Bethany Creek Park Playground-Hop

The Bethany Creek neighborhood in Northwest Portland has four brand new playground options, all within walking distance from each other.

To enjoy this adventure, I suggest you to start by stopping at the biggest playground in this residential area – the Bethany Creek Park, on NW Marie Way. No parking lot is available, but it is a pretty quiet neighborhood and you can park your car fairly close to the playground. There are some covered tables, and a portable toilet (unfortunately, it is very dirty most of the time), and a basketball court on the other side of the park. The playground area is beautiful, well maintained, and with two different structures with stairs, climbers and slides. Besides that, there is an in-ground slide with climbing walls that my daughter is a huge fan of. ADA surfacing connects this park to the other playgrounds nearby. This paved trail runs along the Bethany Creek and your kids can enjoy it riding a bicycle or a scooter. All the other three playgrounds are on NW Shackelford Rd and you can’t park your car there.

The second stop is at a huge dinosaur skeleton. There is just one bench at this place, good to watch little dinosaur fans enjoy the structure. Then, when you walk toward the road, on the left side you can see the Ulrich Gerber Park with a small climbing structure and a picnic table, and looking to the right is the Orchid playground. In this last playground there are more cool climbing structures – the biggest one my daughter named as the spider web – as well as baby and kids swings. This area has more paved paths that are excellent options for stroller jogging, walks and runs too.