Walk #8

I'll start with an aside and say that we're in Colorado and having a great time.  I'm hoping to have some pictures/videos of some of our adventures here for you soon, but the harsh reality is that it might have to wait until we're back home 'cause we're keeping ourselves busy!  Now, back to the title of the post.

Our eighth walk was a second walk of the day - Tuesday (this is Tuesday the 5th we're talking about here - yes, I'm a little backlogged in my posts).  After the first 6 mile walk that day, I went to Poekoelan for "teaching" then we went back out for a second walk before Davan needed to be at Do Jump. 

We headed downtown and did the Southwest Portland/Waterfront area.  We didn't love the more SW Portland part, which involved a lot of dashing across and walking along some pretty main roads, but the upper part of SW and the Waterfront were among our favorites.

We started out in SW outside of downtown where the parking was free, which may have been part of the point.  This area was somewhat residential, somewhat busy road, somewhat industrial.

We crossed over this bridge.

And walked a bit to come to an area that is my old stomping grounds.  I went to school at Portland State University, which is in the SW corner of downtown.  Davan was born when we lived in a small apartment there.  Some areas I didn't really explore until after she was born.  This park was one of them.

Davan is up top there, but she only took one slide down before moving on because is was so packed.  When she was a baby sometimes we'd walk over to this park for the baby swings.  There were closer ones, too, but this one gave us a bit of a walk, too.

On our walk we, of course, had a snack.

Then we crossed over I-405 and were in downtown.  We made a two block side trip to see where our old apartment was.  It's not actually there anymore, as the campus is expanding and took that block over.  It's now student housing.

This corner of the block used to be our apartment building - an old three story walk up.  We were in the 3rd floor corner apartment - just a 600 sq ft one bedroom place.  I loved it there, though!  It did get to feel pretty cramped by the time Davan was a year old, which was when we moved.  What's funny about that is that if we'd simplified then the way we do now, we'd have fit fine.  Still, we wanted a house, so we moved.

We then headed to the walk way just east of campus, but on the way, we went by the engineering building, where I spent much of my time as a student.  It's different now, but out front we found someone with a telescope set up for the Venus crossing.  He let us take a look.

While we were checking it out, who should walk by but my favorite college professor.  We chatted with him for a few minutes before he needed to leave to get to a meeting and we needed to leave to continue our walk in order to get done in time for Davan to get to Do Jump.

Along the walk way which is where 3rd Ave would be if it kept going, there are a series of parks.  One is this fountain.  This was just a few blocks from us and we would take Davan there to get wet when she was a baby and it was hot. 

This fountain, along with a park and a second fountain that this walk takes us by, was designed by Laurence Halprin, who designed the FDR Memorial in Washington DC.

Okay, so the park was so underwhelming that I didn't actually take a picture of it.  We really like the other fountain, too, though.  When it's hot, it is filled with people taking a dip.  That's sort of fun, too, but also gets a little too crowded and dirty.  It was beautiful on Tuesday, though.

Then we made our way down to the waterfront for a lovely mile or so.

We enjoyed these gardens.

Ranger really, really wanted to get this duck.

Then it was just a matter of linking up the loop, back through our not favorite part of the walk.  It was a really good one overall, though.  We want to go back and visit "our" fountain on a warm day and take a little dip.  We did see, though, signs up about the fountains not being intended for swimming or wading.  This is sort of funny because when they were having the dedication ceremony for the second fountain, many people showed up to splash.  The organizers were taken aback, but Mr. Halprin jumped right in and enjoyed the water himself, so I guess the designer really doesn't mind them being used that way.