Mordecai

Mordecai Mini Park

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On the Eighth Day of Raleigh Parks Christmas we visited Mordecai Mini Park in the Mordecai neighborhood. I absolutely love this neighborhood with the architecture of the homes, great walkability, and proximity to Seaboard Station, but I digress!

Mordecai Mini Park is located at 1122 N. Blount St just west of Person St and close to Peace College.  Parking is only available on the street and sidewalks are available for walking from the nearby neighborhoods.

Some of the best features of this park are that it’s completely fenced in with gated entrances and kids of all ages can play at this park.  The tot playground area has tot swings, sidewalk games, benches, and several climbing structures.  Just up the hill from the tot area is the older kid playground area with more swings and a large jungle gym with slides and climbing structures.

Scattered throughout the park are large bird houses and benches.  A nice feature to this park is the deck with picnic tables in between the different playground areas.  It allows parents to keep an eye on their kids regardless of where they are inside the park.  In talking with a mom at the park today, she mentioned this is a very popular park after work in the warmer months.  At any given day you’re bound to find it full with neighborhood kids and their parents.

Thumbs up: neighborhood park, fenced-in area, walkability, multiple age playgrounds

Thumbs down: nothing to report

Naylor Family Farm & All Things Halloween

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Pumpkins, beer, Hokies & family…those were on the agenda a few weeks ago when my in-laws came into town. After some suggestions from my mommy group, we decided to head down to the new Naylor Family Farm in Fuquay-Varina to visit the pumpkin patch. Before setting out on the search for the best pumpkins, we stopped at Aviator’s Smokehouse restaurant in downtown Fuquay-Varina to enjoy a yummy lunch and tasty microbrews. I would recommend the wings paired with a beer flight while Bill would recommend the Monster sandwich and its four different types of meat with the Oktoberfest.

After lunch, we headed a few miles south to Naylor Family Farm. It’s not the typical “park” I should be blogging about, but it has great outdoor activities for the entire family.  Being new, there wasn’t a crowd on hand so we were able to leisurely take our time through everything. We paid $15/person for a Master Pass to all the different areas. There are different admission passes depending on what you’re interested in doing. They have a large corn maze, relaxing hayride to the pumpkin patch, petting zoo, barrel slides, straw bale playground, and larger pumpkins/fall produce for sale. The family was extremely nice to chat with and excited about their first year of operation so be sure to check them out.  After the pumpkin patch, we headed over to Carolina Ale House with the RTP Hokies to watch the Hokies beat Wake Forest!

With the last weekend in October coming up, I encourage you to get out and enjoy some of these fall activities. Naylor Family Farm is open until Nov 5th; Aviator Brewing Company still has the Oktoberfest, and the Hokies are playing at Duke at 12:30pm! In addition, be sure to check out these other favorite Halloween activities of mine:

Happy Halloween to all!