Harris Ryals Park is located right next to Spring Garden Elementary and the Bedford YMCA. It teeters between 2 and 3 stars for me. The play structure itself is a 3 star. It's new-ish and fun enough for a neighborhood park, but with many outstanding parks in bordering cities, this play structure (and frankly, all the Bedford playgrounds) fails to stand out. Because they've been so spoiled by other parks, my kids claim this one is boring. Objectively speaking, I think it's a fine park for a neighborhood. It's certainly better than Carousel Park down the road!
We like the open space and mature trees surrounding the playground. Harris Ryal's proximity to the Bedford Linear Trail is also convenient. We like to take the kids bike riding along the paved trail and this park is a nice little stop along the way.
Unfortunately there are some pretty big drawbacks that keep us from visiting Harris Ryals as often as we might otherwise:
1. No bathrooms - with 5 kids that may have to pee or poop at anytime, there's a limit to the amount of time we can spend somewhere with no bathroom.
2. No parking lot - you can park along the street on Cummings, but my kids exit the car from the left side and this dumps them right onto a busy street. Not ideal.
3. No shade over play structure, and no shade over most of the seating areas.
4. Bizarrely low bench seating. They know it's the parents who sit there, right? They were installed at the correct level for a 2 year old.
5. Bark flooring
Today (a November Monday around 4pm) there were lots of kids there playing, but every other time I've been, we are the only ones there. Maybe that was just because of COVID. Or maybe most people, like us, just drive to a better park. read more