These are many of my favorites as well, though for stilts I used the Hi-C cans (or V8 cans, whichever we had on hand) and twine. Limited the height since mom strictly forbade stacking the cans (kill joy, I know) but still tons of fun to clomp around on. We played kick the can in the street during the summer. As for the underground bunker, well we had a canyon just out the back gate of our yard, complete with caves, indian footholds (can you still call them that?) fallen logs and any number of other things that made for amazing forts. Most common scenario? Well, the intrepid explorers from Star Trek exploring a new world, of course. :)

Ah, the can-stilt variation...a separate but equal answer. We found discarded paint cans worked well, especially if the bail was intact. However, we would inevitably decide that the lids were better employed as flying saucers (pre-frisbee era).

I forgot that you were blessed with that great New Mexican landscape for your playground. What a wonderful setting for child's play (and it's not too shabby for grownup's play, either).

If I can at all swing it, should we ever actually have kids, I intend to see to it that they get to experience playing in canyons. There is seriously nothing better for the imagination.

Tally another vote for kick the can. For some reason, it was always more exotic than mere hide and seek.

Ice plant skimming! We spent a year in Monterey, CA when I was just starting elementary school, and the hills were covered in ice plant, an aloe-esque ground cover that was wonderfully slippery (and stained any white surface it touched). We would go down the hills on disc skimmers, sleds, cardboard boxes, and ultimately our PF Flyers.

The playground of my elementary school would freeze over in the winter. I think the fire dept opened a hydrant each winter just to be sure there was good ice. Get up a good bit of speed on your bike before hitting the ice and see how far you could get before falling. Because you won't make it all the way across...

A vacant lot near the train station was instrumental in my early cycling life. Big dirt hills and lots of loose gravel made for jumps, speed and sneak attacks. Bonus points for spraying gravel without using the brakes.

I did the flattened-can-skid, too! And the bunker - ours was in the pile of dirt dug from the foundation of a new home. We wanted to make it a tiger trap (with spikes at the bottom) but some safety-conscious person among us talked us out of it.

Bret, I would think that your skimming wouldn't be too healthy for the ice plants! My recollection is that they're pretty prolific, so maybe it wasn't a big deal.

Brian, I don't recall ever seeing -- much less riding on -- ice when I was a kid. But that sounds exactly like the kind of thing all the guys in our neighborhood would have tried, given the opportunity.

...some safety-conscious person...

Man, there's one in every crowd. It was probably a girl, wasn't it? ;-)

We did the stilt thing too, and dug forts in the dirt (we also heaved large rocks at each other in games of "war"). We also made good use of the elementary school playground equipment, which (speaking of OSHA concerns) included a "slide" made only of two long steel pipes but no slide bottom (the way this worked was you draped your arms around the two poles and slid down in the hanging position, body dangling below the poles; when your feet hit the ground, your arms were immediately released from the poles and your face was planted in the sand; tooth loss and busted lips were common). 8-}

And then we lived in the country where we had a long steep gravel hill that culminated in a large ditch/ravine/wooded area. We rode our bikes down the hill and (assuming we didn't lose it on the ride down the gravel hill) jumped off of our bikes just before the ditch and let it fly. Whoever's bike flew the furthest into the woods "won."

Gwynne, are you sure that contraption was a slide, and not some relic from an industrial application like, say, a meat packing plant?

I love the description of your bike event. Good thing you guys always wore helmets, right? ;-)

I'm glad I can say I've done something on this list! I did the stilt thing!

Helmets?

*gasp* You mean to say that you made it to adulthood without wearing a helmet?!

I'll bet Rachel had a helmet, even for her stilt adventures. ;-)

Rachel probably wore a seat belt her whole life also. ;-)

Yes, Kiwis are well-known for their safety conscientiousness. We would do well to emulate their model in that area.

Only one thing can suffice to be the ultimate backyard experience.....BB Guns. I honed my Sharpshooter skills for the army with BB Guns. We got expecially good a knocking locust out of trees. The perfect shot was right behind the head...they'd fall w/o a movement. Anywhere else they would buzz and flutter around....perfect bait for dogs. You could hear them buzzing as they went down the dog's gullet.

Right behind BB Guns, of course, were firecrackers.

I never had a BB gun. ("You'll shoot your eye out!") But we did build quite a few rubber band guns with clothes pins.

You were probably kinder to the locusts than us, though, as we'd catch 'em and tie a thread to one leg and fly 'em in circles like those model airplanes.