Lincoln family visits every city park during pandemic

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - Passing time during the pandemic is something almost everybody has found themselves tasked with. For one Lincoln family, it turned into an extensive tour of every park on the Lincoln Parks registry, a task that took about two years to complete.

The Fairchild family, made up of mom and dad Amy and Michael and two daughters Chloe and Eleanor, started the journey in September of 2020, making it a goal to visit all 138 parks in Lincoln.

“All different kinds, so there were neighborhood parks with playgrounds conservancy parks, there was one that was just basically hay bales in a hayfield, there were pocket parks and mini-parks on the corner of a busy intersection, so we just went to all of them,” said Amy.

Amy said those trips looked different depending on the day.

“We started out pretty ambitious, we would do four or five-hour days on a Saturday and go to five to six parks and then we kind of slowed down, but it’s just any weekend we could go we would hit as many as we could,” Amy said.

The City of Lincoln often touts its parks as a focus of the community, which the Fairchilds say in their experience is true.

“It’s nice to have such a robust park system,” said Michael. “There’s a lot of variety, it’s a lot of fun, the kids enjoyed everything from the pocket parks to the neighborhood parks with the park equipment, with the slides and swings and stuff, to like Wilderness Park they enjoyed because they got to explore.”

At the end of each park trip, their oldest daughter, Chloe, made sure to give her review of each one. As for what’s next, the family said they’re looking for their next adventure.

“We need another list of something or we’ll just go back through it again,” Amy said.

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