Little Debbie Park at Dark

We Make A Run For The Sugary Snacks

Evening is upon us by the time we reach Little Debbie Park on the outskirts of Chattanooga, but Little Bean doesn’t care.

“Daddy,” she told me earlier when I argued that we should skip it because it’ll be dark by the time we arrive, “it’s only dark inside because the closed car windows make it darker. It’s actually, like, 50 percent lighter actually outside.”

A reasonable argument for a child desperately wanting to visit a Christmas Tree Cake Sculpture.

We learned of this unusual park thanks to a note from our friend Lydia, and even though Little Bean had yet to actually eat any Little Debbie treats, the idea of a kids park full of Oatmeal Crème Pies, Nutty Buddy Bars and Cosmic Brownies was, as you can imagine, appealing.

The public park is very new. McKee Foods Corporation opened its outdoor park in 2023. Themed around their famous snack line, the park also features a bronze statue by sculptor Alex Paul Loza of their mascot, Debbie.

We were late getting out of Atlanta, hustling to make it to Nashville and way behind. But our bellies were full of Waffle House hash browns, traffic was light and the rain seemed to be calm enough.

I decided to give it a go.

The 10-acre park is situated in a business-park section of Collegedale. The area is wide open, well maintained and well lit from the road side parking areas. But, there is not lighting inside the park itself. And despite Little Bean’s argument in support of light outside the car, the park itself was cloaked in shadows and darkness.

We did tool around on the outskirts, visiting the gazebo and giant Christmas Tree Cake sculpture, but to venture deeper into the park would have required more fortitude than either of us had at that current moment.

“I can hear things out there,” Little Bean said, “but can’t see them. Might be ghosts.”

“Might be,” I agreed.

And so, there we were, my daughter and I, on a dark Tennessee night, wanderers in a dark fiberglass garden, heading away from the rain, heading into the rain, sitting in the cool shadow of an enormous snack - taking a breath, recharging, the evening warm and ringing over with wet air and possibility.

“We’ll come back,” she announced.

Perhaps. Anything is possible.