Treks and Adventures
Taking advantage of a string of days of nice weather I did another training walk up to Pittock Mansion. Today was a blue sky day with clear views of Portland and the mountains. I also got better number on this walk. I did 4.8 miles with about 900 ft of total elev. gain and did 513 steps in an hour and fifty-eight min.
I had not done the stair route to Pittock in many years. Include a couple of short ones I did 10 flights of stairs total. The mansion was in a heavy fog so no views but the fog gave the place a feel of mystery. On the way down I found Balch Creek was running higher then I had ever seen it.
Our goal wad to explore the Gnome Trail but first we had to get there by walking done the Burnt Bridge Creek Greenway Trail. We started at the far West end of trail and walked about a half mile to the gnomes. The weather lived up to the forecast and we had a very wet day. We found the Gnome Trail we decorate with fanciful objects.
After our walk was ended early on account of a lot of rain we did an early lunch at Say Ciao.
Tom has led a downtown Christmas walk for many years though the Mazama Rambles. This year a number of us got to gather to do a private walk with Tom. Walk feature visiting hotels and other venues to see there Christmas decoration. We had 25 people show up for the walk.
Lori put together another Tom Walk, this time over in Vancouver, WA. Lori, Marilyn, Barbara, Wendy, Tom and I met at the Pearson Air Museum at Fort Vancouver. From there we preceded on our normal route of going pass Fort Vancouver, over the Confluence Bridge, under the I5 bridge to walk along the Vancouver Waterfront Trail. At the end of the is a group of picnic tables and we stopped there for a bit to eat. After our stop we headed to to Esther Short Park and over the Evergreen St. Bridge back to Fort Vancouver. Our last bit was to walk along Officers Row and back to our cars. This was about a 4.5 mile walk.
