walks – Page 9 – Out & About

Post-Election Walk

Everyone was pretty raw at work. I did some stuff, and then left early to take a long walk to the Hollywood Library, where I was volunteering with Teen Book Council.

Look at this blast-from-the-past mural/advertisement for radio station 94.7! Usually it’s covered by an official billboard.

I’ve take a picture of this building before, but on a happier day. It seems today the building is sad. Sorry building. I feel sad too.

The footprint of Farm restaurant, which I always wanted to eat at, and never did. I guess I won’t ever get to now.

Tracking apartment rental prices. For reference, when I got my first studio apartment in Portland in 2002, I paid $500/month to live downtown. If Matt and I rented this apartment, we would pay $850 each. Yikes!

Here’s the house where the unit is.

I loved the green of this house.

And look! It’s a very specific green.

Very nice vintage four-plex.

I love the neon sign with the brick.

Bit of grey cloud hovering.

The day after the election, not much was happening at the Multnomah Democrats headquarters. The building was dark. (The cars are from the business next door.)

I had a sundae at Baskin Robbins and a very nice Teen Book Council meeting. Then there was square dancing. It was a raw, but good day.

Hike at Tom McCall preserve

Here we are at the parking lot at Rowena Crest, with the Columbia River in the background. I love this picture because it looks like I’ve got a white stripe in my hair, which has always been a dream of mine. (I don’t actually have a white stripe in my hair.)

Informational sign about the Missoula Floods, a topic which always inspires feelings of panicked boredom. Even while typing the letters I need to remind myself to breathe deeply. Geology. Not for me.

See that peak up there? That’s where we are headed. We’ve done this hike before, in 2013. (Thanks blog, for keeping a record of this stuff. Comparing the two posts is also fun.)

Pretty landscape.

That white car on the right is our car.

Mountains peeking through. We’re at the apex of our hike.

Acorn survivors.

This time, we added the second half of the hike, which took us closer to the river.

These birds were HUGE! I took a picture, wondering if they were ravens. Googling in the interim has told me that there’s not really an official line between crows and ravens. People have also told me ravens are bigger than crows.

Columbia River.

Self portrait.

Nicely tiered landscape.

Foggy Portland Morning from the Steel Bridge

Sometimes the walk over the bridge is magical.

Volunteer tomatoes

Having had tomatoes sprout from compost, I can guess exactly how these tomatoes came to be. Someone dropped a tomato slice, or a whole tomato at some point in the winter or spring. Some seeds germinated when the weather finally warmed up enough for tomato seeds. And they grew.

To tomatoes are very small, which tells me that either someone dropped cherry tomatoes, or the seeds were hybridized, and didn’t grow true.

You will note from the many blossoms wanting to form tomatoes and the relatively few actual tomatoes, and the fact that it is early September, that this climate is not a natural one for the tomato. We have to start them indoors early and then transplant them out. Anything sprouted from seed in the ground won’t be ripe when the weather turns.

These particular tomatoes were gone (tomatoes, plant and all) the next week. I wonder if someone saved the ripe tomatoes, or just weeded the thing into the trash.

Hiking the Gorge: Larch Mountain

In which we attempt to go to Sherrad Point, but are thwarted by our hiking book’s directions.

In which we return to where we were and hike up to the picnic area, only to figure out where we went wrong.

Poor form! Someone left a bottle of water for someone else to clean up. We took it home and recycled it. Shortly after this point, I tripped and full-body flopped to the ground. My camera went flying, but thankfully tumbled onto soft needles and wasn’t damaged. I put the camera away, so as to not court more danger. So there are fewer photos of this trip.

Bridge timer photo.

Matt crosses the bridge.

We had just missed huckleberry season.

Abrupt change in trail elevation.

And we make it back to our starting position. This was a fun hike and we saw few people. We’ve made plans to go back in May or June as a lot of the hike runs along a creek. In late August, the creek had run dry, so it would be fun to go back and compare.

More hiking in the Gorge: Horsetail Falls

At the beginning.

The eponymous falls.

Thanks to this interpretative sign, I now know the different types of waterfalls. From left to right: Horsetail Waterfalls, Plunge Waterfalls, Segmented Waterfalls.

Would you like a photo of some lichen?

Matt stands under the 80 foot Ponytail Falls. Of note, this picture took much waving of hands (I was quite far away) and several photos taken because the water kept blurring.

Like in this example.

Better.

Looking through the falls.

Pretty green hanging ferns.

Poor Glenn. If he was still alive we would more-or-less be the same age. The article from the Oregonian said he and his friend were hiking when this happened.

Downed tree or shaggy wizard?

More falls.

Tall bridge! With interesting anti-flag sticker I didn’t notice when I took the picture.

Blurry picture, but very cool tree growing out of a nurse log. I love how long the roots are.

Guess what this group of falls is called? Just guess!

Did you guess Triple Falls? You are right!

Some cairns.

Timer photo shot.

This is the mouth of the Oneonta Gorge. People were hiking back into it.

Tunnel! This was once part of the Columbia River Gorge Highway. Imagine driving your Model T through this tunnel! The interpretative sign told me that this was a difficult tunnel to make due to how the rock disintegrated easily. If memory serves, they solved this problem by reinforcing everything with concrete and that made it all good. Guess what explains this better than me? The internet! You can read about construction by going here. Scroll down to Design and Desription to find a better explanation.

Lots of rock. Which I now have been reminded is basalt rock. Also known as “dice” rock. Me and geology. We don’t get along so well.

This was yet another good Gorge hike.

Saturday morning walk to MLK

We had Friday off from work because we had a work retreat on Saturday. It was at the Allison Inn & Spa in Newberg and there was carpooling involved. I needed to get to a meeting spot on MLK and decided that this morning was a good time for a longer walk. Here’s what I saw along the way.

Once upon a time, this lot had a blue house on it. I took a picture of that house (but didn’t tag it properly and now I can’t find it. I also have a view from the alley of the initial stages. Now it has eight townhouses. From an infill perspective, I very much like this development. Why? Each unit has a parking space. Also I think they look like small places. Better to have one house torn down and replaced with eight small homes than one huge one. I haven’t been successful in finding a listing, possibly because these have already all sold, and attempts to spy through windows failed because people live there. But I would like to see the inside of one of these units.

I think the sudden designation of a street is a little bit of overkill, though.

I’ve admired this house for some years now. Full basement, okay sized yard, nice mid-century design.

Once upon a time North Portland had a convent. (Maybe more than one, what do I know?) And then the convent closed and eventually the land surrounding it was plotted into owner-occupied and rental housing. But you can still see the original building. And people still live in it.

What do you suppose happened to the statuary that was in this alcove?

Brand new alleyway! New to me, at least.

Interesting design here.

This elm tree is not long for this world.

Another alleyway, this one with contrails. And power lines.

Good bones on this house. It needs some love, though.

Dead car wash.

Dead building. But such excellent mid-century design. I think it could still come back.

When I moved to Boston, one of the markers that I lived in a big city was the presence of the Boys & Girls clubs everywhere. I knew about them from commercials featuring famous people who once hung out at them. Like this one. Which is from 2011, and thus not very old. But watch it and see if you don’t get all teary. Also I feel like Denzel Washington has done voicework for Boys & Girls clubs for many many years. Ha! The internet confirms my belief. You can even watch his first ad from 1993. Prepare to get all teary. Or, as we called it back then (due to Saturday Night Live): verkelmpt.

And Portland has it’s own Boys and Girls club. But just one location. We’re not that big of a city.

Goodbye to a landmark along the way to Fred Meyer

There is one of those great U-shaped apartment complexes on my way to Fred Meyer. This particular one has three separate structures around a grassy green space. I’ve long admired it. (And, if truth be told, fantasized about buying the whole thing, renovating one of the structures into a single family house, renting out the other structures and having an amazing garden in the green space. You know, with all my spare money. And time.)

At any rate, the entire time I’ve lived in the Kenton neighborhood, the same couple has rented this apartment. I walked by today and they were gone! The apartment is empty.

I never met this couple, but I enjoyed seeing the poster they hung on the wall of some country star. I always thought it was Toby Keith, but I can’t be sure. And they had one of those old-timey photos you get taken at the fair. It was framed. I liked the way they shifted their furniture around every December, to accommodate their Christmas Tree. I maybe liked this couple so much because they always had their blinds open so I could observe these things as I walked back and forth running my errands.

I hope their move was a good one, and they are happy in their new place.

I have never been to Pacific City before

After hiking, we went to find food. We found it in Pacific City, where we did not wait 90 minutes for a table at the Pelican Brewery, but instead walked across the street to the pizza place (where they called your order number over a microphone!) and had no wait at all.

Having eaten, we headed down to put our toes in the surf. Walking over the bluff, I gasped, because what did I spy on the beach? Cars! Many, many cars!

I rarely see cars on Oregon beaches and certainly not in these vast quantities.