Sunday in Reinhart and Tussing Parks

Monday, March 22, 2014

I felt like a Sunday in the Parks.  While walking Petey around dawn, I saw that someone had a party in the basketball court on Saturday; trash all over the place.  By the time I got there around 11 AM, there were people playing in the court and the larger trash had been cleaned up.  I gave the man there with his wife and kids a prize and got the little stuff. 

Up by the front entrance, someone had a birthday party in the shelter; they left the Happy Birthday banner along with the rest of their litter.  There were a bunch of big glittery stars and such that I figured to come back and sweep up.  I don’t know that I ever did, because I got involved in the playground.

The playground and the shelters around it had a lot of trash, and when I came back around a short time later, it had more.  It was certainly being well-used at the time.  There was no old trash, so the parks staff keeps it pretty cleaned up.  Still, someone had spread a lot of paper confetti in one area that took a long time to get it all.  

Playgrounds and picnic shelters in Riverside and Reinhart parks would be good places to Super Sponsor.

I had observed a fair bit of trash in West Tussing Park from the pedestrian bridge, and was determined to give it a cleanup, so I drove over and parked in the parking lot at the relatively new east end of the park.  Started in the bio-swale right in front of my truck and then proceeded to the east side of the lot.  There was a lot of small litter in plain sight, some larger farther back in the bushes and next to the fence. 

I found a bunch of lipstick-marked butts in the same place where I had cleaned up what I thought at the time was a place where someone had dumped her ashtray because of all the lipstick butts.  A gentleman I was talking to told me that a lady in a black sports car drives in there every day; eats her lunch; stands outside her car and smokes; and drops the butt.

The litter in East Tussing was, as usual, mostly around the parking lot, tables, and benches by the river.

From there, I proceeded to West Tussing, where the big trash was.  There was some litter around tables and benches, but not as bad as I remember it previously.  I climbed to the top of the rocks under the bridge, and found a piece of sleeping visqueen surrounded by small litter and dirty socks.  Picked up larger litter down the downstream trail and down by the river.  Some was fresh; some had been washed up the steep bank in high water and was hung up in the blackberries debris, very hard to get, but I got it.  

By the time I got to the bridge, I had two full grocery bags and a full bucket to haul up the hill to a trash can.  I strained my left wrist in the process and had to wear cabbage on it all the next day.  I reported some blankets and such upstream, too heavy for me to haul out that day.