Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Photos from Denney Road to Scholls Ferry Walk


The start of our walk is at a small parking area and this really cool sculpture (maybe a bike rack?)

Fanno Creek

One of many bridges we see/cross along the way

This trail would be great for kids as well, lots of playstructures to stop and play on.

The Scholls Ferry turn around point (not a very pretty "bridge" to walk under). You can continue on the path but the book says turn around here....

You can't tell, but this is a very cool looking bird. We saw many of them along the walk.

As usual we find some pretty trees on our walk.

Fanno Creek...

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Photos from the Washington Park to Arlington Heights Walk

This is the path we started on. The old street lamps add to the beauty of the area.

I think these are Horsetail ferns. They are all over out here and look really cool.

This is the first set of stairs we encounter on our walk (there are about 39 here)

This is a statue of an Indian Chief (reportedly Chief Multnomah) looking east.

A chair out of a fallen tree, looks like a good place to rest a bit if you needed.

This house looks like it should be in Italy, we both love the arched greenery over the door.

These Steps lead up to a Grotto (we are unable to go up there though). They were built in 1913 as a family picnic spot for the Jorgensons.

A cobblestone path from years past. It was fun to walk on but was really slippery due to the rain.

One of the many beautiful trees we see along the way.

This area is called the "Peanut Bowl" due to its shape and has many beautiful blooming flowers.

44 step staircase through Portuguese Laurel (yes, we walked up these as well)

Both of us loved this house and the surrounding grounds.


This house has roofing materials used for its siding. The house is owned by 2 architects

We take another set of stairs, this time there are 80 of them and the staircase runs in the middle of someones property.

Surprise!!! We find a chicken coop along the way (3 chickens in this one).


We finally enter the International Rose Test Garden (we walk down another 62 steps down to get there)

One of the many beautiful blooming roses (the yellow ones smell the best today).

The Beech Memorial Fountain in the Rose Garden

As we walk out of the Rose Garden and along the path, we come to the Rose Garden Children's Park.


This tree has a strange color of bark on it and it was very smooth.

The Elephant House which still has some of the bars and the Mural on the back wall.

This is a View of the Vista Bridge from Washington Park (just past the Elephant House)

One of 2 Reservoirs at Washington Park. You are no longer able to walk beside it due to the fence they put up during WWII

Cupids Fountain which was an early day "filling station" for horses

These steps (48 of them) run alongside the reservoir

One of the many Washington Park signs


We are now at the Formal entrance to Washington Park (notice the brick work and more stairs)

Yup, we climbed these steps too.




On the Granite Memorial Column (Commemorates the achievements of Lewis and Clark)

Statue of Sacajawea and her baby

At some point these stairs had more vegetation around them (we went down these 56 steps)

More steps to go down, 46 here.

One quick (not very good photo) of us as we get ready to decend the last section of stairs.

Our last set of stairs is 119 in total and is a good jaunt to the bottom. Whew!!! Was a great walk but we are both tired!

Wednesday, May 15th - Washington Park to Arlington Heights

Bonus walk! We have two more books by our favorite Portland walking author, Laura Foster, so today we decided to take a walk from our new 'Portland Hill Walks' book (obviously we're gluttons for punishment). Washington Park to us means starting up near the zoo, but the takeoff point for this one is 24th & W Burnside so we headed off downtown. If you decide to take this walk, be warned that parking in the area is pretty scarce and many of the spaces have time limits. We finally found a space on 20th and Katje parallel parked like a pro (only two attempts!). Now, you're thinking that we parked on 20th, the park entrance is on 24th...only four blocks, right? No, for some reason the numbered streets have both an Avenue and a Place, so each number you go up is actually two blocks. I went home and Googled it, and it was .6 miles from where we parked to the entrance at 24th.

We slogged – uphill, of course - to the park entrance, and following Laura's excellent directions we bypassed the stairs and headed up into Washington Park on the paved walkway. The 'Hill Walks' book is filled with all sorts of information, from tree identification to information on landmarks to the history of the area. I'm not going to repeat it all, but if you decide to take this walk I highly recommend buying the book – and then highlighting the directions, which are sprinkled throughout the narrative and might be easy to miss. I can't say enough good things about these directions, though. Instead of “take this (unmarked) trail to this park and continue through it (in an unspecified direction) to the next trailhead” it says things like, “a faint dirt pathway between a douglas fir and a bigleaf maple...” I can find that! When you tell me there are four flagstone steps at the top of the cobblestone walkway I'm reassured that we're on the right path. I love this.

The walk comes up out of the park into the Arlington Heights neighborhood, an interesting mix of big old colonial, italianate and tudor houses interspersed with smaller, humbler homes. Two blocks of house envy and we're back in Washington Park, up a steep path and a bunch of stairs, and back out into Arlington Heights. More houses, including a huge old stone house with the largest lace leaf maples I've ever seen, and then we had a decision to make. Should we take the optional one mile side trip, described in the book as “heart thumping” or skip the detour and head into the park? We gamely headed uphill for a fun game of “what does this house tell us about the owner?”. The quirky house numbers and...interestingly painted door of one house imply artsy, avant garde homeowners, while the potted geraniums, trimmed hedges and lacy curtains of another make me think 'grandparents'. Huge plants in front of the door and all the blinds closed? Reclusive. The gray ranch house with two doors in front and the entire yard done in red gravel and stepping stones....yeah, I'm not sure about that one. Definitely no house envy there, though.

We looped back down to the beginning of our detour and picked up the walk heading into the International Rose Test Gardens, one of my favorite parts of Washington Park. This is where the book really earns its keep. It tells us that the terraces the roses were planted on were developed as homesites but the digging of the reservoirs at the base of the hill destabilized the land, making the sites unsalable. The developer sued the city; not only did he lose but the city eventually got control of the land and added it to Washington Park. The test gardens were established during WWI, when European gardeners were afraid of losing their historic roses to the ravages of war and sent cuttings overseas to safety. Oh, and the road leading into the park was graded by elephants from the nearby zoo. How cool is that?

We descended through the park and out into the King's Hill Historic District (more gorgeous houses), then back up to the formal entrance to Washington Park. Somewhere near this entrance is a time capsule, buried there in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt. Unfortunately when they were going to dig it up 100 years later they found that the exact location of the capsule was never recorded. They looked through public records and newspapers, called in scientists and psychics, but never did find it.
Back through the park, and we began to descend the stairs we had bypassed on our way in. Two hundred and fifty one steps later, we were back at the walk's starting point (though still .6 miles away from the car). All total, we walked 5.7 miles, including 259 steps up and 340 down. Not too bad for a bonus walk!

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Photos from the Downtown Milwaukie and Riverfront Walk

City Hall

Beautiful Milwaukie seal

Our obsession with cool looking trees continues

Portland Waldorf School

Johnson Creek

View of the River

Spring Park

Spring park with lots of greenery

Love the wrap around porch on this house

We see a gaggle of geese and their babies....so cute!

You can barely see the babies but there are more than a dozen of them

Trolley Trail in Milwaukie