Walk #4: Science Stroll

Our fourth walk out of Walking the Steps of Cincinnati was our fourth and last in Mt. Adams. Despite our fourth time being there, we still learned and saw things we hadn't in walks one, two, and three.

As usual, you can see the route we took and Chris' snapshots from the trip at SportsTracker.  We record this all on Chris' Nokia 5800 Xpress Music phone on the Cincinnati Bell network.

We initially planned to start the walk about two-thirds of the way through the given path:  We walked from Hoxworth Blood Center where we'd just donated to the intersection of Court & Broadway downtown.

Heads-up for here on out:  The fingers show you which walk we're on. :)

Check out the rest of the walk after the break!

You may have noticed I said "initially" above.  Just past the given starting point in the book (P&G Towers), we realized Chris had accidentally turned off his phone.  So, we restarted the tracker and decided we'd decide later whether we finish at the first starting point (which wasn't recorded) or the second, recorded point.  If you're not too perceptive about things above, you'll have to read the whole post to find out what we decided in the end.

Here's our new starting point:  Sentinel & 5th!

We paused to admire where we were headed.  Give us a few thousand steps and we'd be looking down at where we started from right on top of that hill up there!

We headed up Sentinel toward the 6th Street Steps.  The video below shows you how this Clean Air Climber will still truck up steps for you even after a vampire attack!

These steps lead to the 6th Street Viaduct and take walkers and cars over I-71.  From here, we started to see some of the markers of our city's response to the 1973 landslide - which the book reports as being the nation's most expensive with $22 million of damage (in 1973 dollars?).

These cement columns aren't just ugly - they help keep Mt. Adams up where it is!

Rather than a set of steps, we headed up this ramp toward Monastery and into Mt. Adams officially.

Here we are!  A Mt. Adams sign!  You can see a bit of something we really appreciated on this leg of the walk:  Lots of other people walking from downtown to Mt. Adams.  They looked like they had white-collar worker clothes on and were commuting to the hill.

We turned from Monastery onto Baum Street.  Along Baum we found something exciting:

Not the red car!  Not the landscaping!  Not even the tetherball court!  The real excitement?  The STAIRS.  These are remains of the stairs that ran alongside the Mt. Adams Incline!

Of course, I climbed around up there.  We only thought to record when I was venturing down (which is always worse than up, in my opinion):

This walk was billed as "Science Stroll."  We think Mary Ann DuSablon called it that because of the geology stuff behind the landslide, some extra info she provided about the observatory (also discussed in walk one), and that she referenced these snails.
Here's what DuSablon said about them: "The biology lesson includes the rainbow-colored snails seen in and around the stone retaining walls."  We didn't see any in action, so I picked up a few broken shells for the above shot.

We kept heading up Baum St. to Oregon St., admiring the views the whole way up.  On the brick-paved street I found around a dozen sets of overgrown steps leading up to foundations and overgrown lots.

I think this is the stairwell where I got a little bit of poison oak...  Just a little bit.

Here's a another segment of the Mt. Adams Incline.  We looking up the top portion of it toward Rookwood Pottery's parking lot.  You can see the opposite shot in the last walk.

Turning around, we found this little gem:

As we mentioned in the preview, this lot's for sale!  For $255,000 you can own a small piece of Cincinnati history!

I guess that I'm not totally surprised that these lots and homes are so expensive - check out the view folks up there have!

We headed from Oregon St. back onto Monastery and up around to Rookwood Pottery.  We stalled here on our hunt for the rook statues on the original gateposts mentioned in the book...

There they are!

Here's the Rookwood ATM.  Oh, wait, it's 5/3.

Since our "Science Stroll" includes biology, here! See if you can find the wall lizard in the picture.  We see dozens of them on every walk!

Here's another look at that lot on the incline for $225,000 just in case you're still thinking about it.  Here's how it looks from the back parking lot of Rookwood Pottery.

So, just a heads up, by not walking with us you're missing out on these views:

We went hunting for the cottage supposedly just beyond the Highland House that people think Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall may have lived in.  We didn't find it, so here's a shot of some stairs we didn't climb instead.

Here's a cool set of stairs we'd been waiting to climb.  They weren't on the climb, but we decided to climb it anyway:

You might want to note (y'know, if you're thinking about which climber to sponsor) how slowly Chris moves up these stairs.  Sure, he just gave blood, but so did I and you saw me run up those steps at the beginning.

They led up to this historic parking garage.  (Okay, I made up the historic part - but, c'mon, it's in Mt. Adams it must be historic, right?)

We wandered around to the Holy Cross Monastery building that we'd visited briefly during our first walk.  Coming around the backside this time, we found all kinds of lovely things, including this peaceful fountain.

Well, maybe it's not as peaceful seeming when you consider how viscous hippos really are.

We tried to get pictures of the beautiful inside of the church through the windows, but none really came out.  It's worth feeling like a creeper to peek into the windows - there are beautiful colonnades and paintings inside.

You know this place knows how to party wooooooo!

This is public transportation lover Doris Day's old dance school!

Oh, yeah, stairs.  That's what these are about, right?  These are the Monastery Street Steps, which we took to Wareham Dr.  The book says "children attending schools in the Basin used these steps until 1885, when the first public school on Mount Adams was opened."

If you like ivy, you'll likely think this section of Wareham is stunning.  I don't like Ivy growing on walls, though.

We took Wareham to Van Meter, crossed it, then walked over I-71 on the commuter footbridge.  I pretended I was in a zoo.

We keep showing shots of downtown - here's one from the footbridge looking at Over the Rhine instead.  True story - I think riding the Greyhound for long distances is incredibly relaxing.

Here's the fanciest part of footbridge over to the Court Street Steps.  I promise the first C is there!

We took Court to Broadway and headed back downtown.  Here's a shot of Chris' favorite building in all of Cincinnati which he calls "the old news building."  It's actually the Hamilton County Courts Building, formerly the Times-Star Building.  Built in 1931, it's one of the buildings from the Hannaford clan - DuSablon regularly drops many of the names of the Hannaford men who were architects.

Here's another famous Cincinnati building: The P&G Towers.  My step-dad calls this "the Dolly Parton building."

I can't count how many times I've been asked by security to leave the P&G gardens.  This Friday I guess they didn't mind us so much.

They also didn't mind this wedding party getting their pictures done.  I wonder if they charge for this?

This walk is ending on a high note:  Me showing off my amazing ability to climb two sets of stairs at once! Wow!

All in all, this walk was worth going through Mount Adams for a fourth time - we had a lot of fun and learned more Cincinnati history along the way!