January 29th - Fanno Creek Greenway Trail (route 1)

It was raining today but we did not wimp out and walk the mall. Yay us! We did take a paved and relatively short path but it was one in our “Walk There” book so we can check another one off the list. And unlike the mall we didn't have to walk past the oh-so-tempting Cinnabon, so bonus points there.

This is the section of the FCGT that runs from Garden Home Rec Center down to 92^nd and back, an easy (and flat!) 2.3 miles. It runs behind a few residential areas, through a few wooded areas, past a golf course, over a creek...and did I mention that it's flat? And paved? Our feet got a little (sopping) wet and I discovered that hubby's rain coat is water resistant, not waterproof, but for a rainy day this path was a good choice. Long enough for the coat to get clammy but not so long as to get soaked.

There are four separate sections of the Fanno Creek trail listed in the book, and we'll probably be walking more of them as we head into our wet Oregon spring. The entire trail, from Garden Home to Tualatin City Park, is about 15 miles and one of these days we'll walk the whole thing. Not anytime soon and we'll have to arrange for pickup at the other end because I will not be turning around and walking back to the car. Fifteen miles is ambitious, thirty is just insane. Marathon runners would roll their eyes at this but I think it's pretty clear by this point that I'm not a marathon runner!

To sum up, this is a pleasant walk, easily accessible and almost impossible to get lost on – important for us, obviously. The book says to start north of the parking lot and we had to take a minute to think about which way was north, but we figured it out pretty quickly. In the interests of full disclosure we did take a wrong turn once, mostly because we were focusing on our conversation instead of the trail but were back on track in under a minute. It's pretty hard to deviate from this one, even if you're paying very little attention to where you're going. We may revisit this one some other rainy day when we need to get out walking but don't want to go too far.

Photos from Fanno Creek Greenway Trail - Route One

The parking lot at the Garden Home Rec center. You can see our island blue truck way at the other end, yes, we could have parked closer to the trail.

The start of the multi-use trail (did not see one horse today though)

Beautiful trail to walk on!

long stretch of the trail, nicely fenced and lots of greenery (must be all that Oregon rain!)

Part of the Fanno Creek Trail, many signs like this along the way

Both Julie and I thought this was a great idea to control water run off and prevent erosion. This was layered burlap, rock and plants in different tiers.

One of 2 wooden bridges we crossed

Yup, this is the second wooden bridge.

Part of Fanno Creek

Where the trail ends, at 92nd ave.

For those of you who aren't sure where 92nd is, it's the road that runs between Burgerville and DQ (over by Taco Del Mar).

We both thought the 2 gate system looked cool (there is a road that runs between)

Chicken coop that we saw on the walk back and honestly, this was probably the one thing that we stopped and talked the most about (wonder if my husband will make an additional coop for our yard?)

Monday, Jan 22nd - Murase Plaza to Wilsonville Memorial Park

Super duper über majorly cold this morning. For us wimpy Oregonians, anyway – I'm sure snowier states would laugh mockingly but we're used to more temperate weather here. And if it's going to be in the 20's it should be snowing instead of the freezing fog. Snow is fun, freezing fog is just nasty. Fortunately Katje is a braver soul than I am (and a much better driver) so off we went down the frozen highway to Wilsonville. Interestingly, I-5 was mostly clear and not bad until right around Elligsen Road, where the landscape turned completely white and traffic had to slow down because of the tiny ice particles falling out of the sky and blowing all over the icy highway, then about a mile later everything got better again. Even Oregon weather has no clue what to do when it's this cold!

We started out at Murase Plaza, as per the instructions in our “Walk There” book, which involved parking in the lot, walking to the Plaza then back past the parking lot to the start of the path.  This parallels a little creek gully and comes out on the road circling the playing fields. We turned left down the road and fortunately spotted the smallish sign pointing the way to the dog park shown on our map. Past the dog park the trail splits. To the left is a nice wooden bridge that looks like it should be the main path. It's not. Upon discovering that this path ended at a residential area we returned to the real main path and continued until we hit a three-way fork.

I'm beginning to suspect that we're a bit deficient in the map-reading department, because looking at the City of Wilsonville's park map upon coming home, we should have gone left. Looking at the map in our book, we decided instead to take the middle fork, which looked more well travelled than the left and didn't lead toward the playing fields like the right. Our chosen path wandered around in the woods and did connect with the other after a bit, but I think we missed a viewpoint along the way. Probably it had a sign saying something significant about the area, but we likely wouldn't have stopped anyway because we were letting Katje's labradoodle set the pace and he was going at excited dog speed.

A hard turn to the right at the “private property” fence and we were back on the field-circling road, not quite believing that we'd reached the end of the trail (we even doubled back a bit to make sure). Back up the gully path to the main park, where we did stop to admire the antique barn and read the plaques about it. My favorite bit of info was that it was built by Gustave Stein and his son Kenny. Not Karl or Heinrich or some other good German name. Kenny. There was some other info about founding Wilsonville and about other barns in the area, but I was distracted by Kenny and missed most of it.

Because of our wrong turn we probably didn't go the whole 3.2 miles the book calls it, but our “shortcut” really didn't cut much off so we're marking this one as done. Otherwise Katje would probably drag me out again this week to check another one off, and it's supposed to start raining tomorrow. The overnight temperature the next couple of nights is still supposed to be below freezing, though, so we're keeping our fingers crossed for snow!

Photos from Murase Plaza to Wilsonville Memorial Park

My (Katje's) labradoodle, Harley, went with us today

Where the "start" of the trail is....we had to backtrack to start here

The turn-around by the parking lot, thought is looked neat with all the little grass clumps

The side of the giant slide/dome in the park- on the right side you can see the steps going up

The giant slide....was way to cold for us to try it out, maybe this summer???

The book says we will cross over a creek to get to the rest of the trail, this is the creek we found. We were expecting a little bit bigger creek but still thought this was pretty.

If you get to this bridge, you are going the wrong way (if you are following the trail in the book). This leads to a residential area, not more trails.

Had to take this one, was too cool to pass up.



The Willamette River is in the background



Harely really wanted to go in the water, he kept trying to find a way down.

The boat dock

Another photo of the river, which was very calm today.

One of the picnic shelters at the park (would be a great place for a family reunion!)

One the many barns at Wilsonville Memorial Park

So, this time we took feet pictures, I think this one turned out pretty cool. We even got the dog in it!

The Old Stein/Boozier Barn

Really cool barn door handle...I never knew our friend made these (okay, she doesn't really, but since its the same name, we can pretend)

This is under the barn, where they kept chickens and root vegetables

Inside the barn, looks much nicer than under it!

Our drive home looked much like the drive there, but only in this one area, the rest of the freeway was clear. Strange Oregon weather needs to make up its mind!

Wednesday, January 16th- Hoyt Arboretum Loop

It was bothering Katje that by getting lost on Monday we didn't get to check off any of the hikes in our books, so today we decided to do hike #1 in our “Easy Day Hikes” book, the Hoyt Arboretum Loop. For those of you who haven't been there, this is a truly gorgeous park up above the zoo filled with all kinds of trees, from cherry to redwood and everything in between, and they've labeled the groves so you know what you're looking at. It also has very clearly marked trails so we couldn't repeat Monday's mistake and get lost.

We started out on the Oak trail, which was a bit muddier than we expected due to the high volume of runners we assume must have been there earlier that morning (we were late due to kids' dentist appointments). After a bit we came to our nemesis, the Wildwood trail, with a sign saying we were only 1.6 miles from Pittock Mansion. Darn it anyway, we were walking a trail from the book and “had” to leave it for another day. We happily turned the opposite direction and continued down Wildwood to the Redwood trail and back around to the Visitors' Center. There was some upping and downing but nothing too terrible, and the mud was pretty easy to avoid as long as you walked to one side of the trail. Probably worse when it's been raining but we've been experiencing some unseasonable not-rainy weather so the mud was all from freezing fog and ice melt. It was really, really cold up there.

On a side note, Katje broke down and got a jogging jacket with heat retentive but moisture-wicking fabric and those little built in thumb thingies that keep your sleeves pulled down. (I was very envious of the thumb thingies as I kept getting blasts of cold air up my sleeves.) She's usually the cold one but said the jacket kept her pretty toasty, while I was freezing in my T-shirt, thermal and fleece. The opposite of how we usually are. I might have to go looking for one – preferably without the bright yellow side panels and purple stitching, but I have to admit Katje looks very jogger-ly in hers. Next stop: spandex pants and a fanny pack!

Hike #2 in our book is Macleay to Pittock, which we attempted on Monday, and #3 is the Wild Cherry/Alder trails loop which we completed about 2/3 of – everything except the Alder trail part. So we'll have to go back for those. Thankfully we're not held to doing them in order because I'm not sure I'm up to another slog around Forest Park anytime soon. Good news, though, is that when we do go we'll have a much better idea of where we're going and hopefully won't get lost again!

Photos from the Hoyt Arboretum walk

Hike #1 out of our book, Best Day Hikes in Portland

A quick stop by the Memorial before our walk

The trails, which are marked really well

By the Visitor Center (all the rocks looked really cool)

Start of the Oak Trail (wonder where its name came from...)

Some of the ice we encountered today

I now feel compelled to take a photo of us on each of the trails (and yes, the yellow stripes on my jacket are a little bright)

The Redwood Deck

A view of the Redwood canopy

They even label the trees so you know what you are looking at

Oh, Wildwood trail, how we love you :)

This was at the end of out walk, would be a beautiful place to hold a family reunion, wedding, etc.....

Monday, January 14th - Lost in Forest Park (sort of)

We started out today with the intention of “walking” (hiking) from Lower Macleay Park to Upper Macleay, and possibly on to Pittock Mansion. So much for the no hills thing. The path starts out along Balch Creek, which babbles happily alongside the trail and makes for a pleasant walk. There's some uphilling, and it was really cold, so we agreed to make it to Upper Macleay and reassess. Maybe finish today's walk at a nice warm mall. Preferably one with a Cinnabon in it. At .6 miles out (according to the book) we reached the shell of an old stone house. At that point the trail split in two. There was an “Upper Macleay Park” sign pointing to the right, so up we went. A word of advice: don't follow that sign. The lefthand path would have brought us to the park in .2 miles. After a while it started to feel like we'd gone a LOT further than .2 miles, but I thought that maybe I was wrong about the .6 so we kept on going.

Eventually we reached a junction with Aspen Trail (I looked it up after we got home and found out we were .86 miles from the stone house at that point) but decided to keep on with what we now knew (thanks to the signs) was the Wildwood Trail. If we stuck with the same trail, we reasoned, we couldn't possibly get lost because we could just retrace our way back to the stone house. So we kept going. And going. And going. At this point we'd figured out that we were not going to reach Upper Macleay Park anytime soon but didn't want to stop and turn around without some easily identifiable landmark so we could say, “we made it this far”. We finally met a very nice jogger who told us that we could continue along Wildwood to the Wild Cherry trail and from there down to the trailhead at Leif Erikson Road, which would put us out at Thurman Street. God bless that nice jogger lady. Without her we'd probably have stayed on Wildwood - so we wouldn't get lost – and would likely still be wandering around up there. Our hope renewed by having a clear escape plan, we kept going until we hit the Wild Cherry trail. There was a sign for the path pointing in both directions, but we chose down. Wild Cherry, as promised, dropped us onto Leif Erikson, which ended at Thurman Street. This is a beautiful street to walk down. The houses are huge and gorgeous and have really cool garages with carriage doors. And lots of steps. Big, beautiful houses that I would love to live in, if it weren't for the thought of carrying all my groceries up those steps.

We'd figured that it would be fairly easy to find our way back once we returned to civilization. Lower Macleay Park was pretty close to the Montgomery Park building, an easily spotted landmark. Except that the view was blocked by all those big pretty houses. With no real plan other than “downhill”, we walked down Thurman until we came to a bridge. Wouldn't it be cool, we said, if this was the bridge we passed under on our way out of the park? And it was! Hallelujah, we found the car!

I came home to see if I could figure out how far we went, and between the map of Forest Park, which gave me the distance from the stone house to Aspen Trail, our 'Easy Day Hikes' book, which says that it is 2.6 miles between Aspen and Wild Cherry, another .9 to Leif Erikson and .3 to the trailhead, and Google maps which gives me .7 from the trailhead to the top of the bridge...we walked a grand total of 5.96 miles. Holy cow. Unfortunately, this wasn't in either of our books so we're going to have to come back and do the Macleay to Pittock hike another time, but now we are sure that we can do it! After all, it's only 2.6 miles in each direction...with an 850 foot altitude gain...well, maybe we should wait a while on that one. Whenever we decide to do it, though, we'll be sure to go left at the stone house.

Things to keep in mind: if it's been raining the trail will be muddy. If it's super cold, like today, the trail will be icy; either way, good hiking boots will be a big plus. The trail is very secluded so bring a friend for protection – and encouragement. And to talk with to let the bears and cougars know you're there so they have time to run away. I'm kidding! I have no clue what lives up there; we only saw a few birds.

For our “getting there” tip, if you're following the directions in the “Easy Day Hikes” book, don't try to turn from Vaughn onto 28^th. It doesn't go through. Turn onto 27^th (just before Montgomery Park), then onto Upshaw. The rest of the directions are fine.

I looked up the stone house, which is called the Danforth Balch house after the man who first put a claim on the land in that area. His is an interesting story, as he was the first man legally executed in the Oregon Territory after he shot his 16 year old daughter's new husband. More things I didn't know about Portland!

Photos from Lower Macleay Park and Wildwood Trail in Forest Park

The start of our walk in Lower Macleay Park

Beautiful sounds from the creek



The Stone House, which was owned by Danford Balch, the original owner of the land in the Lower Macleay Park area, and he was the first man legally hung in Oregon.



Uphill climb on the Wildwood trail

Trees!

Map of the area...where we were is not where we needed to be to get to the Pittock Mansion

Some kind of nest, not sure what bird lives here but so glad we did nto encounter it!

We can see the other trail heading down! We are no longer lost!

At the bottom of the trail, on Leif Erikson Drive, almost back to a residential area

Great walk today, but a little longer than we had thought. So many trails through Forest Park....

Beautiful garages we passed on the way to our car

Look, its the Thruman street Carriage Barn (no carriage but they did have a suzuki)

Ok, took this one because it's a purple house!!!! Wonder if David would let me paint our house purple?