Walk #10

We went straight to walk #10 from walk #9 with a brief stop for alfresco bean burritos from Taco Bell inbetween.  If we do fast food, that's what we get.  Or, I guess, occasionally french fries, but that doesn't really make a meal.  :)  Anyway...

Oh, and we did also mark of walk #9 in the book (lightly, in pencil, so we could erase it before giving it back to the library):

This was the Lake Oswego walk and it was one of our least favorites.  Even though much of the walk is near the lake, you can rarely see it due to the large houses and trees that are on the lake front property.  Some of the houses were very nice, but the streets by and large had no sidewalks.  Some of them were pretty busy, too.

We started at a park, the name of which eludes me right now.  What we learned, though, about Lake Oswego, is that it used to be a mining town.  I had no idea.  This was built with some of the by products from the mining.

There was a playground, but we had a time limit, needing to be back in time for gymnastics, so we decided to leave the playground for the end if there was time.

Right near the start of the walk, we found bagels.

Then we started the parade of nice homes, no side walks and low to high volume street traffic.

There was one point, going over a bridge between the original Lake Oswego and the part that was formed by flooding a swampy area to give more lake front property, that we were able to actually see the lake.

We did enjoy our glimpses of the lake and spotting people's slides and decks and such.

There was a long bit of nothing particularly special.  Then we started going into the more downtown part of Lake Oswego.  We stopped at the library for the bathroom and water bottle refill.  They also had these bear statues in front.  Davan was checking them out.

Then Ranger needed to check them out.

We found a small playground.

Davan was discovering that someone had scratched out the periscope.

We enjoyed the sidewalks and different sights of the commercial area.

Then the walk took us down the major thru-way for a little over a mile.  We turned off to see the dam for the lake.  There were two turtles hanging out on the dam. 

After a dash across a busy road and a bit up a side street, we came to a trail.  The was probably the most pleasant part of the walk.  I guess we do need to get hiking.

Back at the start, in the park, Davan enjoyed this sculpture/bench.

There was a swimming area.  Now, as you can see from the way Davan is dressed, it wasn't overly warm that day.  Still, there was a little kid playing in the water and sand.  Also, a man came, rode his mountain bike down the stairs, stripped to his shorts and went for a swim.  Davan and I, who had hot and tired feet, decided to dip them in a bit.

It was so cold!  It felt good on the feet for a bit, though.

Ranger had to wait for us out of the water.

Then we made our way to the playground.

For a short visit.  Davan felt like a couple of grandparents were giving her the evil eye because she was so much bigger than the other kids who were playing.

It was time to get to gymnastics, anyway, though, so it all worked out.  We enjoyed parts of this walk and we're talking about going back to swim when it's hot, but mostly we were glad to mark this 6.5 mile walk off as done!