Pictures and walking
Topic: Walking through the world

I had a very nice walk today through Lacamas Park.  I walked 5.23 miles and feel very good.  There were hardly any people when I started shortly after noon but by the time I finished the traffic was much heavier though not crowded.  It was just warm enough to be comfortable but not too hot.

I've been sorting old family pictures this afternoon and it's not easy since my father had a his own way of labeling them and many that weren't labeled.  I've been putting this off for several years now, since my father died, but I need to get it done before the pictures deteriorate more.  Some are nearly a century old and I don't want to lose them.  I want to scan them or get someone else to scan them so my kids and my brothers families will have them.

I have boxes full of more current pictures that I took before everything was automatically digitized and I need to do something with them also but there are soooooo many. 

Wildwood Trail
Topic: Walking through the world

Today was beautiful . . . sunny, not too hot, etc.  Great walking weather.  I took a side trail from Burnside Ave and 24th st which took me through a lovely tunnel of green and dumped me off at a green space with signs about how to get to the Rose Gardens and other sights along the road to the zoo and childrens museum, etc., area high above Portland.  

I found a side trail that took me to the rose gardens and was happily surprised to see an abundance of roses and people.  I had forgotten that Portland is in the middle of the Rose Festival and the big rose event will be in a couple days.  The roses were so gorgeous and smelled wonderful.  It was also very so maybe I can sneak up there after the festival and enjoy them with fewer people.

The bus came by and I got on for a ride to the top and less people.  The weather was gorgeous and there were less people around the zoo and, etc., but still more than usual.  

I walked through the Vietnam War Memorial and then followed the Wildwood trail for over three miles to Burnside Avenue.  It was wonderful, few people and great weather.  The signage is also much better than when I tried to walk the Wildwood Trail from the zoo.  There were too many trails up there and I got totally confused.

The next section is from Burnside north so I will try that one next time.   

Much walking
Topic: Walking through the world

I went to downtown Vancouver to get tickets for the history walks the Clark County Historical Society is putting on this summer.  I've been to previous walks and found them well done.  Well the CCHS doesn't open till 11 am and we were there before 10 am so my granddaughter and I went down to the river walk to while away the time.  My GG ran, walked, talked, talked, ran, etc.  The usual activity of a 4 year old who is just enjoying herself.  

Finally I got signed up and home we went.  My GG to a playdate and I walked 4.37 miles in Lacamas Park.  It was a beautiful day but the mid afternoon missed the early birds and the people coming after work so I met very few people.  Nice!

Lacamas Park is a nice sized park within Camas WA with a variety of walks. It has Round Lake in it which draws the fishers and the boaters. It also has a protected area with the blue Camas lilies which are gorgeous in the late spring.

Now just northeast of Lacamas Park is Lacamas Lake so you can see that Camas lilies have named quite a few places including Camas WA itself. 

Anyway I had a very nice walk and thoroughly enjoyed myself. The sun was actually out and it wasn't raining, which is the default weather here is the pacific northwest. 

Walking
Topic: Walking through the world

I walked about 7 miles on the Lacamas Lake trail here in Camas.  It runs up and back on the west side of Lacamas Lake (duh!).  It was very busy with walkers, runners, children and dogs. 

I do a lot of walking but want to get into a daily walk, at least, or every other day when life gets in the way.   I used to bike quite a bit when I lived in Tucson but I didn't have a car there.  Now I would rather drive or take public transit to a walk instead.  

I like volkswalks and other set walks but I also like to just walk.  I've been walking the streets here, usually Portland but some in Vancouver.  I just walk for one, two, maybe five miles.  I'm working on the main east west streets between I-5 and I-205.  It's interesting how many things you see when you walk a street rather than drive.  Sometimes it takes several times to walk the whole street and I often walk part of it in a different direction so there is no pressure to walk a certain direction or for a specific time.

Set or programmed walks are also nice but it's interesting to just start walking to see what you find. 

Sky at evening
Topic: Walking through the world
I'm still trying to get in five miles a day of walking except when I ride my bike to work so I'm beginning to see some beautiful sunsets since between walking the five miles, the bus ride to take care of the rest of way home and stopping at a store, it's getting close to 7:00 pm when I get home. There were some beautiful pink clouds to the west but to the west the cky was that clear twilight light blue that is so beautiful. I always think of it as eggshell it looks so fragile and delicate.

Working and walking
Topic: Walking through the world
I had to work today and my niece is getting married and I couldn't be there so the first part of the day rather sucked. It was cooler today so I decided to just walk to my usual weekend errands in an effort to improve the day, so I did and managed to rack up 5.55 miles, according to my GPS. This is only outside, where GPS tracks and only when I remember to turn it on. I have to turn it off when I'm on the bus so it doesn't count the miles done on the bus.

I just don't like riding my bike everyday but if I don't keep track of my walking I tend to take it easy. I'm trying to walk five miles any day I don't ride my bike to work.

I do feel better but my feet hurt. I haven't done as much walking recently because of the heat so I'll have to keep it up to get my feet in shape. I also need to wear walking shoes instead of sandals, but it is just too hot for closed shoes.

Geopsychology Walking
Topic: Walking through the world
I actually got up early enough today that it was still cool and at 7:00 I started out to try a little Psychogeography walking. See my entry on July 3rd, about the Utne article, though the correct link to Glowlabs is http://glowlab.blogs.com/.

I decided to go with the First Left, Second Right and First Right, starting with walking west on Broadway right outside of my apartments. I wandered through the residential area south of Broadway which made for interesting wandering since many of the streets are cul-de-sacs and I had decided that I wouldn't consider that a valid turn. Some streets are blocked by walls due to the commercial buildings on Wilmot. I walked along some nice residential areas and crossed a wash at Harvard and Malvern, where I stopped to take some pictures. I finally ended up at Wilmot and Barnan.

I crossed Wilmot and wandered south of Park Mall ending up in a park that runs along the south and west sides with a wall between the park and the mall. I had sort of realized there was a park there but had never walked through it. It's nice though there's not much there, just trees, grass and a couple back stops if someone wants to hit a ball, but no real ball fields. I pretty much quit counting at this point as it was 8:00 and getting hot.

I walked through the park and entered Park Mall to enjoy the cool. I kept getting passed by the power walkers taking advantage of the room to move before the crowds appear. I figured I had done enough walking and walked over the Starbucks where I sat and read for an hour. What a great way to start a day.

Spacing
Topic: Walking through the world
I'm on the Pednet listserv though I rarely, and not in a long time, have posted. I seem to get shot down a lot when I post as I'm not quite politically correct enough, in other words, I think all types of transportation have a place in the infrastructure of a town or city, not just transit, walking or cycling. The same thing happens to me on the Carfree lists but then I have a find like today. The post was actually a week ago but I'm just now reading it.

There was a link to Spacing an ezine about walking. I believe you can also subscribe and get a paper copy. It's great! The article are very good and it's so wonderful to see people walking for pleasure not to attain some political goal. So often on Pednet it seems like people walk because it's their duty, but Spacing is very good. So nice to have a resource like this. It doesn't look like they have new issues very often, in fact this is just the 2nd one, but at least I have this one. The purpose of Spacing is actually about keeping public spaces public instead of them being privatized and walled off, which I tend to agree with. After all without public spaces there would be no walking, would there.

There's one article on alleys, which I enjoy walking through. They call them laneways so I didn't realize at first that they were talking about alleys. The one drawback of alleys is the dogs barking at you, but you find bits of nature and parts that aren't prettied up.

Psychogeography
Topic: Walking through the world
Utne magazine has an interesting article on a new way of walking called Psychogeography. Basically it's a way of jogging you out of your set paths through town. You use an algorithm such as 1 block left, 2 blocks right, 1 block right.

"Still others practiced "generative psychogeography," or algorithmic walking, pioneered (as far as I can tell) by a Dutch artists' collective called social fiction. Participants walk an algorithm or fixed pattern, such as "first right, second left, first left, repeat." In other words, you head in any direction, take the first right, then go two blocks to the second left, then at one block take a left, and then repeat the pattern as often as you wish. The result is a remarkable style of travel -- neither goal-oriented nor random, structured but always surprising.

I asked Christina Ray, one of the conference organizers, what common thread holds these urban adventures together: Just what is psychogeography, in a nutshell? "Break it down into its two parts," she says. "It's the psychological and the geographical. It's about how we're affected by being in certain places -- architecture, weather, who you're with -- it's just a general sense of excitement about a place."

Most of us, she explains, just follow a small set of preprogrammed instructions as we wander through the city: office, day care, grocery store, home. And she's right. If you track your own path through a typical day, you'll soon discover that your journey is habitual, that you're slowly wearing a canyon through the same streets, the same sidewalks, day after day.

Psychogeography encourages us to buck the rut, to follow some new logic that lets us experience our landscape anew, that forces us to truly see what we'd otherwise ignore. "Chance and randomness," says Ray, "are what's exciting." (The Web site of Ray's art group, Glowlab -- www.glowlab.blogs.com -- is a great source of information on psychogeographic happenings.)"

This intruiged me because one reason I like volkswalks and geocaching is that it takes me to places I wouldn't normally go and phychogeography not only would accomplish the same thing but it can be done at anytime for however much time I have available. Sort of an instant off the beaten path type of thing. I'll have to try this.

Mt Lemmon Volkswalk
Topic: Walking through the world
After two years of being cancelled due to fire, once again the Mt Lemmon Volkswalk occured. I was holding my breath because we've been getting "moisture" and all the Tucson weather people have been telling us, with bated breath, that we're almost into the monsoons, which means lightning, which means fire on the mountain, but the monsoon held off, the lighting didn't happen and Friday evening I got my rental car and drove up Mt Lemmon.

I wanted to camp at least one night and thought maybe two just to get away from the heat. I started up about 7:00 and it was after dark when I got to Rose Canyon Campgrounds. The road is actually in pretty good shape most of the way but there is a long section from below General Hitchcock to past San Pedro Vista where it is really torn up. One section you had to wait for a traffic light to turn green which took quite a while as it's one lane for a long way. You could tell who was used to this as they drove up, turned off their engine and got out to stretch their legs. I sat there for several minutes before I turned off my engine. It was already so much cooler than Tucson so I didn't mind the wait. Green light and off we went. I did not recognize Windy Point even though I knew we were there. Wow, there's a lot of work being done. During the week you can only come up or down during certain times, about hourly during the day but only at 4:00 am at night. Starting this week they will be working all night which is, I'm sure much cooler and it's good no one lives close by.

I had reserved a campsite since I didn't know how crowded it would be and knew I would be getting there late. It's been a while since I camped at Rose Canyon but they don't take reservations for Spencer Canyon, where we usually camp, and I guessed wrong and picked a really sucky site. There was no table, just a flat piece of ground. I got there after dark and left before 7:30 am so I didn't spend much time there. I would have been just as well off camping at one of the primitive camp areas except that it did have a pit toilet and I just hate having to wander off in the woods since you know other people are doing the same thing and it's dark and ...

Anyway, Saturday morning I drove up to a picnic area and heated some water for tea. Boiled eggs, some fruit and almonds, and I felt much better. Gotta have my caffeine and I recently read an article that caffeine is good for altzheimers and such. Yeah!!! After breakfast I drove up to Summerhaven with a brief detour up to Ski Valley. From the road it didn't look too bad as there is quite a bit of green but through the gaps you could see the devastated areas.

Summerhaven is so sad. There are gaping holes where homes used to be but there is also quite a bit of new building. Most of the new building is log cabin style and the new logs are so shine and bright. It was good to see that people are building again but most of the trees are black and dead.

The volkswalk started at 8:30 and I was there at 8:00 so I walked down to the general store, which is rebuilt and open, though not till 10:00. The cafe is still there and in business and the real estate office escaped the fire, go figure. You can't go down to Marshall Gulch which is where the fire probably started and the Marshall Gulch and Aspen trails are still closed. I understand there is a hefty fine if you are caught on the closed trails, which is good.

The volkswalk started in Summerhaven, but unlike the previous ones which went up to the top of Mt Lemmon, which is closed, we walked up the road, past the entrance to Ski Valley and turned off on the road that goes by the fire station and down to the trailhead for the Oracle Ridge Trail. This side, towards San Manuel and Oracle, was heavily hit by the fire but the trail mainly goes above the trees most of the way so I assume it's safer than the others that goes through the trees.

The first part of the walk was fairly level and through the blackened, dead trees but the flowers during the whole walk were absolutely beautiful. This is the plus side of a fire when the other plants grow exuberantly. In one area there was a forest of little shrubs and I kept thinking the leaves looked like oak leaves, and duh, they were oak leaves on little one and two feet tall oak trees. They were so cute. I kept thinking that all they needed were tiny fairies and dwarves riding through the "forest".

After the level section there was a series of ups and downs, mostly down, in a fairly open area. It was such a nice walk even though the view was burnt trees everywhere with an occasional area that had escaped. The volkswalk is only 10K so we didn't go down the entire trail which is about 12 miles and ends up in Oracle on the north side of the Catalinas. We turned around at the checkpoint and walked back with lots of rest stops. Going up was hard and the altitude bothers me plus it was very warm, even at 8000 feet, and we had no shade most of the way. I thought I could not go on a couple times but I just took a rest and then did. This is one thing I like about volkswalks as I can go at my own pace.

At the trailhead they had checked us going in and checked us coming out. When I came out a fire fighter was helping out by checking us off. I asked why since usually we just get checked at the turn around point. He said they wanted to make sure everyone got out. This is new but I guess they worry about who is out there since we are deep into fire season already and everything is very dry.

Back to Summerhaven and resting. I did the 10K in 2 1/2 hours which is pretty good for me, especially for such a difficult walk. The award was a very nice ceramic tile with pine trees and birds on it. Very nice. I have several of these from other walks around Tucson. I went through three bottles of water and didn't need to pee during the walk. I sat down to take off my boots and put on tevas and realized that I had soot up to my knees. I suppose it's on all the plants and we brush it off as we walk by. My shorts and shirt, which of course were light colored, also had soot on them. I imagine people who live on Mt Lemmon are very tired of soot on everything.

I just wanted to sit for a while and then have a nice shower so I decided to not stay and camp, though I had already decided that if I did stay I was getting a different campsite. I drove down Mt Lemmon seeing more of the construction in the daylight. Windy Point still has the viewing platform on the big rock but on the other side they've totally wiped out the parking area. When I got home it was a shock to get out and feel the heat hit me. Woooh! It was so good to get home and have a cool shower and feel clean. I even took a nice nap.
Mt Lemmon Volkswalk