Portland, Oregon, is known as one of the artsiest and creative communities. Luckily for visitors, this creativity follows through into its gorgeous parks! Here are four of the best parks to visit in this city of Roses, and what you can do when you visit them.
This 176-acre park is the top sprawling green place to be in Portland. Home to reservable picnic areas, endless walking trails, and even a couple of dog parks: it has something for everyone. This park is a century old and is most famous for its adult soapbox derby where people can let out their inner child. Amazingly, that’s not the most exciting part of the park! It also has a volcanic cinder cone that you can marvel at and multiple open-air reservoirs. Although you could enjoy lunch in the park at face value, Mt Tabor Park has much more to offer than that.
Laurelhurst Park
This 26-acre park in Portland’s Laurelhurst neighborhood is a smaller but very beloved plot of land. If you love fishing, this is the park for you! In the early 1990s, park surveyors found the waters were overpopulated, and the fish were stirring up the muck that stopped the waters from being clear. A couple of fishing clubs banded together to try and stop this overpopulation, hosting a fishing tourney that would go on for a couple of weeks. There was no lasting success with this, though, and the fish population, composed mostly of catfish and carp, is still overloaded to this day.
Council Crest Park
This 42-acre park sits at the highest point in Portland. With this height, park-goers get the most incredible views that they’ll ever see. A large water tower sits atop the park, where an observatory sat for dozens of years. This park is luscious and green, with views that will make you seek out Portland houses for sale. A beautiful bronze statue sits in the middle of one of its various ponds, showing the fun of a mother and child playing on a sunny day.
Washington Park
The Washington Park is a family fun park with ramps for boating and endless picnic tables to enjoy a day out in the sun. Home to the Oregon Zoo, this park lets you get in touch with the wild, while not risking life or limb. An archery range, a Japanese garden, and a beautiful arboretum all sit on the premises, with enough activities available that you’ll never run out of things to do. If you’re traveling around the city on foot, you can take a light rail right to the park and enjoy one of the many walking trails. Multiple rose test gardens, statues, and memorials are tucked away in the park, waiting to be found.
Each of these offers a small escape from the city life, places full of green and art that you can slip into when you need some fresh air. Most of these have rotating art and displays, so if you visit the same park, later on, it can be an entirely different experience!
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