We Have A Playground!

The playground for the Wellness Center is here! It's in a million pieces spread out between 89 boxes, crates, pallets, and giant carboard tubes. It's inside the former PCC building instead of outside where it can be played on, but it's here!

Bob the truck driver pulled into the parking lot about 24 hours later than planned after having to be rerouted through Coos Bay to avoid both 299 and 199 after driving our 8,300 pounds of playground across the country from Pennsylvania. It turns out that a large playground takes up a large truck -- it was the only thing in the truck:

The truck wasn't exactly packed to the rafters, but all those poles and bars and railings take up a lot of space and don't exactly play well with others in terms of being stacked neatly in a pile. We had been scrambling the day before to change our plans for unloading the truck. Many volunteers, a forklift, and a pallet jack were needed, and the plans for getting them to the truck all had to be changed. Luckily, once again, the community came through with everything we needed to move forward on this project.

Employees from Redwood State and National Parks came out in force, along with VISTA and AmeriCorps members, students and staff from Sunset High School and the Bar-O Boys Ranch, and other community members unloaded everything that could be unloaded by hand. A staff member from the Del Norte Community Health Clinic supervised the receiving paperwork and made sure we had every piece and box we need to put it together.

Thursday's forklift was going to come from Crescent Ace Hardware, who have been fantastic partners in this project from the start, but they needed it on Friday. Beyond Waste Salvage, on very little notice, came through with a replacement and unloaded the pallets. (Note the message on the box: The World Needs Play. How true.)

Some cast members from this spring's Lighthouse Rep production hammed it up as they did some heavy lifting. It was heavy, but not THAT heavy.

Eventually, the truck was empty and three rooms of the former PCC building were full:

Then it was time for snacks and group pictures. Our heroic students didn't want to be memorialized for their work, but we captured our parks folks for posterity:

Many thanks to everyone who helped unload our playground. We're now in the process of planning the installation. Within the next two or three months, the empty space in the community garden at the Wellness Center will become this:

The colors in this photo are not the same colors of our playground, but the equipment is all the right stuff in the right place. We have a lot of purple and green in our scheme. Stay tuned for updates about when the installation and grand opening will take place.