Tag: parks

Posted in: Animal Sightings, Exploring Louisiana, Hiking, Sightseeing

We Found Crescent Park! (French Quarter, New Orleans, LA)

Written by tepetravels 1 Comment on We Found Crescent Park! (French Quarter, New Orleans, LA)

Crescent Park is located near the French Quarter, right on the Mississippi River. The park is a little over a mile long. One of the entrances is by the French Quarter Market; it is tucked behind a wall, on the other side of the train tracks. If you are anything like us, you probably walked right by it and didn’t even realize it was there. There is also a parking lot at the other end of the park.

Two of the bridges you can use to access the park. The tall cement one has an elevator and stairs, and is by the French Quarter Market.

The park has several tables and chairs, lots of lawn space for a picnic, great views of the river, and a dog park. There were a lot of runners, bikers, and roller skaters. There is a large covered concrete pavilion of sorts on the French Market side where kids were practicing their on bikes and roller skates.

Foggy morning. Same views: top picture is at the beginning of our walk, bottom is at the end.

It was extremely foggy when we got to the park. We were standing on the walkway right next to the Mississippi River and couldn’t see the water, much less the city. Eventually it started to clear up. Towards the end of the park, the skies were pretty clear and blue, but on our walk back there was still some fog closer to the city.

It was a really nice walk and we enjoyed the park. It seems like it would be a nice green space to walk and enjoy some beignets. 😉 (Note: It would probably be pretty hot in the summer, as there were trees by part of the path, but it didn’t seem like they would really provide shade for the trail.)

Posted in: Animal Sightings, Exploring Louisiana, Hiking, Sightseeing

New Orleans: City Park

Written by tepetravels 1 Comment on New Orleans: City Park

City Park is a pretty large park. You can drive and park there, or take one of the streetcars.

The park has a lot of things to do! Free things include playgrounds, walking trails, and picnic tables. Paid items include: Storyland park ($5.47, under 36″ free), Art Museum, Besthoff Sculpture Park ($5/adults, 19 and younger free), City Putt (starts at $10/ages 13+, $8/ages 4-12). There were also soccer fields, tennis courts (reservations/fee), and a dog park (permit required).

We really enjoyed walking around the park under the Spanish Moss.

On our last visit to the Park, we explored the Couturie Forest. It does not have a large parking lot, so you may have to park farther away. There is a little library nearby and a creek with a bridge to cross over. The trails are dirt/mulch. We did get to complete the arduous climb to the highest point in New Orleans: Laborde Mountain. It is a whole 43 feet above sea level! There were even chickens roaming around.

Walking around Couturie Forest: Trees, platform at top of Laborde Mountain, wild chickens, stick shelter, ibis

I would definitely get a copy of the park map on your phone before you go! It is a large park and we did not see a lot of signs with a map on them. It is a nice park to spend the day at.

Posted in: Animal Sightings, Exploring Louisiana, Hiking, Sightseeing

Audubon Park in New Orleans, LA

Written by tepetravels

We wanted to get out and take a walk, so we started looking for local parks. We found Audubon Park. There was on-street parking, and their website states there is a parking lot as well. You can also take the St. Charles Streetcar to get to the Park. The park had a a golf course, a great walking/biking trail. There were a few shelters and spots to have a picnic. There was a pond as well, but no fishing was allowed. It sits next to the Audubon Zoo and also across from Tulane University. The park itself was free, but the Zoo and golfing do cost extra.

Restrooms were also hard to come by if you are not familiar with the park. Shelters 10, 11, 12 are listed as having restrooms. (Two of which are on the same side of the park.) The men’s restroom was closed at Shelter 10 and while the women’s was open, it was missing toilet paper in some stalls and was ok in terms of cleanliness.

We really enjoyed walking around the park and seeing the huge live oak trees. We stopped at the Tree of Life (Note: It’s on the zoo side, not the golf course side, so we had to cross the road to get to that part of the park). It was planted around 1740! The tree was amazingly large and very neat to see.

We also saw The Labyrinth while we were on that side of the park. It is a two part maze, but is built into the ground, so there is no getting lost! We had a kind of sunny day, so it was a little hard to see the different colors of the bricks marking the path.

Video: Walking the Labyrinth

While walking around the pond, we saw a few different types of birds that were new to us as well.

Posted in: Exploring South Dakota, Sightseeing

July 17: Dinosaurs and Burgers

Written by tepetravels

Today was a play around day, nothing too strenuous. I looked up some more quirky things to see near Rapid City, SD. (Rapid City because it was a bigger town close to the campground (40 minutes away) and had a Walmart for groceries.)

First stop: World’s Largest Quarter-Pounder outside a Rapid City McDonald’s. Of course, we had to get quarter pounders to pose with it! It’s been years since I’ve had McDonald’s burgers.

What the inscription means per Google translate box

Tire Man: A man made of red, white and blue painted tires at a car shop. This was just a quick stop, jump in and out for the picture.

Dinosaur Park (free). This isn’t a huge park, although it is on top of a hill and there are some steps. The park also has a visitor center, but we didn’t go in. The dinosaurs are made from concrete. There are still signs labeling the dinosaurs, but some of them were hard to read. The park was made in 1936. The boys got a kick out of seeing the dinosaurs.

More of the Will and Large Objects series.

Before heading to get groceries, we stopped at Mostly Chocolates, a drive through coffee and chocolate menu! How could you go wrong? I got a mocha and dark chocolate pecan caramels.

We stopped for groceries. It’s always a challenge to go grocery shopping. There are signs in South Dakota “recommending” wearing masks, but very few people are. The grocery store is normally a big grocery game of frogger. Today was really bad, so we actually left before we bought everything we wanted.

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