In Honor of the Olympics

Here's a video of pictures I took when Davan, Lena and I visited the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs last month.

Walk #19

Coming on the heels of Davan's not so enthusiastic mid day walk, we headed out on walk #19, the second to the last walk, after her Night Flight class.  This walk was in the NE, in the Hollywood neighborhood and was our last longer one at about 5.5 miles.  It turned out to be a good one, though.  Davan was in much better spirits and we enjoyed the walk quite well.  That isn't to say that we weren't glad it was done, either, though, as we were so very foot sore and tired by then.

We started and ended at this park.  Davan went to play a bit while Ranger ate her dinner.  I packed dinner for us all.

Here Ranger is with some of her dinner on her eye.  She's worse than a toddler.

Davan coming back to join us.

And we were off.  We went through a lot of neighborhood off and on.  We liked the arches on the upper balcony of this house.

It wasn't long before we came to another playground.  Davan is the orange blur on the right.  I didn't get any good pictures of her here because I was with Ranger in a fenced in off leash dog area.

A selfy of the two of us.

We liked this frog sculpture.

Walking by another nice house.

Davan did most of the reading for this evening's walk.

We went on a stretch through this golf course.  We were a little worried about how that would work out with Ranger.  One golf course in town with a walking path doesn't allow dogs, but it didn't end up being a problem.

Climbing the hill out of the golf course.  We were walking on a train on the side of the road.

We then walked along a bluff overlooking the golf course for a while.

There were many nice houses with views over the course.

We took this picture to remind ourselves that this would be a good place to come in blackberry season.  That's now!  We need to go back and do some picking!

This is the view those houses have.  Nice, no?

Then we were back into some busier parts of town for a while.

I took the opportunity to make a pit stop at a Carl's Jr's and came back out to find my girls waiting for me like this.

Walking down this road yielded views of downtown.  Luckily they were doing construction so we could step out into the street for the view.  The trees pretty much blocked said view on the sidewalk.

We broke out the Tasty-fu.

When we passed a local small business district with, according to the book, a bagel place with the best bagels in town, we were disappointed but not surprised (as it was 7:30pm) to find that it was closed.  We drowned our sorrows with this Odwalla Juice from a small neighborhood grocery store where we also picked up some bread to supplement our dinner.

We walked for a while on Klickitat Street.  Yup - that Klickitat St.

We walked on this path between houses that led to...

a flight of stairs.

And continued through more lovely neighborhood streets.

With nice houses.

Until we came out onto busy Sandy Blvd with the Hollywood theater.  This is a lovely old theater that plays second run movies.  What we didn't know about it was what intricate detail is in the facade.   The book pointed out several things to look for including an owl and a mermaid.

This interesting porch design had bricks and stones put together in nearly a mish-mash, but it turned out to look lovely.  Not a half bad downspout, either.  

This is the other end of the park where we started from and was also an off leash area.  Ranger is always happy to go and say hello.

Davan is always happy to turn a cartwheel.

And then we were back to the playground where Davan had a little bit of extra energy to play.

I, though, laid down and did some cloud gazing.

It wasn't long before Davan joined me.

Ranger was happy to chill out, as well.

We knew we had it in the bag at this point.  We had one walk left and a time slot in which to do it, as long as we stayed on task.

Walk #18

We're into the final stretch of walks now!  Walk #18 and #19 both took place on Monday.  Davan and I were on our own for both walks, as Lena was busy and Anthony was at work.  We had to fit them around the homeschool class that Davan was teaching at Do Jump and her class at Night Flight.

Walk #18 was the Pearl District walk and I was looking forward to it because I like that area of town.  We started off fine, driving straight down from the end of term show for the homeschool class.

We parked near Union Station and the walk took us inside.  We went right in with Ranger and no one said a thing.  Davan was nervous about it, though

Then we did a side trip onto the pedestrian bridge that runs over the train tracks.

This picture is another reproduction of a picture on the cover of the book.  We thought it was funny how often we had to detour a bit to get these pictures.  If they're on the cover, shouldn't they be on the main walks?

Davan drinking from one of the ubiquitous bubblers.

Walking in the park blocks.

Davan, though she's smiling, developed some sort of mental block about this walk and seemed determined not to have fun.  

Even with the bushwhacking by the fountain.

Finding a place that sold vegan cupcakes helped for a while.

Ranger was pretty sure she should get some, too, but, alas, it was chocolate.

We came to this fountain with lots of young people splashing around.  I went to dip my hand in for fun, but Davan refused.  That was just another indication of her mental state on this walk, as that is something she'd normally jump on. 

In fact, we came back to this fountain with another cupcake to share a couple of weeks ago and we both took off our shoes and played in the fountain a bit.  Silly girl.

Walking along on a Pearl District street.  I liked the Lizard Lounge sign.

Okay.  Here's another instance where I can't remember what I was taking a picture of.  It was something about the building behind Davan.  Perhaps it was one of the last remaining single family residences in this area.  What is now the Pearl District was once a factory workers area, then became a warehouse area, then started transitioning into fancy lofts and condos.

We walked under the soaring I-405 interchanges and bridge.  I was trying to give perspective as to just how high these were, but I don't feel like I really got it here.  Oh well.  It's still an interesting picture.

We stopped at some food carts and bought the one vegan option they had.  There were only about four food carts in this lot and we'd been rather looking for them as we'd seen them before.  I liked the filled pastries, but Davan didn't care much for them, but ate them anyway as she was starving.  (I have to wonder.  Did she really not like them or was her her mood again?  They seemed like just the sort of thing she usually likes.  Ah well.)

We did share a little with Ranger, who was taking her place at the table here.

We walked through this natural area, which was a contrast to the fountain where the water is untreated with a supportive eco system of sorts.

We discovered on our way out that Ranger wasn't supposed to have been in there - no dogs allowed.  Opps.

Here we're nearly back to the car.  Davan was quite happy about that.  Luckily for her, it was a relatively short walk at about 3 miles (I think...).