Jo and Johnny Finch, stalwart friends and volunteers for Virginia State Parks, are also Friends of Lake Anna State Park (Jo is President the Friends Group and Johnny is President of the Virginia Association for Parks). With Lake Anna their "home" park, they spend a good amount of time there. When they became grandparents they couldn't wait to share their park with Megan.
They took toddler Megan over to the Lake Anna State Park playground and realized there was a problem. All of our play equipment was designed for older children. In fact, systemwide, we had virtually nothing for toddlers. While most park visitors would have said "oh well," that phrase is not in the Finch's vocabulary. They did some research and found some great toddler play equipment with a train theme. Many of our state parks have historical links to trains (nine of them). So the Megan Project was born and the Virginia Association for Parks put together a fund raising campaign.
The Friends of Lake Anna State Park went into super fundraising mode and had a significant chunk of money raised but not enough for the project. All Recreation, Inc., the equipment vendor, offered a generous discount to facilitate getting one of these play sets installed. The Virginia Association for Parks (VAFP) provided a bridge loan to the Friends of Lake Anna State Park so the equipment could be installed before the season got under away. More donations are needed to this project (project #3 in the list) to pay this loan back.
After a successful Virginia Association for Parks spring meeting, the Finch's came home in time to witness the installation of the equipment at Lake Anna State Park.
The finished product is great. Enjoy this slide show:
Johnny Finch emailed me Wednesday evening the photos and news that the train play area had been installed. I want to share with you his description as to what happened:
You need to know that as the "yellow tape"- "don't cross" was installed, two moms and a dad with multiple kids in the toddler age range and one kid in a basket (below the toddler age range) appeared on the site. They had been hovering in the parking lot waiting for the construction activities to cease. So, the installation actually cut into their normal daily family time at the park.
The Moms told us that they visit the park almost daily and that they viewed the train as a "Godsend" because the existing equipment was too advanced for their kids. We virtually had to physically restrain the toddlers from using the train because the concrete pilings needed a couple of days to cure. The parents were understanding, the kids were not.
We promised the kids that if they would not use the train until Saturday, the train would be "theirs" at that time.
The Lake Anna State Park Toddler Play Area will open Saturday, March 27th. Significant fund raising is still needed to pay for the Lake Anna Toddler Play Area and to raise money for the other eight parks. The total project is in the $300,000 range. You can select any of the projects to donate to at the VAFP website. The site accepts all major credit cards and Pay Pal. All donations are tax exempt under IRS code 501(c)(3). The VAFP will send you a letter acknowledging your donation for your files.
Megan will be visiting Jo and Johnny soon and I am sure she will be very happy about this new addition to Lake Anna State Park. Won't you consider helping get this project expanded to our other locations?
