This is one of those things which is not immediately obvious but contains a ton of useful information: the Bend Parks and Rec site has a listing of all parks in the city area. For awhile now, I was interested in the fact that Google Maps shows the names and locations of all the known parks, but I wanted more info, and found the Parks and Rec listing.

But a couple of things with that. I don’t think the Parks and Rec listing is fully up to date—at least, based on some discrepancies between Google Maps and P&R. For instance, Google Maps shows "Skyliner Summit Park", but that doesn’t show up on the P&R list anywhere.

On the other hand, Google doesn’t show Foxborough Park, and P&R does. So it’s not clear who’s the most authoritative.

Another interesting thing: P&R has an "interactive map" of the parks, tied to their listings. However, the "interactive" part of this map is a bit limited—it’s simply a clickable image map. In this day and age, I want to see the Google Maps functionality built into a true interactive map. Or at least, the P&R map should highlight on the image where a park is when you roll over the text listing (go to the page and you’ll see what I mean).

Overall, between Parks & Rec and Google Maps, there’s a pretty comprehensive directory of Bend parks available. Now if they could only be organized and merged in an easily-searchable single location…