Tag Archives: parks

Los Olivos Park

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In February 2015, I had a house/dog/cat sitting gig at a home across the street from Los Olivos Park in Phoenix, Arizona. On the first morning I was there, I took photos while the dog and I were out for our morning walk.

IMG_1744  This was the sunrise we saw as we started our walk.

Los Olivos Park was originally an olive grove.  IMG_1785      Hence the name. Hence the olive trees growing in rows.

The park has a really nice, big, covered playground for kids. IMG_1773     IMG_1772     IMG_1758

There are many picnic tables scattered throughout the park and even some barbecue pits. Unfortunately, only two of the picnic tables are under a shelter. (That’s two tables under one shelter.) So in the long, hot Phoenix summer, if you and your friends want to sit at a picnic table, you might get some shade from a nearby tree, but you’re mostly going to be in the sun. The woman I was house sitting for told me that on weekends she sees one person stake out the covered shelter territory early in the morning in preparation for a party later in the day.

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The park also boasts a disc golf course. On Friday afternoon, there were several groups playing disc golf.

A concrete jogging/walking path winds through the park. Along the path, there are exercise stations where folks can stop and do a specific workout.
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There are two sand volleyball courts too. It’s hard to get a good photo of a net, so I didn’t even try.

Even with the big playground, picnic tables, a walking/jogging path, and disc golf and volleyball courts, there’s still plenty of room in the park to toss a Frisbee, kick a soccer ball, play catch, or just run around and spin in circles. Los Olivos is a huge park.

If you have to use the facilities while in Los Olivos park, there are facilities to use. This is the restroom building.IMG_1754

It kind of looks like a jail. I didn’t actually have to use the facilities, but I peeked in, just to see what it looked like. It wasn’t horrid or terribly dirty. It was better than park restrooms I’ve seen in New York City and Richmond, Virginia. As the dog and I were wandering around the park before 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning, a city truck pulled up to the restroom building. Workers were cleaning the restrooms.

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Along with the olive trees in the park, there are some palm trees. Palm trees are not native to Phoenix. Well, neither are olive trees, for that matter. Learn more about the palm trees in Phoenix here: http://www.examiner.com/article/the-palm-tree-story-of-phoenix and the olive trees in Phoenix here: http://www.garden.org/regional/report/arch/inmygarden/3656.

Dogs are allowed in the park (obviously, or I would not have been walking the dog there). There are signs in the park stating that all dogs have to be leashed at all times. Not everyone follows this rule, so anyone visiting with a dog companion should be cautious and alert.

The park is open from 6am until 10pm. There is plenty of parking on the streets on both sides of the park, but there are signs saying it is illegal to park in those spots from 10pm until 6am. Parking is also allowed in the two good sized lots behind and on the side of the senior center. The entrance to the back lot is off of Devonshire and the entrance to the side lot if off of Glenrosa.

On Friday evening, an older, brown Dodge van that had been retrofitted with the proper accessories to be an ice cream truck stopped on the street alongside the park. While it was parked, the song it played was the instrumental version of “Union Maid” by Woody Guthrie, particularly the part that goes

Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,
I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union.
Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union,
I’m sticking to the union ’til the day I die.

I thought that was a little bit weird, but it made me happy too.

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Self-portrait with dog.

I took all of the photos in this post.

Papago Park, Tempe, Arizona

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I went to Tempe to visit a friend who was in town briefly before she caught a plane. We ate free breakfast at her hotel and gabbed for a couple of hours before she had to check out of her room and head for the airport. As I was driving away from our visit, I decided to stop at Papago Park.

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Papago Park is on the corner of East Curry Road and Collage Drive. It is actually on two corners of East Curry Road and Collage Drive. East Curry Road splits the park in two. I visited the side of the park with the pond and the large playground. I could see the other side of the park from across the street, and it has a much smaller playground, but larger open areas.

The park has a good size parking lot with spaces for many cars, so finding a place to leave the van was not a hassle.

I needed to use the restroom, so I headed over to the restroom building.

The restroom building.

The restroom building.

The building housing the restrooms is near the parking lot and NOT in the middle of all the park action. It’s closest to Curry Road, away from the places people in the park congregate. The women’s room is on the left.

As I walked into the women’s room, someone in the men’s room (a man, I presume) took a half step from behind the partition which keeps people from looking into the men’s room. (I think the partition blocks the view of the urinals.) The guy stood there and watched me walk into the women’s restroom. I’m not usually nervous about using public restrooms, but this guy freaked me out. I didn’t know what to do. I really needed to pee. I should have gone back to the van and used my pee bucket, but I didn’t have that idea until later. I decided that if the guy followed me into the toilet stall, I would start screaming and carrying on. Thankfully, he didn’t follow me.

What was he looking for? I don’t think it’s normal behavior to hang out just inside the doorway of a men’s room. I suspect he was either waiting for his drug dealer or he was waiting for another dude, someone with whom he could have some public restroom-gay sex-afternoon delight.

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Unfortunately, the park was littered with trash the day that I visited. I don’t know if a bunch of trash had blown out of a can that morning, or if people had recently thrown a whole picnic’s worth of paper plates and bottles onto the ground, but there was a lot of rubbish on the grass and in the pond. Yuck! There were several trashcans around the park; I don’t know why people didn’t used them. (Don’t look for pictures of the trash here, because I didn’t spend my time taking any.)

IMG_1902     The pond was cool, although a pond in a desert is a little weird to me. I guess Papago Park is supposed to be an oasis. My favorite features of the pond were the ducks IMG_1916     IMG_1918     IMG_1917

and the No Swimming signs. IMG_1932     (Who decided that a bald, gender nonspecific person with his/her hands in the air would communicate a ban on swimming?)

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Papago Park has a large playground for kids. IMG_1923

There are also two sand volleyball courts and a dog run. IMG_1929

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Trash is visible in the grass on the right side of this picnic area.

I counted twelve picnic tables under ramadas which protect from sun and rain (mostly sun, I’m guessing). There were several other tables scattered around, not under protective covers. This park also has wide open spaces for running around and/or tossing or kicking balls.

I was in the park at midday on a weekday, so there wasn’t a lot of action. Some office types were using picnic tables for their lunch break, and an older man and his physical therapist were exercising with a large ball.

Papago Park is also the trail head for at least two trails. I didn’t hike either of the trails (too hot, no water, wrong clothes, wrong shoes), but I did see this rock formation when I stood at the trail head. IMG_1909

While trying to review Tempe’s Papago Park for TripAdvisor, I discovered that there is another Papago Park in Phoenix, at 625 North Galvin Parkway. (Lord knows why they didn’t give these two parks different names.) It looks like that Papago Park is near the Desert Botanical Gardens, and photos show that park also has a (apparently much larger) pond. An attraction of that Papago Park is Hole-in-the-Rock, which looks to me more like a hole in a mountain.

By the way, I searched “Papago” and found on https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+papago&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 that it means:

1. a member of an American Indian people of southern Arizona and northern Sonora.

2. a dialect of the Uto-Aztecan Pima-Papago language.