We set out today to do a bike ride along a portion of the 45 mile route of the Portland Century. We loaded all our bikes (ours on the rear bike rack, Chris and Anara's in the truck bed) and headed to the University of Portland, the starting point of the ride. (The actual organized ride was yesterday.)
We parked at the university and rode west. It was a beautiful day for a ride. We stopped at Kelley Point Park to eat our picnic lunch in the park near the river. We went on to ride along the Smith and Bybee Natural Area. We stopped to visit a couple of observation points, one on Bybee Lake and the other on Smith Lake.
We had to walk our bikes into the natural area because no bike riding is allowed on the trail. After riding through a commercial and industrial area, it was refreshing to find ourselves in a completely different environment. We saw lots of water birds and some turtles on a log.
We ended up accidentally taking a shortcut back to the university, but we were all happy to get back to the truck. The afternoon sun was quite hot, and air conditioning felt really good. While we were at the university we walked along the bluff overlooking the Willamette River and found a historical marker showing the furthest penetration of Lewis and Clark up the Willamette River.
We stopped at the Backyard Bird Shop on Fremont for Chris to pick up an ant moat, a small upside down metal umbrella to hang above the hummingbird feeder on his porch. The idea is that ants fall in the water and are unable to get to the hummingbird nectar. Rather spiffy! He also decided to buy a suet feeder to attract more birds to the porch.
[photos later]
0 comments:
Post a Comment