by Jennifer Tipton
What is your favorite park in Ventura?
Ron Root
age 71
retired from Honda Motor Co.
“Probably the Aquatic Water Park on Kimball because it’s really well laid out. It’s large and great for walking the dog, you just have to go when everyone else isn’t there, it gets pretty busy.”
Carmen Rico
age 49
works at Paradise Chevrolet
“Let me see … I live across the street from Huntsinger, that’s not my favorite park but my kids used to like to go there to play football with their friends. I’d probably say Arroyo Verde, it’s more outdoorsy, there’s more nature, when our kids were small, we’d go there all the time. If you put a block of ice on the hill, you can slide down!”
Rob Lambert
age 59
works at Paradise Chevrolet
“Before the fire or after the fire?” (funny guy)
“It’s still Arroyo Verde, I have no choice, I have to go there every day with my girlfriend, she walks up and down the trails and all the way to the top.”
“And what do you do, walk with her?”, I asked.
He chuckled, “No, I just watch … but I must add, they’ve done a great job restoring the park, what they’ve done is pretty nice!”
Pat Halverson
age 73
retired RN
“Marina Park! I love walking by the ocean and they have a wonderful playground too. But what we really need is a fenced dog park in Ventura that’s nice. All we have Camino Real and the area for the small dogs has no grass – it’s all dirt and I have small dogs. My one little guy is a therapy dog for CMH!”
(Pat, we look forward to seeing them on the SCAMP page!)
Emily Bishop
age 34
piano teacher
“The park my boys love is off Bristol and Petit, don’t know if it has a name, it’s really small. It has a gazebo and they like that.” “Love that!”, corrected her son Heath.
Emily continued, “there’s one play structure and a rock-climbing wall, there are other bigger parks, but this is near home and it’s a nice quick play.”
(Could she mean Chumash Park?)
Pat Natzke
age 23
works at Ventura Hardware
“That’s a tough one! I would have to say probably a tie between Camino Real, (it has the dog park and the tree sculpture with the bear climbing up it) and Kellogg Park, the new park on the west end. I lived on the avenue for years and it was always an empty lot with the sign, “Coming Soon” … but they were always developing it and I thought – someday. It’s really cool, they have different exercise equipment, the tables have built in chessboards and the path around it is really a ravine, so that when it rains, it’s like a little stream that goes around the edge!
By the way ladies, Pat is single (he said I could share that).
