Well, this has been an interesting couple of weeks, by which I mean that every time I have stepped outside in the past couple of weeks, I have had approximately fifty gallons on water promptly dumped onto my head from the wrathful god that dwells in the sky above. Yes indeed, it's the rain season, and in the middle of talking about today's playground, I found myself feeling soggier than the town boozehound's pants after a long night in the saloon.

Actually my pants specifically were about that wet - I still had to go down the slides after all, rain or no rain. The mention of a saloon too, was not just for the sake of throwing a synonym for a bar, a pub, a tavern or a taphouse somewhere in there to keep things interesting. Instead, I'm here to bring you, at long last, an actual themed park, this time based around the old west, which should be obvious considering it's... in the title.

So get your dueling pistol and wait for sundown, because this playground ain't big enough for the two of us.

Huh, well actually maybe I'm wrong. This place is pretty big. Probably one of the biggest thus far this round, not counting the Park by the Hill with its large area filled with approximately no actual content. This one's got a lot going on, at least at first glance. The flooring here is also a first for this round, made of shredded tire. As tends to be the case with shredded tire, it is light and bouncy, making for a great cushion with none of the potential discomfort that could be caused by getting a rock in your shoe (or worse, a splinter).

As usual though, let's have a look at the surroundings.

I don't really know what I was expecting with this little rocker car thing. I don't think I've seen a single one of these that I even fit in so far, but this is maybe the worst offender. All the floppiness of the depressed frog from last time, but with absolutely none of the charm that comes naturally with being a rusted, poorly maintained red frog with an expression of pain plastered across its froggy face.

But MAN did this place instantly flip my entire first impression on its head with this spinning ring. I haven't seen one of these before, but holy shit. You just sit on this thing and push a little bit, and you just go spinning around. I don't even know how this thing actually functions by the laws of physics though, to be honest they seriously need to invest in these things for electricity generation or something. Perpetual motion machines are real, and whatever madman designed this place invented them. Playground designers: 1, scientists: 0.

Speaking of perpetual motion machines though, hey look, it's another one of those egg-cup lookin' things from... god it was probably the first time I did these. It works the same as the one from way back then too, you plant your ass inside, and it just spins you around until you throw up. Great fun for all, I'm very happy to have found another one of these, besides the fact that this one had a nice pool of water at the bottom too, to ensure my ass was nice and damp by the time I was done.

Then there's the swings. Look, I ain't got anything to say about these, they swing, back and forth even, at a reasonable speed! Two normal swings, two baby swings, all completely normal and functional.

This playground is split into two "parts", kind of. One is much smaller than the other, clearly meant for little kids, so let's take a look at that first.

These monkeybars that lead to the smaller zone are, sadly, next to impossible to interact with meaningfully. I stand taller than these things, by like two feet too. I could try to like, get up on top of them of try to walk along them like that bridge from last time but without the reassuring handrails, but I won't because I really, really value my scrotal integrity.

The main way of getting up to the small area are these stairs though, which are pretty normal, exce-

oh fuck is that a meme wheel

alright let's take a brief aside to look at this thing. shockingly, at least as far as meme wheels go, it's nice and smooth, spins pretty well. We had another "good" meme wheel earlier this garrison, and I'd say this is about the same. While you'll see some cool western stuff later on this playground, I personally think it was a bit of a waste to not make this smaller area look like an old carriage or something. I know those were like, horse drawn, but come on - kids don't know you didn't use a wheel to drive them, it'd be an easy roleplay.

Also attached to this small area are a slide, some musical features, and this climbing wall, leading to some stepping stones that connect to the main structure.

The slide is short, but it was moist enough that I still got some good speed out of it. Entirely because of the water, mind you, but still. The music features, meanwhile, are... mostly functional. The xylophone works pretty well, with the added bonus of potentially acting like a jail cell if you want to play around that way. I've seen better than these drums though, hitting them mostly just sounds like beating on some plastic.

These stepping stones are pretty neat though, nothing incredible, but what I really like is the attention to detail on the ground, making it appear like a bridge over water. Speaking of water, the rain made walking on these into a truly harrowing experience, likely not what the original designer intended. It's a good excuse to start on the other side though, so I guess I'll do that, starting with another perimeter walk.

The stepping stone bridge thing leads onto this set of faux-stone stairs. These are nothing new, but they are always a nice addition, being more interesting both visually and in a tactile sense than normal stairs. These were fucking lethal in the rain and I almost wiped out, but they add some great flavor after the bunch of bland junk I've been running into so far.

Underneath them is this little bench, a pretty normal feature in the playgrounds so far, but at least this one is made to look like worn wood. Again, not the most convincing effect, but it beats the standard black plastic any day. On the opposite side of the wall across from the bench though is a rather interesting feature. You've got this wheel, which for once is not part of the meme variety. You can give the little arrow in the middle a spin, and it'll point at one of the surrounding icons.

Initially, this feature (while sort of unique) confused me, but I realized something - around the playground itself, you can spot these emblems on the wheel in various places. That means that this thing is almost surely meant to be used to figure out someone's starting position in a game of tag or hide and seek or something, if not some other creative purpose that only the disturbed mind of a child can conjure. While not a fascinating activity on its own, this wheel is a useful utility when it comes to designing activities, and I appreciate its existence.

If you want to play a little game, try to find as many of these emblems as you can in my pictures. They're probably not all there, but some of them are.

There's a few other methods of getting onto the playground too, which are all... great! You've got this log you can climb up, with stepping stones that connect to another, larger faux-rock climbing structure, as well as a series of stumps to climb up as well. I'm really loving the commitment to interesting, more "natural" features in this one as opposed to just resigning itself to being a bunch of plastic tubing.

By the stumps there's a section of the flooring that was torn up, but it seems like, judging by the fact that it's specifically been cordoned off, they are actually planning on repairing it instead of just leaving the damage there. Maintenance? On a playground? Genuinely surprised.

And if you want to be a piece of shit, you can ignore all the cool things to climb up and take the stairs instead. Make sure to ring the bell to the left before you do, so everyone else on the playgrounds knows that you're a complete fucking weenie.

Alright, time to head up onto the main structure now, where you'll find...

Wow, a classic wobbly bridge AND a rope bridge? In the same playground? It must be fuckin' christmas morning in here. Both of these are pretty good at what they do, which is admittedly something that isn't hard to do at all provided the feature is present, but I love it anyway. What are the chances, one playground has BOTH of my favorite features on top of a pretty strong theme?

On that note, you've probably noticed that most of the paneling around here is either made to look like wood, or have some kind of window frame you can look out of. This place loves its theming, and has lots of room for creative play on top of that. It'd make a kickass fort, and an absolutely killer place to have a water gun shootout at high noon or some kind of king of the hill or capture the flag game.

Now, how is this gonna disappoint me at the end? The slides, maybe?

No way man, these slides are amazing.

Grain of salt here obviously, the slides are soaking wet, as are my pants, which probably makes them more slippery than they are on a dry day (with dry pants), but like, holy shit. The straight and long slide had me going so fast I went flying off the slide and slid on my ass across the ground for a bit like a slip and slide. Probably the literal best slide of the entire garrison so far.

The spiral slide isn't much worse, though it didn't have me skidding across the ground afterwards. Not too tight of a spiral to where its uncomfortable for longer legs, and rather than being cheap plastic that feels gross, it is metal with some kind of enamel finish. It makes it slick and fun, though I can see it maybe being a safety risk if the paint starts chipping. Luckily that is not the case yet though, so I am not inclined to care.

And that concludes what is without a doubt nearly the objective best playground thus far this time. What can I even give as an example of a negative, the small section of the playground meant for little kids being too small for my decidedly not-little self? The damage to the flooring that seems like it's actually going to get fixed for once? It's jam-packed with neat stuff and features that are hard to find at other playgrounds like that egg cup thing. Not to mention it's got a great theme and loads of aesthetic touches that double as interesting things to play around on like the log or the rock formations.

It's not the biggest, or even the flashiest I've encountered on my multi-year journey, but without a doubt I think that this one is easily the best out of the ones I've done so far this time. For the first time this garrison, I'm giving this one a...

9/10

I see the skull, hat, cactus, and a couple in the distance that're too hard to distinguish

Genuinely impressed by actual maintenance on a public playground

yo this one seems sick tbh

what the fuck, this one rules. i'm really curious about that spinning ring thing, never seen anything like that before but you make it sound like a lot of fun.

the tree/rock theming for the ways you get around is REALLY good, i like that a lot. considering that, as you've shown many times in the past, theming is usually kept to one or two aspects of the park, having it played throughout the entire general design for once is awesome.

this one doesn't have EVERYTHING you could want but it seems like a very solid package with the essentials and some unique tricks of its own. a banger.

idk what was with the meme wheel though. i'm with you that they should've used a wagon deal there as much as that doesn't ENTIRELY make sense.

I've seen those spinning rings a bunch, they're cool, def overlapped my own experience using playgrounds