Before this area was developed, there was a great sand prairie. Most of it has been paved over and developed or turned into farms. Thankfully some of it has been preserved in the 61 acres of the Holland Sand Prairie. This area is open to the public for a beautiful walk. Bring your camera to photograph the wildflowers or just enjoy nature. More information can be found on the official website or on sites like these:

http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2007/09/05/news/z02sand0905.txt
http://dnr.wi.gov/ORG/LAND/ER/sna/sna553.htm

This park is also called Prairie Woods. It is right on XX but there is a tiny parking area on the Prairie Woods side. There are long paths leading to the park from there and from Ver Meer on the other side. We didn't stop because the park was a long walk in but I took a picture from the road. The park has one large play structure with four slides on it. There's also an open shelter.There were no swings as far as I could see from the road.

This is a small park in a new neighborhood. There isn't a lot there, but they may plan on expanding. Currently there is a large plastic slide, a swing set with four regular swings (no baby swings), a rocking horse, and a small modern teeter totter.

Note that the Google map isn't quite right. Off New Amsterdam road, you want to turn onto Mc Wain Drive, not Pine View as it's named on the map. You'll know you have the right road if you see the end of an airport runway on the other side. Seriously.

The Google map isn't very helpful for this park. It looks as though Gaynor Dr hooks up to McHugh, but it doesn't. What you want to do is take Briggs along side the high school and make a left on Sween Drive. That takes you over to Gaynor. Take a left and follow that down to St Croix.

Unfortunately, the park itself isn't worth all the effort of finding it. The playground is old style equipment and there's not much there. The swing set has two regular swings, a swinging bar, and swinging rings. There are no baby swings. Attached to the swing set is a teeter totter and on the other side is a metal slide. The playground is way back from the road with the grass baseball field between it and the road.

Because of the old style equipment, this park isn't recommended for babies and toddlers. Older kids would do ok with it.

The playground equipment is set way back from the road with Skogen field before it. There is a small modern play structure with a slide, a wooden play structure with a metal slide, a swing set with three regular and one baby swing, and a metal climbing structure. The park also has an open shelter, a one hoop basketball court, and a sand baseball field.

Holland Park is located off McHugh road behind the Town of Holland's town hall building. There is a good sized parking lot far enough away from the play structures to give a bit of a buffer zone. The park itself is quite large and spread out with two open shelters and a building with bathrooms. There was a bubbler on the side of the bathroom building but it was removed when I visited recently.

Near the large shelter is a set of swings with two regular swings, three baby swings, and a chair swing. On another side of the shelter is the large sandbox, rocking toys, and digging toys. The baseball fields are behind the shelter. Farther out is a long cement tunnel partially buried underground for kids to crawl through and those toys where you can talk in one and the sound comes out the other. Then there's two climbing structures, each with multiple slides and a set of three tire swings. Near those is a smaller open shelter.

The park has some wonderful views of neighboring fields as it's up high above the road. It is a bit scary having that hill so close to the play areas, though. There isn't a lot of shade at this park outside of the shelters but the smaller shelter is near enough to the play areas to sit at the picnic tables and still keep an eye on the kids.