You may remember that one of the reasons we've been trying to build up our speed and stamina was because we were planning to walk a half marathon this fall. And you may have noticed that we haven't mentioned the half marathon in quite a while. Our friend Shannon was the one who talked us into it and then something came up, she couldn't make it and it wouldn't have been the same without her so we postponed it until next year. In the meantime, a deal came up on one of our discount websites offering this scavenger hunt type race through downtown Portland at half price. I immediately emailed Katje, saying that we'd probably suck at it but we should do it anyway because it sounded like fun and a little out of our comfort zone. And of course she agreed.
So Saturday morning the 21st we rode the Max downtown with very little idea of what to expect. From looking at the Urban Dare website we knew that we'd need to solve clues to find places where we would either take a picture to prove that we'd been there or face a challenge. We'd probably also have to ask strangers to pose for us. Fun. And WAY out of our comfort zone. So we met at Kell's Irish Pub at 11:00 as instructed, then waited until the 12:00 start time (note to selves: we don't have to be there quite so early next year).
Of course it started raining just as we were given our clue sheets, so we took shelter under a nearby awning and started attempting to solve clues. And holy cow these were hard! Things like, "Get your picture taken in front of a mural painted by Rone, an artist from Australia.", and "Donna Sheridan was played by Meryl Streep in this movie. Take your picture in front of a restaurant with this movie's name". We'd brought our internet-connected phones but found that searching on a phone is a LOT slower than on a computer, so going with our backup plan we called home and started our families looking up clues. After a few false starts (apparently 'wine pitcher' sounds a lot like 'line picture' to an 18 year old) the answers started coming in. The Yankee Champion statue is at Portland State University, the first chairman of the Portland Development Commission was Ira Keller...in retrospect we should have taken the time to figure out the clues first, planned our route and THEN started walking. It would have saved us quite a lot of zigging and zagging and a second trip out to Portland State to find a books mural.
Thank goodness we didn't have to ask six people to form a human pyramid (the example given at the Urban Dare website) - instead we got a trio of college students to do the 'see/hear/speak no evil' thing, and Katje got to pose as if she were proposing to someone. This was a highlight, as we found a wedding party doing their pictures at Keller fountain and got one of the groomsmen to participate. He was a great sport and this was a fantastic picture. The guy who checked us in at the end really should have appreciated it more.
With major amounts of help from our hubbies and my son we finally finished up in almost exactly three hours - not too shabby - and could probably have knocked a half hour off that time if we hadn't had to make that second trip to PSU. We met a lot of really nice people and learned a little about the city (it's a lot bigger on foot and when you're in a hurry!) and when we do it next year we're going into it with a PLAN. No, we're never going to get anywhere close to the winning time of 1 hour and 3 minutes, but I'm betting we had a lot more fun than the winners did anyway.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Photos from the Willamette Historic District Walk
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| We discover a very cute shopping area here. |
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| One of many historic homes we see along the way |
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| This house was once owned by Nicholas Walden, an early developer of Willamette. |
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| Our wildlife picture of the day- 2 quails in someones front yard. |
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| Where the Tualatin River meets the Willamette River |
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| Willamette Park- bigger and cooler than this picture shows. |
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| More of Willamette Park |
Photos from the Milwaukie/Oak Grove Trolley Trail
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| Loved the stone work on this house (one of the outbuildings also had the same stone, very pretty!) |
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| The Trolley Trail is a flat, paved trail. Was our best bet on a rainy, windy day. |
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| Some cool "art" along the way |
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| We decide to turn around at this park because of the rain. We will come back another day and finish the last few miles the book has you walking. |
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| The rain is starting to let up a bit (now that we are heading back to the car) |
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| I took this photo for a friends daughter, whose name is Ada. |
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| Love surprises of art like this one. Makes the walk so much more fun! |
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| We both loved the shape of this house. |
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| After our 5 1/2 mile walk. I look more like a drowned rat than Julie does. |
Photos from the Urban Dare
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| Before the race |
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| Our first stop finds us at The Good Earth Cafe |
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| Best picture of the day! We have to propose to someone, and look who we find! |
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| Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil.... |
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| Petunia's Bakery |
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| The Rone mural. Much harder to find than you would think! |
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| to bad we didn't get to go inside and buy chocolates |
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| This was our 2nd trip to PSU. So glad we got this one! |
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| Ahhh, finished the race! We were about an hour faster than we thought we would be! Yeah us!!!! |
Friday, September 27, 2013
Photos from Downtown Hillsboro Walk
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| Had to take this one, we all thought it very funny that he was sitting in a chef's hat smoking. |
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| Our friend Shannon's old stomping grounds |
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| Loved the entrance! |
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| Me and my obsession for houses! I love the peaked roof and the big front window. |
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| A wonderful foot picture of all of us. The concert is stamped with these really cool birds. |
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| By the MAX station they have all these neat quotes and sayings. We stopped for awhile to read them. |
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| Love the clock "tower"! |
Thursday, September 26, 2013
September 9th, 16th and 23rd
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!
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!
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Summer
I want to start out by saying that we have been walking every week, sometimes twice a week. We haven't been blogging about it, though, because it's been boooring! It's been hot and muggy and we've both been busy, so we put the book-walking on hiatus for a while and have been walking the same 3-1/2 mile loop on the Fanno Creek Trail. It's only about 5 minutes away and we know that we can get it knocked off in about an hour, so if we don't get out in the morning we can easily make it up in the evening.
With the kids starting school tomorrow we'll probably get back into the books pretty soon but don't be surprised if every once in a while, when the weather is particularly bad or we find ourselves short on time, we revisit this trail. It's paved, it's flat and we can track ourselves on Katje's Endomondo app to see how our time compares to previous walks. Plus there are bunnies! The ducks that used to sleep on the trail (and expect everyone to move around them) moved on when they drained the beaver pond last week, but we almost always see at least on bunny. And what is better than bunnies?
With the kids starting school tomorrow we'll probably get back into the books pretty soon but don't be surprised if every once in a while, when the weather is particularly bad or we find ourselves short on time, we revisit this trail. It's paved, it's flat and we can track ourselves on Katje's Endomondo app to see how our time compares to previous walks. Plus there are bunnies! The ducks that used to sleep on the trail (and expect everyone to move around them) moved on when they drained the beaver pond last week, but we almost always see at least on bunny. And what is better than bunnies?
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