As promised, I'm going to start this post with some pictures of the Washington Park MAX station, by far the most interesting in the system.
It didn't photograph very well, but running all along the inner walls of the station is a test bore from the station's construction, with labels talking about the geological history of this location.
The elevators have a display showing the height above sea level where the floor indicator would normally be, along with a plaque showing the cross-section of the elevator shafts. If you zoom in on the second picture, you should actually be able to read the text, surprisingly enough!
)
Continuing the geologic theme, the floor indicator at the top of the elevators is depicted as a time scale of the rock layers. Unfortunately, neither of the operational elevators had these functioning (this one's doors had just closed when I took this picture); the other two are out for rehabilitation, and hopefully they'll fix this feature while they're working on them!
The main goal for today was to visit the three main gardens of Washington Park. First up was the Hoyt Arboretum:
Next up was the Japanese Garden, which could quite easily be seen from above from one of the Arboretum trails (as shown in that last picture above). This was by far my favorite part of the day! (Which, of course, means way too many pictures...
Last up was Portland's famous rose garden, which was overrun with people today and isn't really my thing, so I didn't get so many pictures from there...
OK, that's probably still too many pictures! 🙂
Anyways, after that, I headed back downtown for a last little bit of retail action.
First up was a store that has me convinced that Safeway's Oregon region has lost their complete minds:
This disaster had better not start showing up in my area anytime soon! The worst part is that this store is currently being remodeled to this decor, meaning that it seems to be their current decor package, not some old aberration...
The other was perhaps Portland's most famous retail location:
I certainly found my happy place here! I almost bought a book or two, but I really don't have the space in my tiny apartment (this hotel room is huge in comparison!) nor the time to do much reading these days.
In between those two, I took the streetcar a little more, and managed to get this picture of its most famous segment while getting lunch:
That's the streetcar cutting straight through the middle of the Portland State University campus. The college uses this scene all the time in their marketing materials -- they're quite fond of their urban location, and have made urban planning and transportation their specialty. PSU was my second choice if I didn't end up going to the UW, but (for once!) I am quite happy with the decision I made.
We're getting close to the end here, and my posts keep getting longer and longer. Don't worry, things will get back to normal here quite soon!
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