Creekside Molly

These days the car has become one of the few places where Clara will reliably sleep. It's a far cry (da-dum) from the early days where the car was one of the places where Clara would reliably cry. But, I seem to frequently end up in the car with Clara asleep and Molly getting restless. After many hours sitting on the curb eating a snack with Molly while we wait for Clara to wake up (Clara's sleep is still too tenuous to risk moving her) I finally remembered the cute "creek" that runs along a street in Temescal. Perfect for fun on hot days.

The crazy thing, though, was that Molly also remembers this creek from her visit a year ago with Paz... ( http://tuchus.blogspot.com/2007/09/keeping-cool.html ). As we pulled up she said "This is the park where I went with Nate and Paz". It's crazy what kids remember.

This also happens to be a park that my friend Barnali had a hand in creating. She can correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that the "creek" is in the approximate location of a real creek that once ran here, but now it's below ground. Some of the water is pumped to the surface and flows through this area to create a creek experience. Except in the winter when they turn it off. Then it's a dry creek bed. That makes sense from the park-management and park-user perspective: we want water for our kids to play in during the summer, but don't want to deal with the maintenance in the winter. But it doesn't make sense from an environmental education perspective: we have a "Mediterranean" climate here, which means it rains in the winter and it's dry in the summer, so the cycle is reversed.