Portland Walks: Governors Park

As it turns out there isn't so much of a Governors Park as it is just a natural area, set aside for wildlife and whatnot. Now that I've had time to properly research this, turns out it's just an undeveloped area in the Southwest Hills, set aside in 1894. Our usual Sunday afternoon walk was almost rained out this week, but the sky cleared up in the late afternoon. Not knowing how long this would hold up, I picked something close on google maps that we had yet to see. So our walk was more about houses and views, a perfectly acceptable alternative to a pair of architecture people.

 

I'm getting so that when I see what looks like over 100 stairs somewhere the urge to climb them is very compelling. This week it was about 178, we counted, and that was just to the mid-height level. As we were making our way up the rest of the slope, through the neighborhood I was caught taking pictures. This resulted in being inviting on a wonderful wrap around porch to take some pictures of the great view of the city. They also had a really cool old wooden birdhouse.

 

Once we saw the park (which involves nice trees and sign) we were headed downward again. That part of the neighborhood seemed to have quite a few more contemporary homes than other areas; a few of those are pictured above. The one on the right might look much smaller than the one on the left but don't forget it's on a hillside. It was a couple of stories tall to make up for that compact street front appearance. People in this part of town have some fun things too:

  

A weird little tri-wheeled car, a discoball in a greenhouse, and a sailboat mobile spinning in the wind!