June 25, 2014 - Portland 4 T's

We parked without incident (!) in the Portland State University Parking Structure 1 and walked out into comfortable temperatures in the 60's. An auspicious start for today's 10k walk!

The 4 T's in today's walk are Train, Trail, Tram and Trolley.

Train:

The TRAIN, also known as "light rail"

We walked about 1k from Ondine Hall to Pioneer Square. There was a track for Portland's light rail system running down the street and we purchased tickets from a machine next to the train stop. Someone at the start point had told me we should buy a day pass ($5 each), so that's what we did. A group of walkers was walking on a guided walk with Dick (from CRGBC) and they arrived at about the same time we did. I overheard Dick telling them not to go the NE 11th Avenue/Lloyd Center station, as specified in the walk instructions, but to get off one station earlier. He said construction at the Lloyd Center would make the walk longer. I don't know if the marking for the walk would have been impacted by the construction and I didn't want to get lost so I followed Dick's advice. 

The train arrived after a few minutes and we got on without having to show our tickets to anyone. Half the seats face backwards, so that is how we sat for our train ride. We rode from 6th down to 1st and then rode along 1st for several blocks to the Steel Bridge. After crossing the Willamette, we rode a few blocks to the Convention Center, where we got off.

Walking:

We walked past the MODA Center, a sports arena, and crossed the Broadway Bridge back to downtown Portland. The railroad station is a fabulous Romanesque Revival structure surrounded by lush landscaping. Next we came to a new, modern building that turned out to be transitional housing for homeless people. Portland is well-known for innovative methods of dealing with chronic homelessness. (I'm not sure it's working.) But it's interesting to see what they have done. What I saw was a nice building and a lot of very sketchy people standing around nearby - chronic homeless people as well as possible teen runaways. Anchorage has started to try out some of Portland's ideas. One of those ideas is to provide decent housing so that people can be safe. I don't know if these problems can ever be solved, but I guess we have to try. As Hillel said, we can't walk away from the problem.

This time we only walked through the homeless areas for a few blocks before we reached the Pearl District. According to Wikipedia:

"The Pearl District is an area of Portland, Oregon, formerly occupied by warehouses, light industry and railroad classification yards and now noted for its art galleries, upscale businesses and residences. The area has been undergoing significant urban renewal since the mid-1980s when it was reclassified as mixed use from industrial, including the arrival of artists, the removal of a viaduct and construction of the Portland Streetcar. It now mostly consists of high-rise condominiums and warehouse-to-loft conversions."

One of the most unusual places we passed was Mill Ends Park, the smallest city park in the U.S. It is a hole from a utility pole that has been turned into a park - in the middle of the street.

Mill Ends Park

During this portion of the walk we passed dozens of food trucks. Portland is famous for its 600+ food trucks, offering food of every ethnic provenance, not to mention vegan food and Alaskan reindeer sausage. We even saw a soup cart nearby on the sidewalk.

We began to feel hungry, so we stopped for a quick lunch at Bangkok Palace - a restaurant with tables and chairs, not a walk-up food truck. We got there about 11:52 and got a table right away. Promptly at 12:00, large and small groups of people began arriving and quickly filled the place up. Outside, people marched up and down the street carrying their boxes of food from the food trucks.

We walked back to Pioneer Square and enjoyed the sculptures along the way, as well as a high school orchestra giving a concert in the amphitheater.

You will read/see more about this in my post for the 27th!

Trompe l'oeuil mural

Our walk brought us back to Ondine Hall for a checkpoint and then we continued uphill, heading away from downtown toward Duniway Park. 

Trail:

Additional uphill walking brought us to Marquam Nature Park.

Mosaics in a small amphitheater in Marquam Park.

Connor Trail

Here we followed the main trail for a short distance and then turned onto Connor Trail. The instructions rated our walk 1A, but after walking at least 1k on Connor Trail, I would argue that this walk should be AT LEAST a 2B. The trail was not much more than a goat path in some places. It was all uphill. Had it been raining it would have been treacherous. The surroundings were very wild for being such a short distance from downtown.

Finally we reached the end of the trail. We crossed a parking lot and entered a hospital complex. 

Tram:

After passing several buildings, we entered a building where we passed people wearing scrubs as we made our way to the Tram. It costs $4 to ride the tram up, but it is free to ride it down. It runs every 5 minutes. We rode it down and enjoyed a nice view of Portland and the Willamette.

Trolley:

At the end of the tram ride we walked about half a block to the trolley stop. Portlandians really call it a streetcar, but to have "4 T's" you have to call it a trolley. We waited about 10 or 15 minutes for the trolley. When we got on we didn't have to show our tickets. After about 10-12 minutes we arrived at the PSU stop and a short walk brought us back to Ondine Hall.

The idea of riding on various forms of transportation made for a unique and fun walk. But it left us hot and tired, as the temperature was now around 80. But not as tired as last week. I am getting stronger from all this walking.

Walk Route: B+

Walk Instructions: C-

It is a shame to walk past so many significant buildings and not have them noted on the instructions. I didn't even know what hospital we walkd through. It would have been so helpful to know what tickets to buy for the train, etc. Trail marking was good in some places, but absent in others, especially the last  half of the walk. The instructions were really hard to follow around the hospital. The information about taking the trolley back was confusing and I was concerned that I had gotten on the wrong trolley.