Sunday, August 30, 2009

A long walk.

Matt and I took advantage of a beautiful summer day to take Walk #2 in Portland City Walks, which was the "Piedmont and Overlook Loops" walk.

On our way to the Kenton Max stop I snapped a picture of the new, smaller Paul Bunyan's coffee place. It used to be on the other side of the Kenton Max stop in an actual building, but I think the recession must have gotten to them.

A close up of their Paul Bunyan. They are quite trusting, I wouldn't leave this out.

Our first stop was Peninsula Park. These planters have always interested me. "Jeb, let's make a huge concrete seating area and plant some Doug Firs in there and in 40 years, the seats will be in shade..."

We timer-photo pose in front of the fountain in the rose garden.

Matt has no time to stop and smell the roses.

But Patricia does.

This is a 100-year old cherry tree whose life was spared as the Portland Community College Cascade Campus' parking lot was poured around it.

I've been to the North Portland Library before but I've never noticed the faces of great authors staring down at me from the carved ceiling.

Said carved ceiling.

Once upon a time this was a funeral home, albeit a lovely one designed in the Italian Renaissance style. Now it is yet another outpost in the McMenamin's empire. Indeed, this is McMenamin's corporate headquarters.

This used to be a convent and girls school. It closed in 1993 and in 1998 the Portland Development Commission purchased it and the seven acres surrounding it. It's now a low-income senior apartments and many Habitat for Humanity houses have been built on the site.

Matt stands in the middle of a traffic calming device.

I've always loved the art at this shop.

Don't you want large metal flowers in your yard?

More art.

Maybe you would like to visit them? www.edelia.com

At the Rosa Parks Max stop we learned about the art which is in the style of Columbia River Gorge Native Americans.

This brick has a traditional Klikitat basket weave pattern.

New Seasons has an eco roof.

We walked to this overlook in the, you guessed it, Overlook Neighborhood.

I love finding survey markers.

More overlooking. That's the Fremont Bridge in the distance.

Self portrait.

This house reminded me of the house every five-year-old draws, but with more details.

A twisted trunk.

Maybe yoga got it this way?

These next set of pictures are from a park that I have ridden by many times, but have not often taken time to visit.

A mosaic picnic table top.

Matt attempts to pull something out of the ground.

Oh! Those are caskets! (Don't worry, it's art.)

We snap a self-portrait in a comfortable seat with the caskets behind us.

In the tree in front of us looms a figure.

Some of the houses along the street with this park are also very arty.

And there is an art car parked next to the park.

Art car closeups:

Naked lady seat.

All the plates from the trophies on the front are adorning the back.

The park turned out to be a Portland Water Bureau park and I quite enjoyed my visit.

We spied this teepee in a backyard along the way.

This was a great, if dying, madrona.

What used to be Bess Kaiser Medical Center is now Addidas World Headquaters. The campus is fun to walk through.

I'm a fan of interesting graffitti.
Thus ended our walk. We stopped and had dinner at Sagittarius, which has delicious Mac and Cheese and excellent desserts. It's also hip, without being too cool for us. And they have a variety of horoscope books which are fun to while away your time reading.

4 comments:

balyien said...

Wow, what a great walk. Love the pictures!

Sara K. said...

Timer picture - love it! Weaving pattern in the bricks, very cool! All of the self-portraits - great (even the casket one - which is the art I found a bit disconcerting). All of the art is super cool - I really like the tree figure! Were you up near UP at all? I feel like I have seen a bit of that neighborhood when I visited Jess.

Sara K. said...

PS-Your Delia link is not working quite correctly...

Patricia said...

I think it is the web site. It took a very, very long time to come up on my computer.