Olympus Park, Encinitas, CA 92024
Hours: Monday-Sunday (Dusk to Dawn)
Restrooms? No
Playground Surface? Rubber and mulch
Parking Lot? No. Street parking only
Gated/Fenced? No
Overview
Olympus Park is such a unique and incredible park. Located in the city of Encinitas, this park offers up so many different things for kids to do and the fact that there are so many other amazing places to visit close by is a huge bonus. The first thing that visitors will notice upon walking up to the park is the huge synthetic lawn hill used for sliding. Although other park goers usually leave cardboard behind, visitors should make sure to bring some with them just in case. Kids and even adults will have a blast sledding down the hill time and time again.
So many things in this park just jump out at you. The skate park and zipline above it are attention grabbers. At the top of the sledding hill is a fort play structure with a massive tunnel slide coming down the sledding hill. Yet another attention grabber. One of the last things that additionally sticks out is the super cool cube net climber. The playground also boasts two, super fast, concrete slides. Olympus park also features two dog parks, a separate playground above the main one and gazebo and picnic areas. This park is an absolute blast and will keep families and children occupied for a good chunk of the afternoon.
Features
Two separate play areas, including an area above the main playground that is a bit hidden
Main Play area
- Synthetic lawn sledding area (bring cardboard just in case there isn’t any left over here).
- Fort play structure with a spider web climbing net on the inside and a cargo net that leads to a massive tunnel slide
- Huge cube net climber
- 2 incredibly fast concrete slides
- Zipline
- Carousel net spinner and tire swing
- Covered gazebo with 4 picnic tables
Upper Play Area
- Gazebo with 4 round picnic tables
- 2 mom and me swings, a spinner and blue and red wooded picnic tables
- Very good sized lawn area and walking path
- Reflexology path where visitors can walk along stones to hit different pressure points in their feet (a plaque shows visitors the different pressure points in the foot).
Other Amenities
- Awesome skate park and half basketball court
- 2 separate, side by side, fenced dog parks. One for small dogs and one for large dogs
Scout’s Story
Our recently turned 2 year old daughter, Scout, has now been in remission for a little over 2 months. At the end of last month Scout’s central line was removed from her chest and things continue to head in an upwards direction as our family regains some normalcy after watching Scout battle stage 4 cancer for the past year. We wanted to decompress a little bit as a family and decided to take a short 3 day trip to San Diego to check out some parks and museums and to just watch Scout enjoy life.
It’s hard to believe that the last time we were in San Diego was exactly four months ago and we were a lot more limited as to what we could do with Scout. Scout had just finished up her P.E.T scans at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and we were awaiting the results of the scans to inform us of our next steps in her fight.
Three months later and we find ourselves heading back to San Diego, but this time with Scout’s tumors having been removed and her officially being in remission
Scout’s Day at Olympus Park
After getting an early start to make our drive towards San Diego, we elected to make the drive a little easier on Scout by making a few fun stops along the way. After stopping at Canyon View Park in San Clemente, earlier in the morning we made our way towards Olympus Park in Encinitas. We pulled up and Scout, like usual, took off for the playground. Olympus Park is so neat with a huge tunnel slide coming from a fort like treehouse.
Scout was drawn to this area but was a bit intimidated by the size of the slide so she instead chose to slide down the massive hill in front of it, which was lined with artificial grass. Another dad had a piece of cardboard and was sliding down with his kids before he offered it to Scout and let us know they were getting ready to leave. This began an uncountable amount of times of my wife and I taking turns to follow Scout to the top of the hill to slide down. Finally Scout decided she wanted to try out the big tunnel slide and coerced her mom into taking her down it.
Our last stop would be at the concrete slides that were a ton of fun and super fast.
Knowing that we still had stops at the San Diego Botanic Garden and the Scripps Aquarium before checking in at our hotel near Balboa Park, we decided it was time to head out. We were pleasantly surprised at how amazing we found Olympus Park to be and will absolutely make this a park that we stop at when we are in the area in the future.
