WASILLA, AK -- A new playground going up in Talkeetna this summer will feature the usual playground fare -- swings and slides and monkey bars.

It will also feature items symbolic of the town itself: a grizzly bear tunnel, a bush plane, a climbing wall, even a Volkswagen bus.

"It's just part of Talkeetna's hippie culture, I guess -- a lot of granola crunchers around here," said playground project volunteer Karey Larson.

The children of those granola crunchers and their fellow Talkeetna townsfolk led the design of the playground, under the direction of John Dean, a designer with Leathers and Associates, a company out of Ithaca, N.Y., that specializes in community-built playgrounds.

Read more about the project here.

Other tidbits from the article.

• The Talkeetna project will cost about $150,000, including community-built landscaping that will be led by Planet Earth Playscapes, also out of New York, Larson said.
• The playground committee has raised about $45,000 so far.
• Some of that has come in the way of sponsorships: Matanuska Telephone Association paid for a play telephone system that will allow children to talk to one another over phones that will be set up at various locations in the park. The Talkeetna Bachelor Society paid for the VW bus to be built of recycled plastic wood. The Talkeetna PTA has paid for wood tiles to be painted by children and used to adorn various structural elements within the playground. The playground committee is also selling plastic pickets for a fence that will line the playground perimeter. The pickets run $50 each.
• The project has a web site at http://www.talkeetnaplayground.org/