Day 30: Orchard Park

Orchard Park has never been on any of my routes, isn't even on the radar.  It lies between Fifth and Sixth Streets, northeast of the Wagner Mall. It has a seasonal Porta Potty, and crews go to mow it or work on the playground.  I don't even remember ever driving by it, but I must have, as I went by the apartments when I was trying to find one.

This, from the parks brochure:  A grove of giant sequoia, an oak forest and an autumn orchard should help lure the neighbors back outdoors. The proximity of nearby apartments, a private school and daycare center make this park a popular spot.

I saw on a park map that there was a perimeter trail at the park, so I decided to go and check it out.  There were a few people there--a family with two children, a middle schooler shooting baskets.  The place has a large playground featuring a large green plastic T-rex or an alligator with a short square jaw that I think housed a small slide; a small basket ball court with only one pole and basket;  a sports field that can be used for soccer, as the soccer nets were lying in a shabby part of the park's outer edge; a couple of picnic tables and a small pavilion; and the trail.  The Porta Potty was gone for the season, leaving a stain on the slab of concrete that was the floor of its shelter.

Did I mention that it's a relatively small park? Bend's blocks are a variety of sizes--on the map, it looks like it's a large block for the neighborhood. It was tiny by my standards.  The apartment complex was on the north side, some older homes, maybe from the 1950's on the south. At one point on the trail, I could see what was left of a cement driveway.  After a couple of loops around the park,  I crossed Fifth Street, went down Thurston Avenue and checked out another apartment complex there, went down Fourth, back up Seward, and walked across the lawn to get to the trail again.

I never saw the grove of giant sequoia, though there were a couple of evergreens with unfamiliar bark and needles. I'd had Christmas trees that were taller. (I did see redwoods in northern California; one day when I was in a funk in Eugene, and I drove down the Oregon coast, down to Humbolt County in California, then up I-5 one after noon, back in 1982.  That Ford Fiesta was a great car, and the day was beautiful, but the trip didn't ease my mood very much.)  I didn't see any oak forest, I'm not even sure I saw an oak tree.  The leaves were gone, but there just weren't a lot of trees anywhere.  What there was of the autumn orchard were maybe four or five saplings that might have been apple at the southern part of the trail. There were some rather bare bushes that had twigs covered with what looked like blueberries, but I wasn't sure.  I thought of the Hunger Games' Nightlocks, so didn't pop any in my mouth.  

I was bored with my walk, even though I tried to vary it by going off-trail by the play areas.  Due to the looping, it was hard to get a good pace. I missed setting my timer, but after going by the T-rex the fourth time,  I decided I'd been there long enough and fled the place.

Photo from https://bendfamilyparktour.wordpress.com/page/2/

Not a day

Giving in to the weather and to news events, I stayed in and wrote essays, did housework, posted on Facebook, read short stories.  I have other blogs, but I haven't updated them.  I've been working on one article for one of them for a while, years, and it still isn't ready.

I am aware that I could do stair laps, I have free weights, I could dance to songs on Youtube.  I used to exercise those ways before we moved here.  There's a gym in the office building, with weights and such, that I still haven't used.

In the future, but not this day.

Day 29: Larkspur Trail, north

The Larkspur Trail is probably best done with two people, one car at each end.  Lacking a second person, I just did part of it.

What I had done before was the southern end.  The middle part goes from the base of Pilot Butte, under Greenwood, and on down towards Larkspur Park.  Where I was now was at the part of the state park, where I could park my car, use the restroom, and head out.  The weather was cold, with thick clouds and a strong wind, which was to my back on the first part of my walk.

The path goes past the playground, and is paved with asphalt and is nicely wide and for the most part, easy to go on in a wheel chair.  I looked to my right to the multiple family housing that was packed in like sardines and then to my left to the butte, sagebrush and junipers.  The trail was down hill from Pilot Butte Middle School, and I could see the tops of people standing by the track above me and the sound of voices.  There was a blasted, long dead juniper lying by the trail, and it was lovely to look at, as the wood had been polished by time.  The trail has the helpful little posts to remind you that you are on the Larkspur Trail, and the trailhead sign was inconveniently in a place where you had to walk a ways to get to it, and where there was no parking.  I walked down to the front of the school, to the crosswalk.

If I took the crosswalk, I was to walk down the sidewalk to Hollinshead Park, go through a residential neighborhood, and end up at the triangle of grass and trees and brush that made Sawyer Park.  I haven't been to Sawyer since my oldest was a toddler, and I didn't go there this time.  Instead, I turned and walked back to the shelter of my car, through the cold wind with its infinitely small flecks of sleet hitting my face.

Photo of school from http://www.bendbugle.com/wp-content/bdc-images/1408_1.jpg

Not a day

I don't do well in the cold and damp, and after church, I stayed in.  I did do my yoga, but it wasn't enough for my goal.

Day 28: Historical Society

The county historical society has an annual chili feed.  I don't remember actually dining at it before--I have a vague memory, or was it imagined? of having pie with the children and Nancy and her children at one. 

The society uses the meeting room of the museum, which was a large classroom back in the day, and the black boards are still on the wall.  Banquet tables, chairs, and other diners filled the room.  The chili was quite good, mild, and I learned from a waitress that "Millie's Chili" had been served for thirty years, using the family's grass-fed beef, and now being made by the second generation of the family, which donates it for the feast.  I sat across from a couple who were 20 years older than me. He was from Ohio, and she was from Queens, New York, and her grandfather had been a tug-boat captain.  He told me of his history, but I don't remember it.

Afterwards, I went down to the Drake Park Neighborhood Historical District and walked for about 40 minutes.  The leaves were still thick and dry on the ground, and pumpkins were still in the doorways of the houses, the temperatures have been cool, as so they looked for the most part as if they'd been carved only a day earlier.  I saw the house that Greg Putnam, Amelia Earhart's husband lived in when he was still married to his first wife, and the company house that served room and board for middle management and the comptroller of the logging company, and learned that the camp towns were served with a motion picture theater and a forty piece brass band to keep up the morale.  (I knew from other sources that the camp towns were moved around the forest by rails, and were where loggers and their families lived, Les Schwab having spent his boyhood in one.)  I saw a couple getting what looked like engagement photos in front of a while painted wooden arch that decorated one house's front walk.  The houses varied from a three-story mansion to a small brick four-unit apartment row.  One house I remember driving by, back when we were looking for a house to buy, when the girls were little--it was only seven hundred square feet.


street sign from https://www.oldbend.org/drake-park-neighborhood-historic-district/

Not a day

I spent time trying (fruitlessly) to get Skype to work and (as fruitlessly) living in the past. 

But as this was November 13, I offer this excerpt from Kahlil Gibran's prose "On Children":

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams,
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

Day 27: Bank

 

Once I was out of the apartment, it wasn't that hard to walk to the bank.  I discovered it takes only eleven minutes to make it to the store where our post office box is, and twenty-three minutes to the bank itself, and that was at a good steady clip.

Along the way, I noticed that the progress of the assisted living complex.  The windows and the air conditioners were in place, and siding over the Tyvek covering had started.  There's another, one story building between the new building and the memory care place on the back of the block that got got its plywood layer.

At the property that included the area where Greg Gibson's Auto Mart used to be, the pine trees are still there.  A few days ago, there were about a half a dozen or more of two story tall pillars of gravels and dirt that lined the roads, and now they are all leveled down. (Greg is retired, and puts in a few hours a week as a cart pusher at the west Safeways, where I last saw him.)

I was pleased to notice that I didn't feel tired after my walk, which included a trip to Fred Meyer before I returned to the apartment.


Photo-- http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMJBPJ_Bend_Oregon_97702_Butler_Market_South_CPU

Day 26: Veterans Day

The parade started at 11 a.m.  I went to my usual spot, south side of street, just west of the Franklin/Wall intersection.  After the introductory police car and honor flags, the Vietnam vets were the first ones to walk the route, and with them, a uniform and helmet with a gun in salute position--but no one was wearing the uniform.  It was a statue representing the missing soldiers.  Most of the parade had vets in classic cars, some had the tops down.  The weather was cold and I wondered how many who survived the freezing weather in Europe and Korea would die of pneumonia in a short while.  The combined high school bands came by, playing "This is My Country, Land of the Free," but there was no one I knew marching in it.  I was annoyed that, following immediately, was a radio station's pickup truck, blaring out Waylon Jenning's wailing some song, drowning out the band.   About 15 minutes later, the Cascade Horizon Band came by on a flat bed, Sue Stieger conducting.  There were vets from the Korean War and from WWII, but no one is still alive from the first world war, and no one was there from Desert Storm or the more current ones.  There were memorial banners, including Marine Lance Cpl. Randy Newman's.

After the parade, I thought about which park to visit, then decided to just walk down Kansas, catch Georgia and go to Hill Street, and head back.  This is the Old Neighborhood District, where the houses and lots vary from postcard size to a little larger than postcard, some properties seem rather Bohemian, while others are trimmed to the toenails.  I had visited twice, years ago, and was curious to see if anything had changed.

I walked by a house that I think I may have been in, when we were looking to buy ages ago, during a housing shortage.  The place I looked at, you had to go through the bathroom (which had an old porcelain tub without claws on its feet)  to get from one end of the house to the other.  These were houses built by mill workers on their off hours.  Many still had jack-o-lanterns on the door step and fall leaves were every where on the ground. Sidewalks are very scarce and for the most part, I walked in the narrow streets, which was not a problem as there was no traffic to speak of.  The sky was overcast and there was some sprinkling of rain, but no lights were on in any of the houses.  The only place I saw people was at the Taco Stand, a small place by a bike shop in what used to be a small mom-and-pop grocery store.  One of the apartments that I'd been at had new paint and windows.  I didn't see the other building, but it might have been refaced.

I was surprised to discover a little open spot signed "Mary Jane's Park," which is not part of the Bend Park and Recreation, but is the responsibility of the neighborhood.  The volunteers names were on a sign, and there were two memorial benches. It had clump grass and other native plants and the borders formed a triangle shape.

A "little library" graced a corner on Federal.  It was twice the size of a bread box, and had two shelves, but not a very interesting collection of books.

As I headed back, my half hour timer went off.  I continued to walk, checked out the "teaching garden" at the Environmental Center and made a lap around Troy Field, just for giggles.  The public hearing signs were on the fence.  December 3 is when public comment will be accepted regarding the fate of the green area.  The plans are to have it commercially zoned, and sold to the highest bidder.  It had been the place of Troy Laundry, and after the place closed, it was a hazardous waste site that was cleaned up and covered with lawn, and was used as a playing field by the next-door Catholic school.  When the school moved to the east side of town, and the buildings sold to McMenamins and made into a hotel and theater pub, Troy Field was used as a meeting site for various activites, including the Day of Yoga.  The field takes up half a block, while the other half is a parking lot, and was the temporary home (using modulars on cinderblocks) of the Bend post office during its reconstruction on Oregon Avenue.



top--from http://www.hackbend.com/2007/05/17/mary-janes-park-signage.php 

bottom--http://www.bendbulletin.com/localstate/3288264-151/bend-la-pine-accepts-offer-on-troy-field

Day 25: Choices

I wasn't feeling well the past two days, so I'm not counting them.

Today, I did my walk after I went to the Post Office.

Pioneer Park was the closest one that I knew. It is by the river, and was part of my route.  My head supervisor didn't like it:  "The place looks like a graveyard.  The restrooms look like a mausoleum, the memorial markers look like tombstones, and it's just dark."  It's a popular place for weddings, as the rose gardens are there and the lawn and trees in the back of the park make for beautiful photos and a pavilion for the wedding dinner.  It has fewer trees, thanks to last winter's storms and a diligent naturalist taking some down. The trail goes down stream and connects to First Street Rapids area by  a footbridge, and from there, you can follow the trail to Sawyer Park. I've been on the trail for a small distance but it felt creepy.  So I didn't go there.

Orchard Park was the closest one I didn't know.  It looked small when I've seen it on the map, so I decided to leave that for another day. 

Riverbend: I promised myself that I'd wear a hat the next time I went there.  Farewell Bend"s traffic is terrible.  Larkspur Trail from Pilot Butte to the south, again bad traffic.

So back to Juniper.  Nice walk.



Photo of a tree that missed doing massive damage to the Pioneer Park restroom last winter.  http://www.ktvz.com/news/pioneer-park-reopens-after-windstorm-cleanup/31133670

Day 24: Shopping

Today being the first Saturday of the month, of an odd-numbered month, it was our turn to help clean the church building. 

My body felt cranky when I got up in the morning, but when it moved around a bit, the pain in my hip sockets/top of thighs disappeared.  I went down the apartment stairs easily and quickly, and when I was at the church building, I was able to walk fast and carry the vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs to the stage, no problem.  Same with the other chores.

Back at the apartment, I mused over what I should do before the rain came.  Walk? walk where? Go to the apartment's gym?  Work out on my own free weights here?  So instead I answered questions on Quora regarding Harry Potter and How do I like my pumpkin pie? and read Facebook.

Later in the afternoon, we went to stores to look at couches, went to Ace Hardware, Lowe's and Home Depot, and to Taco Bell for dinner and Fred Meyer, not in that order. I walked, er, wandered around, looking at Christmas stuff and looking through magazines (did you know you can bake a pecan pie in a slow cooker?) and visiting with one of my former coworkers from Fred Meyer, who is now a cashier and employee of the month at Home Depot.

And so there's where my walking for the day was.  If I were to give points for getting exercise today, on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the nature trail on Pilot Butte or the three mile river trail up the canyon, I'd give it a 2.  Maybe a 1.5.

Photo of an end cap display at Home Depot,  from https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT1MNhNu8plmWEjzUyzWpRO_myMl6BLPl0IRcljE4wa0vqhRdDl

Day 23: Juniper Park, again

I chose Juniper Park as I wanted something that had some up and downs and a definite beginning and end.  The park was pretty empty, except for a guy who was grooving out to his earbuds on a little hill, and a couple of dudes at a picnic table who soon left.

The tennis court area had been under construction on earlier visits, but was now completed, with a new map showing the one-mile route.  It took me just over half an hour to go about a mile and a half, so my time is improving.  Bonus in that I've noticed I now walk faster at other places, too.

The weather was nice, a little on the chilly side, but I was warm at the end of my walk.  In the park, most of the leaves had fallen from the trees, but there was one thicket where the yellows of the aspens and the lotus trees were so bright, it seemed that they were shining.

Image of a lotus branch, from http://www.mooseyscountrygarden.com/driveway-garden/locust-tree-thorns.html


 

Day 22: Larkspur Trail

After a great "where to next" debate, I decided to return to Larkspur and try the trail, which starts by the Larkspur Pavilion and the fitness trail  The weather was cloudy, cold and breezy, but there were still people playing basketball, and some of my Parks coworkers were working there on the landscape, one who is year round, the others are seasonals who started later than I did and work into the winter.

The trail is a sandy gravel, and I had no trouble following it for twenty minutes out, through the Pinewood Natural area.  The trail runs behind fenced yards and the backs of apartments and duplexes, cuts through the natural area, and then back into more houses.  A couple of benches that had thoughtfully been placed off to the sides of the trail, with a nice view of the small (now empty) canal, and would be nice places to meditate on a day when the garbage truck wasn't making its run through the local neighborhood.  There were some trees, rock, brush, grasses and dirt, and of course, the canal and it was all very open and inviting. The area is not as isolated I thought it would be, even though I saw only three people there:  a dog walker, another hiker and a Parks employee who was taking care of the pine needles.

According to the map, the Coyner Trail is suppose to branch off and head toward Ponderosa Park, but I didn't see any signs to that effect, although I did see some short grey markers that informed me that I was still on the Larkspur Trail.  At the beginning, I walked through a cul-de-sac of an area of nice mobile homes that looked like houses, and all had garages, and when my timer announced that I'd been walking for twenty minutes, I was at Cessna Avenue.  I decided to save the rest of the hike for some other time, and headed back to the car.

Nope, no photo here at this time; didn't find one on Google.

Day 21: Rest

I spent the day working on the apartment, getting a corner of it cleared out.  My exercise comprised of taking stuff down to the garbage and getting some more groceries and making multiple trips to carry them up stairs. 

The weather was cold outside, and I made sure to wear my gloves.  I was glad to spend the day indoors.   I considered walking laps inside of Fred Meyer. but I think that some people already think that I live there.

Day 20: Larkspur Fitness Trail

Larkspur Park is where the Senior Center is, where I cleaned the restrooms early in the morning for most of a season.  It has a playground that is designed for children who have various physical challenges and its restroom is one of the potty-training ones (the others being Harmon and Blakely Parks) where people let their children go unsupervised and then the child trashes the place or misses the toilet altogether.  It is not my favorite restroom, and it wasn't one of my route's daily regulars. The trouble with this place is largely due to the placement of the trash bin in one stall/room, which is located directly under the handblower, making it very difficult to take out the liner and replace it, as well as the cramped custodial closet, which was created as an afterthought.  There is also a basketball court that doubles as a pickleball court, but no games were played when I was there. The pavilion by the trail head is where I won a lottery for one of fifty expandable lunch boxes at company luncheon. I picked a fashionable blue one, even though the organizers were frantically trying to get me to pick a pink one.


I went over to the trail head, and found an information board, showing a map of the one kilometer long Larkspur Fitness Trail that winds around the perimeter of the place.  It goes north of the parking lot, west of the Senior Center, to the south, on the side walk to the east entrance of the park.  I was surprised to learn that there was an east entrance!  It's for pedestrians, and the paved path lies east of the playground area, with the trail going off of it.  The trail winds around in an undeveloped area that had a lot of juniper trees, and then back to the trail head.  Every one tenth of a kilometer, there was a post, announcing the distance and that this was indeed the trail  The trail itself was covered with bark dust, and even with these helpful features I ended up in the parking lot twice.

At one point along the trail is an uprooted dead juniper.  What makes it worthy of examination is the large rock that the root wad enveloped: basic bubbled basalt that was tucked up almost to the trunk.  Near the 0.6 post, two junipers had shared a same spot, but one had been sawed off about a foot up off the ground.   A small new tree is growing out of the trunk.  There were no pines in the cluster of junipers, and then suddenly, there were Ponderosas of various ages on both sides of trail. 

I made two laps of the trail, which totaled about 1.24 miles.  The first took about nineteen minutes, the second, about fifteen, mainly because I wasn't getting lost.  Then I decided to go up the Larkspur Trail, which is 3.4 miles long, but I only went a short while, about five minutes, between the small canal bed and the fences of the subdivision.  I got to a cul-de-sac, turned around, and returned to the car.

Above:  Photo of Larkspur Pavilion from http://bendparksandrec.org/parks__trails/facility__park_reservations/pavilions_picnic_areas/

Below:  Photo of Senior Center and general landscape from http://kirbynagelhout.com/portfolio-item/bend-senior-center/ 

Day 19: Miller's Landing

The weather today was cold and breezy, with a feel of dampness in it.  I went to the post office, and then the library, where I got the Dr Who eighth season (the one after Matt Smith left), and as I was in the neighborhood, I went down to Miller's Landing Park.

The park is a low use one.  When the girls were young and we used to frequent McKay Park, it was a field of rocks, dirt and weeds that was across the river, where people would take their dogs for romps and games of catch.  Some developer wanted to put condos on the area, so a number of people pooled their money, bought it, and turned it over to Park and Rec to keep the land open.  It features a restroom that was on my route, a picnic pavilion, and community gardens.  I walked by the gardens and saw that there were a number of tomato plants still standing in otherwise empty spots, frozen marigolds, some defiant rhubarb, and a glorious vine of peas that stayed untouched from the frost.  The special needs adults' spot was void of its flamingos.  Down by the river lies a Japanese style sand garden (a patch of fine gravel, with some small boulders to give it character).  It is my thought to bring down a rake and drag out some patterns, but I also think that instead of creating some Zen-ish artwork, I'd find the town's largest litter box.

I set my timer for half an hour, and walked the paths, the perimeter, the inner area, observed the riparian area.  Many of the bushes that were at Shelvin are also at Miller's, but here they seem to be a week late and were crowded and riotous in their colors of yellows, oranges, light greens and brown.  The white waxy Christmas berries were plentiful, while the ones I saw Sunday were scant.

I saw a Park's truck pull up in the parking lot, and a park steward, one of my co-workers, got out and talked to the woman who had three large dogs playing off-leash.  He went to the restrooms while she rounded up the dogs and left.  He doesn't have the authority as a steward to give her tickets, but he is also a police officer in his other job and could when he was on duty.  I had a dog that got injured from another dog that was off-leash, and I had little sympathy for her, especially when I saw one of them squat earlier and she apparently either didn't see it or did and did nothing.

She left and he reappeared, spotted me and came over for a short visit.  The construction area by the Colorado Bridge is coming along, and should be done in a couple of weeks and we watched the work for a short while as we talked shop.  My timer went off, the topic was done, and so I left.

I made up for the moments I spent talking by shopping at the store and making two trips carrying bags of groceries up the apartment's stairs.

Photo from http://www.gogobot.com/millers-landing-park-bend-attraction
Columbia Park can be glimpsed across the river.  The Japanese-style sand garden is right of center

Day 18: Shevlin Park

I brought along my walking shoes to church, and after the meetings, my husband and I took a short trip out to Shevlin Park.

Shevlin is to the northwest, and in a long ravine.  The land was donated by a logging company, as it wasn't profitable for anything else.  The road down to Fremont Meadow was closed off, but we found a parking spot near the gate.  We walked past the pit toilets (I didn't have to clean them this year!) down the slope past the picnic pavilion and over to the Tumalo Creek path.

For all cars that were parked, there were few people, probably because there are so many areas to walk at in the park.  The aspens were pretty bare, but there were plenty of green pine and fir trees and plenty of yellow-leafed bushes.  We walked on the path, that like other paths in the Parks, was marked by a small grain of grey gravel/sand. Tumalo Creek was full, probably due to the recent rains and snows up in the mountains.  There were a number of Ponderosa pine trees of various shapes and ages, including a few snags that were in the process of losing their bark.  e started noticing yellow fir trees--tamaracks!  The small, thin needles were still on the trees, by a lot were on the ground, making a soft glow in the woods.  We found one with black bulgy bark, probably from one of the fires that have touched at the park at times.  We examined the creek and found a recently oiled bridge--the linseed odor was so strong, we wondered if the work had been done yesterday.  Some of the picnic tables were recently pained green.

We didn't make it as far as the covered bridge but we did have about an hour of enjoying our sweet Sabbath walk.

Photo from http://www.glitteranddust.com/cim-training-learning-take-chill-pill/