Riding to visit 2 fun parks with playgrounds

So we started this ride from home and I realized something today - no matter which way I leave for bike rides around our neighborhood, there's a big hill that must be conquered first. Either I climb up Lupine Hills, which is steeper and little bit shorter, or I climb up Sycamore, which is less steep but lasts longer. I have yet to explore what the roads are like if I travel north of where we live. But looking at the hills that surround seemingly ALL of Vista, and the fact that Vista means "view" in Spanish, and the only way to have a view is to be UP HIGH on a hill, umm, yeah, I'll let that speak for itself! Climb, climb, climb! I guess I will get back in shape quickly living here. I used to have to actively search for good hills to train on when we lived in North Carolina!

We rode first to go check out the park called South Buena Vista Park. It's located down in a valley down under S. Melrose Ave, so it's not that kind of park that you'd see just from driving past it. You turn onto Dawson Drive, and immediately, like 25 feet from the corner of Melrose, you turn into a driveway. There's a sign that points you down the hill with an arrow and the words "park" on it. That driveway does downhill quickly and dead ends into a parking lot. There's a cool gated playground with lots of fun things to climb, some great slides and a few swings. Outside of the fenced in playground is the off-leash dog park. So while playing on the play structure, we got to see quite a few dogs having fun running around.

Here's a picture of this playground. (It's not my picture. I just found this on Google. I sadly didn't take any pictures on my ride today)

After having fun at this park, we set off to ride to another park. Climbing UP that steep driveway to get back out to Dawson/Melrose was so physically challenging, I almost saw some stars! One pitch of this climb was a 20% grade! Okay, once I got my breath back and stopped seeing stars, we headed towards the next park - Sunset Park. This park is just past the city limits of Vista and is in San Marcos. It's located off of La Mirada Drive, which included another killer climb of the ride. Whew, all this climbing is killing me! Or maybe it's doing the exact opposite - getting me in shape! Sunset Park was nice and new and the play structure was interesting. I made a video of Eliza going down the slide at this park, but I haven't uploaded it to YouTube yet. Maybe later!

Here's a picture of the playground at Sunset Park. Again, this is not my picture. I nabbed it from doing a quick Google image search.

Here's our Strava summary of today's ride. As you can see, it had a TON of climbing! But it was a fun ride.

Here's to more fun bike rides in the future!