HILLSDALE TO THE RIVER SOUTH WALK CELEBRATING THE REOPENING OF URBAN TRAIL 3 under I5 at the recently rebuilt Iowa Street structure. (Which will officially be open November 1, 2014.
We gathered in the Rieke parking lot for juice and goodies provided by ODOT. Following brief comments by Susan Hansen of ODOT, and Don Baack, 28 of us fast and slow walkers proceeded to walk the trail on our SW streets, through George Himes park to the new stairs and rebuilt trail under the I5 freeway.
This portion of the Iowa Street Trail was built by ODOT. You may better know ODOT (the Oregon Department of Transportation) as a builder of highways.
On the tiny view point with an excellent clear day view of Mt Hood, we noted this is an ideal location for a bench for the tired and less able to stop to rest. Portland Parks has declared that there will no more benches installed along trails because they do not have funds to do so, even though SWTrails and the family of Phyllis Towne, our recently deceased member, have offered to purchase, install and maintain the bench.
Viewpoint on Iowa Street Trail — it is under the freeway – a rather unusual place for a viewpoint. SW Trails is advocating that a bench be installed here.
We continued our walk down Iowa street to MacAdam and in the north entrance of Willamette park, past about 100 geese munching and pooping on the grass.
Geese at Willamette Park
We used the detour caused by the Sellwood Bridge Construction to begin our walk up the hill on Urban Trail 4, first up Taylor’s Ferry Road, thence to the many steps of SW Custer Way, and then along the south side of the freeway on SW Custer until we came to the 70 steps built by SWTrails in 2004 under the Terwilliger northbound on ramp. We then proceeded up onto Terwilliger and crossing over the I5 freeway. We followed local streets back to the Rieke parking lot.
No rain, great talks, good exercise.
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