Week 5 - A hike, a park, a festival and free forest school...and although the ground was wet, no rain on our outdoor adventures this week!
Hike #5
Date: Tuesday January 30th, 2018
Place: Oaks Bottom Nature Reserve
Route: Out and back
Distance: 2.02 miles
On Tuesday Lake and I headed over to Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge for our weekly hosting of a Hike it Baby Hike. And, as it turned out, we also got a visit to a never been to before city park. Oaks Bottom is down on the Willamette River in Sellwood. We’ve played in the water at the Sellwood Riverfront Park a bunch of times, but never have hiked the refuge or played at Sellwood Park up on the bluff.
Anna, one of the HiB Portland Ambassadors, has been to all of our hikes so far, and was there again with her little one. And, once again we had a new to HiB mama there with her kids. The first part of the trail was a steep decent down the bluff to river level...with a steep drop off down the hill. Lake was walking/running ahead and I got ever so slightly worried about his ability to stay upright while moving down a rocky trail a high speeds....but we made it down the hill with no disasters.
My plan was originally to do a big loop, heading north along the bluff side and returning via the Springwater Trail closer to the river. But the kids were letting us know that they were done hiking before we got to the looping part, so we just turned around and returned the way we came. We did push the kids a bit so we could check out the the huge bird mural. The mural can be seen all the way from I-5 across the river, and it's huge from up close!
From Wikipedia:
Portland Memorial Mausoleum Mural is a 2009 mural by Dan Cohen of ArtFX Murals and Shane Bennett, painted at Wilhelm's Portland Memorial Funeral Home (also known as the Portland Memorial Mausoleum Chapel) in Portland, Oregon's Sellwood neighborhood, in the United States.
Date: Tuesday January 30th, 2018
Place: Sellwood Park
We were able to meet both our weekly goals in one day, score. One of the reason the kids were not too into the hike is because they saw the play ground across the field from the trailhead and wanted to go there instead. We told them they had to hike first. Once we got back up the bluff, back to the beginning of the trail, Lake and both of the other kids took off across the muddy ball field and made a bee line to the play ground. There is a nice tall slide and some cool tunnels to crawl through, fun was had. Lake and I have driven past this park many times on our way to play in the river, good chance we'll stop here again. There is even an outdoor pool here which looks to have much more shade than our own Creston Pool...maybe we'll make it there this summer.
Thursday, February 1st, was the first night of the Portland's Winter Light Festival. This was the third year of the festival and the third year that I've attended. Lake went with me the first year, but I went alone last year cuz the weather sucked. I really like this festival, it's so beautiful and the art is amazing and so creative and it was great to bring Lake with me this year.
This year the festival organizers hosted the event in four different hubs throughout the city. I think it is a fine idea to spread out the wonder and lights across the city, however there is no way a person could see it all in one night. Lucky for me, the festival web site was full of information, including schedules for the performances, detailed maps, info on the art pieces and the artists, even sample itineraries for each day, assuming one could/would come all three days of the festival. I was not spending three nights at the festival unfortunately, I only had one night available. So, I spent a fair bit of time looking through the on-line festival info and created my own custom itinerary. We saw a working Tesla coil, a fire breathing dragon, projections on buildings, huge blinking eye ball, got to interact with art pieces, and so much more. Genuine moments of wonder were experienced by us both. I heard it was crazy busy on Friday and Saturday, so glad we went on Thursday. Oh, and the festival was free, even the streetcar to get around to the different hubs was free for the festival, so fantastic.
And finally, on Friday February 2nd, Lake and I went to Free Forest School. He was a bit resistant to the idea at first, but as usual, once he got out and started moving around, he was into it. He's one of the older kids in the group, but I think it's good for him. He actually sat and ate his lunch and listened to a few poems being read...that's a win in my book. We probably got another mile, mile and a half in at Powell Butte, at toddler speed, but still, it was nice to be there. We won't be able to attend next week, we have a shift at HFP, but look forward to our return.
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