September 9th, the second week of school and we still weren't into our routine, so we did the Fanno Creek 3-1/2 miles one last time before "hitting the books"once again. Flat, paved, bunnies...pretty much the same walk we've been doing all summer; you can go back to the previous blog entry if you'd like and just think "ditto".
September 16th, however, we once again delved into the books and walked downtown Hillsboro. Shannon came along for this walk and since this is the area where she grew up we got all of the cool little background stories that go with the location. Always fun. The walk as shown in the book is an out-and-back, but one of those that circles blocks unnecessarily and then insists on those same detours on the way back - probably to add distance to the walk. If you've been following our blog you probably realize what rebels we are - or maybe it's just that we're easily bored - so we did the 'out-', then skipped the '-and-back' in favor of making more of a loop of it. It's always more fun that way, and we'd have missed all the cool quotes on the ground around the Max platform if we'd retraced our steps.
September 23rd we were ready to be more adventurous and planned to do the Hillsdale to the River walk. Unfortunately the trail we were planning to take was closed, with a 1.8 mile detour in one direction and a 2.6 mile detour in the other. So we'll come back to that one later, after the trail is fixed. Instead we drove back up to Hoyt Arboretum, which we really enjoyed the last time we walked it. The trails are well maintained and well marked, so we planned out a route - follow the Wildwood Trail, making sure to stick to the left where it and the Hawthorne Trail converge, then right onto the Maple and right again where it meets back up with Wildwood. We even took a picture of the map, just in case we somehow messed up this relatively simple route.
Of course we messed up. The reason? We made the mistake of taking yet another try at our old nemesis, the Wildwood Trail. Every time we get on the Wildwood Trail we end up somewhere we didn't intend to go, and this time was no different. There were no distances marked on the map so we weren't alarmed when we stayed on the Wildwood Trail for an extended period of time. It's so pretty at Hoyt Arboretum and despite the summer of walking on flat surfaces we did pretty well on the hills, so we were cruising along, keeping an eye out for the Maple Trail sign, until we finally came to another map.
It took us a minute to find the "you are here" star because it was totally in the wrong direction. As in, we should have been below the Visitors Center and instead we were up above it, circling down off a section of the map that was covered by the legend. Hm. Okay. Reset. We took a moment to orient ourselves, and a good thing, too, because if we'd continued in the direction we were heading we'd have ended up eventually at Pittock Mansion. And wouldn't THAT have been a surprise? We had two options - the Beech Trail or the Magnolia, which on that map looked like it would be fairly easy to follow (looking at an online map once we got home, it wouldn't have been). Since the Beech Trail was clearly marked as leading the the Visitors Center we decided to take that. This turned out to be a good idea as we were soon back at the car and heading for home. I have no clue how far we walked, so we'll just call it a fairly good distance and leave it at that. And in future if anything is marked Wildwood Trail we'll turn and run in another direction!
