March 2, 2012:
I don't think we ever cared about the Park.
We loved the Zoo, naturally. And the epic fast food stand facing the Natural History Museum's huge 1915 fig tree. Later the Model Railroad Museum caught my imagination, but I believe that was me by myself.
That fast food stand, though. I recall it was the first where you could get a twist cone, that is a frosty that was half vanilla, half chocolate. We'd bike across town to go there. Today The Village Grill is at that location, but it's evolved, the building now faces east when it used to face south, you no longer go inside to place your order, and there's more seating. Still have the twist cones? Dunno, the lines were so long that I blew it off.
Was there any other attraction there capable of moving us?
I don't think so. Even then it seemed a backwater: a sleepy military town's pretense to culture it didn't possess. Having since experienced real museums and genuine galleries around the world you have to congratulate those kids for their intuition.