We start our first free day with a visit at Mount Tabor Park. It is nearby our AirBnB and is quite big so it fits our desire to explore more nature in urban Portland. It also has a nice mix of water and forest so we hope for many birds and it even has a few caches. Finding where to enter the park and then to park is a bit of a problem but we manage it and park like other visitors on the side of the road. From here we descend slightly towards the first body of water on our GPS and…disappointment. The reservoir is empty, at least for a good reason as the signs say that cracks have been found and they need to be investigated first.
We decide to do a loop around the reservoir to look at the nearby houses and enjoy the views and then return to the car. It is quite cold today so we walk fast to warm ourselves, still at least it is not raining even though the clouds don’t look too promising.
One of the houses has multiple feeders and it is a hive of activity with many squirrels, jays, juncos and other birds scurrying around and gathering whatever they can.
To our surprise part of the loop is a stair with lots of steps. We are quite winded when we arrive at the top but at least we hope for some nice views.
And the views do not disappoint, you can see downtown Portland in the distance and the whole city has some beautiful fall colors, quite impressive. And then we return to the car to explore if there is another parking closer to the top.
And there is parking near the visitor center. The visitor center itself seems closed but at least the parking is open and we decide to walk from here to the top which is not that far away while enjoying the fall colors.
Mount Tabor is an extinct volcano and as such has many volcano features like a crater rim 🙂 that we find near the visitor center. There are also quite a few birds here including our first Hermit Thrush in Portland.
The walk is easy enough and we even find a couple caches as we make our way to the top. We do it slowly to enjoy the many squirrels all around us that are quite preoccupied by finding reserves for the winter.
We continue on across the top to take a look at another reservoir. This area is quite weird, there are statue pedestals with no statues and singular lampposts in the middle of the forest. We can explain the missing statue via the BLM protests as the person represented was really not someone who should have gotten a statue in a public place according to what we read about them on the internet but the lamppost is a bit weirder, does it even have electricity?
The reservoir does have water but not many water birds. We still enjoy our walk around it and even find a historic well along the way.
While there are not many water birds there are quite a few land birds near the reservoir and also on the way back to the car. Robins are surprisingly beautiful, given how common they are here, when you look at them closely but the most surprising and beautiful birds we see here are the varied thrush. We have never seen a varied thrush before our trip to Alaska earlier in the year and now we have seen them in two states in just a few months, nice. Then we return to the car and it time to get something to eat.
We buy some Mexican cuisine near our accomodation and eat it inside to warm ourselves before going downtown for the rest of our day.
