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Health & Fitness

A Short Bike Tour of Mercer Island's Parks

Touring Mercer Island's parks: five bikes, three hours, three playgrounds

On a recent Saturday afternoon, we found ourselves with a few hours to spare and an unexpected blessing of sunshine. Before that, competing schedules, a lack of decent weather, and general inertia had kept our bikes out of commission for many weeks. But we were out of excuses, so we dragged our bikes out of the garage, pumped up the tires, and raised seats to accommodate recent growth spurts. We were ready. 

But where to go?

Our Mercer Island Family Bike Tour

Transporting five bicycles and five people anywhere off the island presents a bit of a logistics challenge, and our time was short. We decided to keep it local and see how many of the island's playgrounds we could visit. The city notes ten parks with playgrounds; we made it to three:

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Mercer Island Parks

- (72nd SE & SE 22nd)

-(70th Ave SE & West Mercer Way)

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- (SE 27th & West Mercer Way)  

Here's a map of our route, starting at the . All told, we put about two miles on the bikes, and much more wear and tear on the play structures. At the end of the ride, we resorted to a motorized assist: an advance team retrieved the car to haul the rest of the group and the bikes home. 

Here's a look at the parks we did make it to:

The Tour

: Sitting atop I-90, the Park on the Lid can offer some fantastic views. Even when the sun is not out, the park boasts two play areas; baseball diamonds; some nice walking and bike paths; and huge grass fields. We visited the smaller playground, near the baseball diamonds. A shiny purple and gold structure recently replaced the old wooden and pipe one. The pachinko-like marble spinner captivated the kids for a bit. Plus, you get the view on a nice day or a covered gazebo on a not-so-nice day.

: The kids call this the "Pirate Ship Park". The ship-themed play structure inspired a marathon session of nautical role-playing, including full-speed excursions "ashore" into the nearby trees.

: Well-named, the Secret Park is a wedge of park near the old on West Mercer Way. Like at the Lid Park, we found a newly-built play structure.  Gone is the small igloo-like playhouse in the woods (which was not nearly as charming as it might sound), in its place are a slide-and-climb unit, swings, and two spinning to!).    

This was a fun way to spend about three hours, but we did run into two challenges about family bike riding on Mercer Island: 

- Many hills, and;

- Few bike paths.

It's hard to avoid the hills. Even on this short ride we had plenty of climbing, and no shortage of complaints, and lots of coasting, with fewer complaints. Our youngest was riding gearless on a coaster bike, which led to a lot of frustrated walking up hills.

Our kids are still learning bicycle street smarts, so we stuck to trails, sidewalks, and side roads as much as possible. As a result, we feel pretty limited about where we could go on the island. The best paths and shoulders run east to west across the North End, basically linking the I-90 bridges. has a bike shoulder lane.  Otherwise, the paths are pretty limited. (Check out the Google bike map for our route again. It labels the paths between the I-90 bridges and a few other short spurts around the island as bike routes. Then there's a dotted line for circling the island on Mercer Way. That's pretty much it for bike routes).  

Still and all, it was a fun way to spend the afternoon. 

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