Three decades of fun!

It was Sunday afternoon when Mark and Jackie Ashley passed through New Hampton on their way home to the northeast corner of Iowa.
In tow, they had their two grandchildren — Alisha and Allison — who live in Cedar Falls.
“We’ve heard about this park for a long time,” Mark Ashley said, “and since we had the girls with us, we thought we’d check it out.”
As the two granddaughters — one is 5; the other is 7 — played on Mikkelson Park’s Wooden Wonderland, the Ashleys watched and learned a little about the history of what has to be the most popular playground in Chickasaw County.
“You’re here on the day their going to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the park,” they were told.
“We can’t stay that long,” Jackie Ashley said, “but I guarantee you we will be making the stop in New Hampton quite a bit from now on.”
In a way, that’s been an oft-heard story over the years when it comes to the playground that sits just to the southeast of the band shell.
— For more on this story, see the Aug. 18 Tribune