Walk #9

Wednesday brought us both walk #9 and #10.  Both were in the same direction (suburbs to the south of Portland) so we opted to knock both out at the same time.  I'm still going to separate them into two posts, though, as they were two very distinct walks. 

We set out bright and early.

Walk #9 was in Oregon City.  This was, I believe, Davan's favorite walk.  At the very least, it make her top four or so walks for sure.

We started at the McLoughlin House grounds.  We weren't able to go in due to the double whammy of Ranger and them not being open.  The grounds were pretty, though, and we learned a lot about the history of the Portland area with the blub on McLoughlin from the book.  It's amazing how much I didn't know about the area.  Maybe I'd know more if I'd gone to school in the Portland area, but a lot of it seemed new to Anthony, as well, when I shared.

Then we walked down the stairs to the first level of Oregon City (it's built on three different levels), along the waterfall.  It was pretty cool.

 On the first level, after a brief tour of the downtown/courthouse area, we were supposed to cross this bridge.

Luckily, it was an out and back bit off of the loop because the bridge was closed for construction and the detour was about 8 miles long.  We just skipped that part.

Instead, we continued with the loop, which took us back up to the second level via this elevator.

It's one of a handful of municipal elevators in the US.  There was even an elevator operator inside to push the button for us.  She was behind a plexiglass divider.  I guess that was for safety?

Here Davan is checking out the view from the observation deck.

The walk next took us along a walkway overlooking the cliff drop.  It was very pleasant.

We decided a snack was in order.

Then we came across the best part of the walk for Davan.  There were all these basalt rocks to climb on.

I love that, even at 14, Davan is still very playful.  She was mostly pretending to be a mountain lion.  She tried to get Ranger to join her.

Just before we turned off of the walkway, we got to a viewpoint for the waterfall and dam.

There was also this great tree.

After this, it was time to walk through town a bit.  We came to a small park with a great swing and slide.

Kitty corner was a park for little kids, but it was still worth a moment's visit.

Moving along after the park, we saw this odd house.  It's a Victorian with a poor choice for an addition.

This walk had a lot of sections that weren't "accessible."  We climbed up to the third level via this road that was abandoned after landslide damage was deemed too cost prohibitive to repair.

Davan, enjoying the walk.

We were only briefly at the third level, but we paused to enjoy the great view.

Then we descended along a path that, for a while, bordered private back yards.

In the last picture, you see some of our struggles with Ranger.  Great dog though she is, she is not always the easiest to have on a leash.  

The trail made us both want to do some hiking, which we haven't done much of this year.  Maybe we'll get some in this summer.

We had one last climb to do after leaving the trail.

Then it was through a historic section of town, where buildings had tiles in the sidewalks telling their build dates.

Just before reaching the car, we enjoyed this statue.

Anthony has asked us to take him on our favorite walks from the book.  This is one we'll definitely be doing again.