Photos from the Lake Oswego River Road Walk

Monday, January 7^{th -} Lake Oswego Old River Road Trail 

This is a great trail right off of State Street in Lake Oswego, fully paved (a plus when it's been raining all night) and with only a very small uphill slant. We got enough hillclimbing in last week and my vote is to stick to relatively flat ground for a while, so this was perfect. The trail starts in George Rogers City Park and runs up through a woodsy area with lovely views of the river (and the big expensive houses on the other side), passes a small waterfall and then a house which we know must be historically significant because it has a plaque – the Tug Master's House, apparently, which was built in 1905. There's a big cement building across from it on the other side of the trail, also historic I'm sure but I have no clue what it is. We were more curious as to why the Tug Master would need a garage at the bottom of his hill with no access except for a footbridge. Maybe there was a driveway there once or maybe it was used as a halfway point between whatever the cement building was and the house. If you know, leave a comment and share! 

The trail comes out of the woods and runs alongside Old River Road, which has more lovely views of the river and the big expensive houses on this side. We walked until we ran out of sidewalk in a residential neighborhood, then turned around and headed back to the park. On the way back we saw a ripple in the river which appeared to be moving, so we stopped to watch and concluded that it was probably a sea lion or maybe a seal. Wildlife payoff! It disappeared after a few minutes and we couldn't find where it resurfaced, so we moved on. Back in George Rogers Park we walked around the big furnace stack and read all about the old Oregon Iron Works operation that used to be down there. I'm starting to suspect that there's a lot I don't know about the Portland area because I had no clue Lake Oswego was once industrial. They're just so fancy now! Katje took some pictures of the furnace and surrounding park which I'm sure she'll post later, once we've figured out how to upload pictures to our blog. It can't be too terribly difficult, right?

The “Walk There” book says this is 1.3 miles each way (assuming we were supposed to stop where the sidewalk ended), so 2.6 miles out and back. On a 'getting there' note, the book shows that parking is at the end of Green Street but doesn't say that there's no left turn at the intersection, so we had to find a place up the road to turn around and come back. Next time we'll know to turn left at one of the earlier streets (Wilbur or maybe Ladd) then take a right onto Furnace Street, which drops directly into the park - much easier than our roundabout way.

All in all, this was a very nice easy walk that could easily become a favorite. Mostly flat, pretty, interesting – and paved, so there's no need for boots. Quite a contrast from last week!

New Year's Eve - Marquam Hill to Council Crest

 Okay, this was a tough one for someone really out of shape (that would be me). We started at Marquam Hill Park, which is basically just a small parking lot and an information shelter down below OHSU. The first third of a mile is almost straight uphill (I may be exaggerating a bit here) and it was a tossup as to whether my legs were going to give up first, or my heart. Or maybe my lungs, as I was sucking in cold air and I think I'm coming down with a cold to begin with. I'm going to tell myself that, anyway. After we reached the first marker at .3 miles out I was about ready to quit, but Katje said that we should walk another 15 minutes or so before we turned back. Being a lemming, I agreed. The uphill was still bad at that point, but not as bad as in the beginning. The trail gets pretty muddy at points so hiking boots would have been helpful. We just hopped from relatively dry spot to root to rock to relatively dry spot – whatever it took – and still got somewhat muddy. 

 The next trail marker put us at about .6 miles and an option to take another trail and loop back to our car – a little over a mile walk and the equivalent of about 10 when you factor in the hill, in my opinion. Katje was firm that we hadn't reached our time limit, though, and we decided that we could probably go a little further. Every trail marker after that put us a little closer to Council Crest until we just decided that if we'd made it that far we should just just go all the way, if only for Facebook bragging rights. And we made it! 1.7 miles almost continuously uphill. Yay! Near the top we saw a red crested woodpecker pecking at a dead tree, which we'd have missed if we hadn't continued, so there was a wildlife payoff. Most everything else must have been curled up out of the cold, though (it was 34 degrees at the house when we left).

We stayed in Council Crest park for maybe a minute, just long enough to say we were there, and then headed back down. Downhill would be a piece of cake, we figured, completely disregarding the fact that mud downhill is a lot harder to navigate than mud uphill. So it took us a bit longer than we thought, but we were on such a high from having climbed the whole trail that it was just a fun adventure. At the splitting point we decided to explore the other half of the loop, since it was .6 miles either way we went. I'd probably recommend it in the summer, but the trail turned out to be a lot muddier than the other way and the adventurous aspect lost its appeal about the third time we had to grab a fern (Katje kept apologizing to the ferns, which was pretty funny) to avoid slogging through deep, nasty, slippery mud spots. Still better than going uphill, though! The very bottom of the second trail was a little icy, but we could see the shelter by then and were back to the car in no time. 

 According to the Marquam Park trail map*, the Marquam shelter is at 300 feet and Council Crest is at 1,040 (HUGE Facebook bragging rights!). It's probably best we didn't know that beforehand, though, since it makes the walk sound more than a little intimidating. If a person as completely out of shape as I am can make it, though, I'm pretty sure that anyone could – a stubborn and motivated friend who refuses to quit early is a big help, of course, or I'd probably have circled back at the .6 mile marker. But it was l.7 miles each way, so 3.4 miles out and back. We should probably be planning these out better and building up to bigger walks instead of randomly throwing them in amongst our shorter neighborhood walks, but what's the fun in that?

*the trail map can be found here: http://www.fmnp.org/images/MNPtrailmapforwebsite.pdf

September - December 2012

Just to catch everyone up... We started walking on September 10th 2012, just after the kids went back to school.  That first walk was not too long and not too fast, and we spent more time standing down at the end of my street talking than we did on the walk itself.  We learned from that, though - now if we're not finished talking we go another block or two (or three or ten - we have a lot to talk about). 

Since then we have walked the Fanno Creek Trail, the trail from Cook Park to Tualatin Community Park (it sounds so impressive to say we've walked from Tigard to Tualatin, but it's really only a couple miles out and back), the inside of the mall and the Tualatin Hills Nature Park, which is a beautiful wild area right in Beaverton that feels a lot farther from town than it actually is.  Just be careful of the wooden pathways - they can get extremely slick and are often marked on only one side -  usually the side opposite where you're walking.  It's not very helpful to fall on your backside and look back to see that the walkway was, after all, slippery.  My tailbone already figured that out, thank you!  We also walked the track at a local school once but I don't recommend it.  It feels too much like exercise.

It hasn't always been on Mondays and sometimes it's been just a quick tour of the neighborhood, but we have walked every single week since September except two.  Halloween week we were busy setting up Katje's haunted house and Christmas Eve we spent with family.  All in all though, I think we've done better than I expected. 

We ended the year with a very ambitious walk which deserves its own post, so stay tuned!

New Year, New Walks

We are two friends (Julie and Katje) who decided this past September to get out once a week and walk together. Up until now, our time was always divided between volunteer work, Girl Scouts and our own families (we each have 3 kids ranging in age from 11-19). With both of our youngest ones in middle school this year, it seemed like the perfect time to do it.

So why a start a blog about 2 women walking? Our walking was and is about us getting together, going for a walk, catching up on each others' lives, and most importantly, doing something for us. However, we wanted something more than just our area, so we picked up a few Portland area walking books and started to expand beyond our own neighborhood, setting a goal to walk every trail, map, and course in the books we have (will expand to new books as we finish these). While walking different trails these past weeks, we discovered the book didn't always have all the information we needed (hiking books, not tennis shoes or clear directions how to get there). We jokingly said, we should write a book for people who are just starting out walking and give a "novice" perspective on these trails. So, long story short, we now have a blog (which seems so much easier than writing a whole book).

Neither of us is very athletic, we don't own any expensive excercise shoes, clothes or equipment, but we do have a love of the outdoors and enjoy the time we spend walking around Portland.