old pics and post 'em today!

For more playground fun, check out Sit On Some Fries from July 27, 2007 featuring another cool playground that I grabbed pictures of before they tore it down.