Hoyt Arboretum

Here are a few photos I took over the summer (or so) at the Hoyt Arboretum, part of Portland's Washington Park. I wasn't really taking these photos for a blog post, so they don't cover everything that's there; it's more that I realized I could take a long lunch, hop on MAX to the Zoo stop, and go wander around in a forest for a bit, either while thinking intensely about work or trying to avoid doing so. I used to go to the Arboretum all the time as a kid, but it had sort of fallen off my radar & I hadn't been there in years. I actually ended up there back in May looking for House for Summer, an art installation in the park that had just celebrated its 30th anniversary. It was a bit hard to find, so I ended up wandering around the area more than I'd expected, and after I finally found it I ended up wandering a bit more, and I've been back a number of times since then. Some parts looked familiar from mumble-mumble years ago, other areas I'm fairly sure I'd never been to before. (Btw you'll see the art in a separate blog post, because them's the rules.)

One bit I had no recollection of was at the north end of the park, where the Wildwood Trail winds down to a scary crossing of W. Burnside St., which is not technically a freeway but it might as well be. I suppose my mom was afraid we'd try to run across the busy street, or more likely she would totally have done it herself but didn't think my siblings & I were fast enough to keep up. So I got to the crossing, saw the cars whizzing by, and immediately noped out. So (as far as I know) I still haven't ever been on the portion of trail on the other side of Burnside. The crossing isn't safe here, and there aren't any sidewalks on either side of the street that would let you get to a crossing somewhere else, the bus doesn't stop here, and there's only a parking lot on the south side of Burnside if you feel like driving -- so you'd still have to run across the street. The trail continues north (and steeply uphill) to the Pittock Mansion, and then back downhill to NW Cornell & Macleay Park, so you could drive to either place (since Trimet doesn't serve either one) and do an out-and-back hike from there. Can't really do that on a long lunch break from the office, unfortunately. This is all about to change, though; a fundraising campaign just finished raising money to build a footbridge over Burnside to connect the trail in a less scary way. So I think I'll go ahead & wait for the bridge to go in next year. And yes, once it goes in there's bound to be a bridge blog post about it sooner or later. Though the way my drafts folder looks, I can't make any guarantees about when, exactly.