Monday, March 4th - Lower Macleay Park to Pittock Mansion, take 2

We decided that today we'd take a second go at the Lower Macleay Park to Pittock Mansion walk. We attempted this once already in January, took a wrong turn and got horribly lost in Forest Park (there's a blog entry about it, if you're interested) so we were determined that today we would make it to Pittock Mansion because there was not going to be a third chance at this walk. We would either check this one off our list today or rip the page out of the book and pretend it was never there.

We started out again along Balch Creek, and this time when we came to the stone house we went left instead of right. We'd have taken great satisfaction in ignoring the sign that pointed us the wrong way last time, but it's been removed. We followed the (correct, this time!) trail as it continued alongside the creek and switchbacked up to Upper Macleay Park. Here the trail crosses Cornell Road and continues uphill (from this point forward just assume that everything is uphill) to a junction with the Wildwood Trail. The book says to continue on Upper Macleay Trail, so we hung a left and kept climbing. A few weeks from now the Trilliums will probably be blooming and it will be gorgeous, but Forest Park is always pretty and with the sun shining and the trees starting to bud, it was a beautiful day for a walk. Which makes it doubly sad that I was so busy creaking and gasping my way up the trail that I wasn't giving it the attention it deserved. Those three weeks of cookie moving and lame walks were probably not the best way to lead into a hike like this!

Eventually we reached another crossroads with the Wildwood Trail. The signs this time were very clear – the Upper Macleay trail continued forward, while Wildwood ran to the right and left. Since the book mentioned no detours we continued on Macleay...until we hit a residential street. The trail did continue, but as Lower Macleay Trail. Hm. We pulled out the book (which we've been bringing on all of our walks since the last time we got lost) and started trying to figure out where we went wrong. Once again a jogger came to the rescue (huge deja vu moment here!) and set us straight – to get to Pittock we should have turned onto Wildwood at the junction. Back we went (fortunately we hadn't gotten too far off track), and were soon once again heading uphill toward Pittock. The rest of the way up was pretty much just gasping and creaking through a series of steep switchbacks but at last (at last!) we came out in the Pittock Mansion parking lot.

If you've never been to Pittock you should definitely go, Built in 1914 by the owner of the Oregonian, it was saved from demolition in 1964, fully restored and opened as a museum. We wandered around the grounds for a few minutes and admired the views of the city, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, then headed back down the trail. It was a little muddier on the way down due to the melting ice dripping from the trees but it was definitely faster downhill (we didn't get lost, which helped) and before long we were back at the car. Tired and muddy, but we made it this time- 3.8 miles out and back with an 850 foot elevation gain, and now we can check it off our list. Finally!