Five Reasons to Visit Pixie Woods this Summer

The girls' grandparents were visiting from out of town a couple of weekends ago, and we decided to take the whole gang to Pixie Woods.

Set behind a rainbow gate in a corner of Louis Park, Pixie Woods is charming in that way our city can be so good at: Not fussy or fancy, but full of heart.

This is the top of the birthday enclosure.

Here are five reasons you and your kids should visit Pixie Woods before it closes for the season:

1. It inspires imaginative play
For the most part, Pixie Woods is made up of themed play areas. In the firefighters "boot camp," Alice climbed onto a big red engine and sped off on a rescue. During our visit, she was also a princess, a pirate and one of the three little pigs.

2. It's cheap
Admission is $4 for kids 2 and older. Ride tickets are $2 each, and family ticket packages are available. Parking is free.

3. It's cooler there
Under a canopy of big, shady trees, the park also features several pools and streams. It's just a pleasant place to be during the summer. And bring a towel: At 1 p.m., the dragon fountain switches on and your kiddos can splash in the water.

4. It's something special.
Besides the playgrounds, there are also a kiddie train, paddle boat, vintage carousel - and rabbit burrow. (With live bunnies).

5. It's a community effort.
Since Pixie Woods opened more than half a century ago, it has depended on the work and commitment of volunteers. Members of service clubs gather regularly to spruce up the grounds, and last year, a 16-year-old made it his Eagle Scout project. That's a cool thing to support.

Convinced?

Here are the details.
Address: 3121 Monte Diablo Ave., in Stockton
Hours:  From June 1 to July 31, Thursday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
From Aug. 1 to Sept. 29, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m.
* The park is open on both Independence Day and Labor Day.
Tickets: $4 each for guests 2 and older. Rides are $2 each, with packages available.

And here's a bonus point:

It's not just for kids.

My husband and I don't get to a lot of fundraisers. Crab feed season passes us right by. But one fundraising event we've really enjoyed has been the annual wine tasting event at Pixie Woods. Contribute to the park while enjoying yummy wines and hors d'oeuvres. This year's event is Friday (June 21) from 5 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $40. More information.



Explore some other local parks here.

Play Date: Atherton Park

Play Date is a series of little guides to the area's parks and play areas.
This week: Warren Atherton Park

The Basics | Warren Atherton Park
Location: At Quail Lakes and Grouse Run drives in Stockton
Type: Neighborhood
Size: 10 acres
Amenities: In addition to a playground with metal slides, swings (regular and infant), bars and equipment to climb on, the park features a softball diamond with concrete bleachers, two basketball courts, two handball courts, two tennis courts, benches and picnic tables, restrooms and lots of open, grassy space.
A little history: The park was acquired by the city in 1977. It's named for Warren Atherton, who, though he had no formal higher education, became a prominent Stockton lawyer and a judge, and is known as the father of the G.I. Bill.
Play date: Take the tricycle - there's a nice, paved pathway through the park. 
(Source: City of Stockton)

When we got to the playground, we found a girl and her grandmother, filling a pail with sand to build a sandcastle. 


Only slightly less rare than finding metal slides at a playground anymore is finding sand (They all seem to be lined with wood chips or rubber tiles now). Atherton has both. So, it's showing it's age a bit, but it's very clean and so green and grassy that you'll feel like playing chase and picking dandelions.

Except for the infant swings, the playground itself is better-suited for big kids than for preschoolers. I have a 2-year-old, and we struggled. The gaps between the steps leading up to the slides are wider than she could easily manage on her own. And I wouldn't have let her anyway - the towers are tall and the guardrails modest. 

But kids are resourceful when it comes to fun, and she had a good time managing the playground on her own terms (mainly by climbing wrongways up the smaller of the slides and coming back down on her belly). 

Play Date: Micke Grove Regional Park (playgrounds)

Play Date is a series of little guides to the areas parks and play areas.
This week: Micke Grove Regional Park (the playgrounds)

The Basics | Micke Grove Regional Park
Location: At 11793 N. Micke Grove Road in Lodi 
Type: San Joaquin County Regional Park
Size: 258 acres
Amenities:  The sprawling park has a handful of playgrounds (including one water play area) with equipment that'd be fun for toddlers on up through school-age kids. It's home to the Micke Grove Zoo, The Japanese Garden, The San Joaquin County Historical Museum and Fun Town at Micke Grove. Other amenities include softball fields, rental facilities, picnic areas and horseshoe pits. Originally an oak grove, the park also has lots of open space and shade.
A little history: The park was a gift to the county from Lodi farmer and philanthropist William G. Micke. It now draws as many as 700,000 visitors a year.
Play date: Sure, there are plenty of picnic tables, but for this park, bring a blanket, pick up a pizza on the way over and enjoy lunch under the lovely Valley Oaks. See who spots the most squirrels.
Special notes: The Park is open daily (except for Christmas Day) from 8 a.m. until sunset. Parking is $5. Pets cost an extra $1 and must be leashed.
(Source: County of San Joaquin)

While the park's size seems a little overwhelming for a weekend afternoon out, it's also what makes Micke Grove a really great community resource: You can carve out the space you need, whether it's a big, open expanse for a family reunion, or a low-key spot for the kids to burn off some energy before naptime. 


This week, we'll focus on the latter.

The playgrounds at Micke Grove are sort of scattered throughout the park which helps make a rather enormous place feel like a more familiar and manageable one. And I like that my daughter can run around pretty freely without me worrying about her getting accidentally trampled by bigger, faster kids.

After a recent visit to the zoo with a couple of 2-year-old girls, we parked in front of the play area nearest Wortley Lake, a 3-acre water feature that was built a few years ago as part of an expansion project. The equipment looked new and seemed the most toddler friendly: there are both regular and bucket-style swings, and the slides have stairs rather than ladder-syle bars to climb.


There was also a little rock-climbing feature that the kids enjoyed more than I thought they would, and some lazy Canada Geese that they had a good time quacking at.

If you time things right, you might be able to wave at an Amtrak train roaring by on the tracks just outside the park.

Play Date: Victory Park

A friend once sent me a text message: “Do you know if any of the parks around here have bucket swings?” I could think of one. Maybe two. But that was it – and not because there aren’t more bucket swings in Stockton.

It’s just that, short of going and hoping the best, there isn’t a really easy way to find out which of Stockton’s more than 60 parks has exactly what you’re looking for, be it a slide or a soccer field. So here’s Play Date, a series of little guides to the area’s parks and play areas.

This week: Victory Park

Sorry, guys. No bucket swings.

The Basics | Victory Park
Location: At Pershing and Argonne in Stockton
Type: Community
Size: About 27.5 acres
Amenities:  Home to the Haggin Museum, the park features a playground (for big kids) and tot lot (for the littler ones) with slides, bars, and – this is cool – a mini climbing wall. There are ponds with ducks and turtles; group picnic areas and barbecue pits; lots of benches with plenty of shade; two lighted softball fields; Two lighted tennis courts; a swimming pool and restrooms. All along the park’s perimeter is a sidewalk that’s perfect (and popular) for walking and jogging.
A little history: The Victory Park site was gifted to the City in 1924. In 2009, when the park’s ponds were drained for maintenance, ducks – almost 100 of them -  were relocated to Swenson Park. (Some fish and turtles were moved too). They seem to have found their way back.
Play Date: Haul out the jogging stroller for a Saturday-morning run. When you’re finished, find a raspado cart ($1 per cone) and an empty bench.
(Source: City of Stockton)

This one reminds you that you live in a city.

Where I grew up, in Southern California, there were annual field trips to the Natural History Museum, followed by picnics in the park where pigeons convened to tussle over our scraps of sandwich bread and potato chips.

Victory Park reminds me of that a little bit.

This isn’t a park in the sense of a refuge or a hideaway. It’s park as community center and civic hub. It is a fantastic place to be - but maybe not if you’re looking for a quiet afternoon on a lazy weekend.

You’ll be sharing space with far more people than you would at, say, a neighborhood park: Joggers running up and down the Haggin Museum steps, walkers who invite you to pet their dogs, families gathering for weddings in the lovely rose garden.

There might be a political rally, a pageant, a festival.

There will definitely be a bounce house.

It’s chaotic – but the good kind, the kind that makes me really happy.

And I happen to think that feeding ducks in a public park is an essential formative experience. I’ll let you in on something, though: They’re not interested in your leftover Goldfish crackers. Don’t even bother.

Play Date: Caldwell Park

Once, a few months ago, a friend sent me a text message: “Do you know if any of the parks around here have bucket swings?” I could think of one. Maybe two. But that was it – and not because there aren’t more bucket swings in Stockton.

It’s just that, short of going and hoping for the best, there isn’t a really easy way to find out which of Stockton’s more than 60 parks has exactly what you’re looking for, be it a slide or a soccer field.

So this is Play Date, a series of little guides to the area’s parks and play areas.

First up is Caldwell Park.

P.S. It has bucket swings.

The Basics | Caldwell Park

Location: Just south of Alpine Ave., between Pacific Ave. and Allston

Type: Neighborhood

Size: About 3.5 acres

Amenities: The park has a tot lot with two slides (one spiral, one wavy), bucket swings, bars, and other things to climb and crawl on. The ground inside the play area is covered with woodchips. There are barbecue pits, picnic tables, benches and bathrooms. The park is outfitted for half-court basketball and has a half-acre of multi-use space to run around on.

A little history: The Caldwell Park site was donated to the City in 1939 on the condition it be used for recreation.

Play Date: Buy some snacks at the adjacent S-Mart Foods grocery store and make it a picnic.
(Source: City of Stockton)

Kids seem hardwired with a sense of playground etiquette that always surprises and impresses me. Once in a while, when other parents are in earshot, we might remind our kiddos to take turns or to look out for the littler ones. But they mostly don’t need us to. They’re pretty self-governing that way.

At 2-years-old, my daughter is still the smallest child in lots of crowds, but when we go to Caldwell Park – whether on a party-packed Saturday afternoon or a low-key weekday evening – she’s at ease. It’s one of our favorites.

The playground equipment is toddler-friendly, but still seems entertaining for kids as old as 6 or 7. There are lots of places for parents to sit and a fair amount of shade.

The picnic tables are pretty grimy, though, so you might think about packing a blanket if you plan to eat. And since it’s next to the grocery store and a bus stop, there tend to be a lot of people coming and going.  

But I’ve never felt unsafe there. The opposite. It’s a friendly place.

Find us on the slide next time.