Day 3 Walk

I took another trek to a different park for today's walk:  Tumbleweed Park.  It's been many years since I visited and things keep evolving, as they should with parks.  There are a lot of new play areas for kids, and for a Friday at 1pm there were a *lot* of kids at the park playing and having a good time!  It was a warm day (85!!) and I was glad I was wearing a tank top under my work shirt, so I got a little sun on my arms as I walked!  There was one area in the grass where there were some rocks, and I kicked loose a lovely oval, very smooth stone just a tad bigger than my hand.  I'm not sure if I'm going to leave it as it, or use it as a rock for my kindness rocks project!  

There's a small part of the park that is a working ranch, with lots of old tools and an old house, and this old truck.  There are events and sometimes docents working who talk about what farming was like in the past.  This is also the park where they have the annual Ostrich Festival in the spring.  

The Chandler Arizonan said “Ostriches are all the rage in Chandler” in 1914 and they’re still the talk of the town more than 100 years later.  The man most associated with the large flightless birds and Arizona is none other than city of Chandler founder Dr. Alexander J. Chandler.

The doctor was among the first to bring the birds to Arizona after he saw them at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Chandler Museum Administrator Jody Crago said.

Twelve years later, in 1905, the doctor had a large herd of ostriches at his ranch in Mesa and his success spurred other local ranchers to follow suit. Chandler tried to corner the ostrich market but eventually was upstaged by the Pan American Ostrich Farm in the West Valley, Crago said.

My son and I went one year and watched jousting, monkeys performing tricks and of course, the ostrich races!