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 24^th & 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 20^th and Katje parallel parked like a pro (only two attempts!). Now, you're thinking that we parked on 20^th, the park entrance is on 24^th...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 24^th.

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!

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

Monday, May 13th - Downtown Milwaukie and riverfront

We started out directly across from City Hall, in a three-part parking lot that was reserved for city employees on one side and somebody else on the other. The center section didn't have any other cars in it but didn't seem to have any posted restrictions (that pertained to us, anyway), so we took a risk and parked there. We headed up Harrison past the big construction site where they're putting in the newest branch of the Max light rail system and hung a right on 28^th. This is a cute area of mostly older homes, and we had a great time dissecting the pros and cons of each. (Symmetrical is nice, but so is asymmetrical if it's done right, doors should be in front, not at the side of a bump-out entryway, planted yards are nice but grass is a lot easier to take care of...that sort of thing.)

Two blocks over and we headed back down toward McLoughlin Blvd, the main road that bypasses the downtown area. Back across another set of railroad tracks, also under construction, then we had to wait for the looooong light at McLoughlin. Across the road is a lot where they keep all of the gravel for the construction project and a water treatment plant. Neither looked like the path we were supposed to take so we continued along the path that looked like the one we were supposed to take, but wasn't. Fortunately my complete lack of navigating skills have made us pretty adept at improvising and we went through a (less charming) residential neighborhood and picked up the path, making this a loop walk instead of an out-and-back.

On the way back we came across a gaggle of canada geese with a whole bunch of fluffy little youngsters. So cute! The lady walking her dog in the opposite direction agreed they were cute, but noted that soon they'd be contributing to the rather large amount of goose poop in the park. Focus on the present and enjoy the moment, random lady!

It turned out that we were supposed to have taken the road past the water treatment plant that looked like a driveway to connect to the path. Oh, well. After that it was just another looong wait for the light and a quick jaunt back to the car. According to the book it's 2.4 miles, which seemed like quite a reasonable distance when we first started. We're getting a lot better, and I'm beginning to think we may actually survive the half marathon Shannon has talked us into this fall!

Photos from the West Moreland to Crystal Springs walk

The start of our walk finds us by the Stars Antique Mall

Crystal Spring Creek running through West Moreland Park (Julie and her sister would float down this and pass through the culvert under the road when they were kids).

One of the old beautiful houses along our walk

I love the way the Laurel is framed into an arch over the gate

Another beautiful house along the way



The Crystal Springs Rhododendron Gardens



Our walk takes us into Reed College

Love the Salmon art work on the walkway

One of the water areas in Reed College

The steps up to the Bridge and the scenic viewpoint

The bridge across

Our view from the viewpoint, the water is a little murky and not very deep

Reed College (looks like something out of Harry Potter)

We both laughed at the couch sitting in the covered arch way of this beautiful old building. 

Eastmoreland Garden (this is about it for flowers)

A few more around the sign.

This is the culvert under the road that Julie and her sister would float through as kids 

A view of the "wedding" bridge over the Creek. So pretty!

On the other end of Eastmoreland Park is Westmoreland Park.

The purple house by where our car is parked. I love the dark rich purple. Wonder how I can convince my husband to let me paint our house this color.....

Monday, May 6th - Westmoreland to Crystal Springs

My old stomping grounds! We started this week's walk in “downtown” Westmoreland, which is about six blocks from the house I grew up in. I love this area, mostly because it's full of memories. Milkshakes at the soda parlor at Rexall drugs (now a Zoomcare), paper dolls at the Coronet five-and-dime (now the Stars antique mall), watching 'Grease' for the first time at the Moreland theater (still the Moreland theater – I wonder if they still have the scratchy old loveseats with the springs poking out?). They used to have a Make It Moreland Day parade every summer, and we'd scramble to pick up candy and Stan Wiley Realtor buttons thrown from the floats. It was a great place to grow up.

We headed down Bybee, past Westmoreland Park where they used to hold the milk carton boat races every June and over the culvert that we used to inner tube through with my cousins (my mom is looking down right now disapprovingly – we never did tell her that we used to cross Bybee with our inner tubes so that we could float back under it). We crossed over McLoughlin Blvd into Eastmoreland, and followed SE 28th Avenue past the golf course to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden. The garden, which was free when I was a kid, now charges $4 admission so we bypassed it and walked through the Reed College campus instead.

Reed is a small liberal arts college that takes great pride in its academic rigor and free thinking attitude. It's also really, really pretty, with beautiful old brick buildings, huge oak and pine trees and a wide, sunny lawn. We took the path halfway around Reed Lake and past the dorms, which are decorated with window chalked art and philosophical quotations and give a sense that while this is a very intellectual college, it's also a lot of fun. We walked across campus back to 28th Ave and retraced our steps back to Westmoreland.

This is one of my favorite walks since we started last fall. Not because it was especially interesting but because I used to walk there with my Mom and Dad. We have at least one more Westmoreland walk in the book, but we might have to wait a while to give Katje time to recover from my unrelenting “we used to...” and “when I was a kid we...”. In the meantime, I may have to take my kids over to that side of town and bore them with my stories. I'll also have to walk them from Llewellyn Elementary to my old house, and from there to Sellwood Middle School so that they can marvel about how far I used to walk. By myself. Without a cell phone to call home in case of an emergency. Ah, the good old days.

Monday, April 29th - Mt. Tabor park

New first rule of walking: never take more than one map. Especially maps of Mt. Tabor park, because none of the maps will show the same trails and the whole place is kind of confusing anyway. After trying to reconcile the map in the 'Walk There' book with the one in the 'Easy Day Hikes' book we picked up an official park map and (kind of randomly) decided to follow the blue trail. One problem: the blue trail isn't marked. The top of the hill looked like a good starting place, so up we went – on the express trail, apparently. It was very steep, but it certainly got us to the top quickly. Having summited Mt. Tabor, we asked a nice older gentleman the way to the blue trail. Not only did he know where the trail was, he knew where all THREE blue trails were. We picked one at random and headed down toward the reservoirs.

The city of Portland gets most of its water from the Bull Run watershed up above the city, and it is gravity fed into eight different reservoirs throughout the city, four of which are located at Mt. Tabor, one underground and the other three uncovered. Shannon walked with us again this week and asked how they keep people from throwing things into the water. Umm...yeah. For the sake of everyone who drinks Portland water (myself included), we're not going to go there. The good news is that they only fill one reservoir at a time to keep the water fresh, and they clean the other two while they're empty.

After walking around the two reservoirs at the bottom of the park we cut a little through a residential neighborhood and up the path back to the car, which was parked about halfway up the “mountain”. The good news is that in our wandering we covered all of the 'Walk There' hike and most of the 'Easy Day Hikes' route, so we're checking them both off and calling it a two-fer.

One other item of interest: there is a statue at the top of Mt. Tabor of Oregonian editor Harvey W. Scott which was designed by Gutzon Borglun, the artist who sculpted Mount Rushmore. Which makes Portland almost a little bit famous, in my opinion. Not quite, but close.

Photos from the Mt. Tabor walk

In case there was any confusion, we hiked Mt. Tabor

The Outdoor Amphitheater

View of the Willamette River and Downtown Portland peeking through the trees

Another view of Downtown Portland, this was our friend Shannon's favorite view

Statue of Harvy Scott

One of the Reserviors on Mt, Tabor. I love the turret looking buildings.



One of the beautiful trees on Mt. Tabor



another reserviors here, not very full right now.

View from the top of the stairs looking at a few of the full reserviors

the many stairs down

Look! A chicken coop. We find many of these when we walk....

Loved the vine covered portico on this house.

Shannon, Julie, and I all loved this tree and thought is would be a good climbing tree. I also think it looks like it is waving to folks.