cyclotram

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Saturday, June 16, 2012

This is the grand entrance to French Prairie State Park, an obscure little state park on the Willamette River, just downstream of Champoeg State Park and upstream of Wilsonville. The is one of the state's many obscure Willamette Greenway sites; they don't appear on most maps, the state parks website doesn't list them, and the only road sign indicating you're in the right place is the tiny one pictured above. I'll cover the Willamette Greenway park system further in a later post about a place I was actually able to visit. This one was "Closed for Winter" when I stopped by, even though it was after Memorial Day. The sign doesn't give any indication about when winter ends in these parts. In reality it's probably closed due to the state's budget woes, or maybe vandalism, and all they had was a "Closed for Winter" sign.

But suppose winter really has persisted into the summer months in this one small area, and there's a sheet of glacial ice here that isn't visible from the front gate, and ice floes on the river, plus drifting snow and so forth. What supernatural cause might be responsible for all this? Does a Snow Miser live here? Or maybe a white dragon from D&D has taken up residence. I lean toward the latter hypothesis, because white dragons are always chaotic evil, and that would explain why the gate is closed locked and visitors are quietly discouraged and the place's very existence is not exactly shouted from the rooftops. And the state certainly wouldn't undertake all these dragon-mitigation measures if dragons didn't actually exist, which to me is kind of a big deal even apart from the whole state park thing. It all makes perfect sense, right?

Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge

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Another Florida slideshow, this time from the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which borders and sort of overlaps the undeveloped parts of Kennedy Space Center. The tourist-friendly parts of the area ended up in the Canaveral National Seashore next door, so the wildlife refuge is mostly salt marshes and palmetto thickets, with no shortage of alligators, and mosquitoes beyond measure. I wasn't feeling much like a wilderness adventure that day, so these photos were all taken along the nature walk at the refuge's visitor center. Yeah, yeah, I know. Go ahead and make fun of me if you want.

One photo I want to point out is the taxidermied bird in a glass case. This is a Dusky Seaside Sparrow, which lived only in the Merritt Island area and went extinct in the late 1980s due to DDT and habitat loss. The bird on display looks outraged, and I can't say I blame it.

Mallory Meadows Park

View Larger Map A few photos of NE Portland's tiny Mallory Meadows Park, right on Killingsworth a few blocks west of MLK. The city describes it thusly:

Formerly a parking lot, Mallory Meadows is one of three parks in the King neighborhood financed in large part by a grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund. Completed in 2002, neighborhood volunteers built it with grants, donations, and hard labor. One of the park's elements is a low, undulating wall faced with glazed tiles containing self-portraits of elementary school children from the neighborhood.

The city did a great job of making a .15 acre lot look bigger than it is, with little hills and winding trails, like a miniature version of downtown's Pettygrove Park, which itself is pretty small. The design also does a great job hiding the busy street next door. Still, you can't totally escape the small size of the place. The first time I drove by to take photos, someone was sitting in a swing, obliviously texting away. Maybe it's just me and my antisocial tendencies, but somehow it felt like there wasn't room in the park for a second person, so I bailed and came back another day.

Friday, June 15, 2012

NE 33rd & Clackamas

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So here are a couple of photos of the sorta-but-not-really city park at NE 33rd & Clackamas, just south of I-84. The city's full of tiny, unmarked, sorta-nondescript city parks -- they're sort of this humble blog's stock in trade, in fact -- but this area's owned by ODOT (the state transportation department). I imagine it was probably acquired as part of a freeway expansion many years ago, and PortlandMaps shows that even now it's still platted out into several house-sized tax lots. If the city owned it there might at least be some swings or a rose garden or something here, but ODOT really isn't into that sort of thing.

In case you're wondering how I even knew this place existed, it was once the subject of an Urban Adventure League picnic (and subsequent blog post) way back in 2007. I didn't actually participate in that, but I ran across it on the net later and figured the place sounded extremely obscure and therefore blog-worthy, and it went on the TODO list, albeit nowhere near the top. And, well, I'm reminded yet again that lots of obscure places and things are obscure for good reason. But hey, this place is finally off my TODO list now. So, mission accomplished and all that.

Roselawn Park expedition

Here are a couple of photos of of NE Portland's tiny Roselawn Park, at the corner of NE 13th & Roselawn, hence the name. It's ok if you think the photos are boring. That was my impression of the place when I was there. The official photo on the city parks website is just as boring as these, and says nothing about the place except the location and standard operating hours. Which makes sense as there really isn't much here. The park's landscaped as if there ought to be something here, but at the present time it's just a bit of grass, some roses, and a mural on the side of an adjoining house that may or may not be part of the park, officially.

I stopped by on the same day I visited Sumner-Albina Park, making a swing through and visiting a bunch of tiny city parks in that part of town and taking photos for blog posts like the one you're reading right now. Roselawn Park is probably the least impressive of the lot, and there are close to zero mentions of it anywhere on the net, or so sayeth Google. Although the one Yelp review of the park tells the story of rescuing a sick, abandoned cat here. So three cheers for Roselawn Park just on the strength of that alone.

Sumner-Albina Park expedition

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Here are a few photos of North Portland's tiny Sumner-Albina Park, at the corner of NE Sumner St. & Albina Ave. It really is tiny: The city says it tops out at around 0.08 acres, or roughly 3400 square feet. It also doesn't have the usual city parks sign out front, and it looks very much like it's a small lawn attached to the Cherry Sprout Produce store next door (which has a lot of rave review on Yelp). But I checked the city's GIS system just to be sure, and the land is definitely a city park. So don't be shy, feel free to use the park even if you aren't shopping.

The park has exactly one Yelp review, which claims that the fence around the park is made with recycled bike parts. I didn't take much notice of the fence at the time, so this might be true as far as I know, and it would be completely unsurprising here given how hipster-ish the neighborhood is. I neglected to check out the produce shop next door, but it has a bunch of rave reviews as well.

A little patience for the conceits of Portland hipsterdom (i.e. things like decorating a ridiculously small park with recycled odds and ends) will go a long way here. If that's not really your thing, you'll probably be happier going elsewhere; here you'll be sighing a lot, and rolling your eyes, and muttering about how terribly precious everything is, and people will see it and think you're just being a big jerk for no reason, and they'll probably assume you're a tourist. So don't be That Guy, ok? Or if you're going to insist on being That Guy, at least please don't mention this humble blog by name. Thx. Mgmt.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

reflected, whitaker ponds

Here are a few photos that didn't make it into an earlier post about NE Portland's Whitaker Ponds Natural Area. So yeah, I took these about two years ago and I'm only getting around to posting them now. You won't be surprised to hear that I have just a bit of a backlog I'm trying to work through. I still think this is better than running out of material, or running out of readers. Although some would argue both of those things happened here years ago...

Monday, May 28, 2012

Canaveral National Seashore

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A slideshow with a few photos from Florida's Canaveral National Seashore, immediately north of Kennedy Space Center. It's a fairly untouched bit of barrier island beach, at least compared to most of coastal Florida, but in the distance you can see the Vehicle Assembly Building and both of the Launch Complex 39 launch pads (used for the Space Shuttle, and Saturn V rockets before that).

If the original plans for the launch complex had come to fruition, there would have been between one and three additional Saturn V launch pads in the area, and pad E would have been right about at the point where I took these photos, if I'm reading the old maps correctly. Longer-term, less definite plans envisioned additional launch pads further north for the Nova rocket, a cancelled, even larger successor to the Saturn V. So this area would likely be very different if we'd ended up sending people to Mars back in the 70s or 80s. It wouldn't necessarily be less natural; much of today's Kennedy Space Center, other than the actual launch pads and support buildings, is still in more or less a wild state. But you certainly wouldn't be able to drive in and wander around on the beach.