Stone Age

White handprints on a stone wall
https://www.strava.com/activities/4902223367
RATS #00376 – East Liberty, Belmar, Highland Park

This early March, Saturday run took me from alleys of Highland Park into the heights of Belmar and took care of some intervening areas in Larimer. I was also stretching out the distance, aiming for more than ten miles.

I started out on a few dead-end alleys in Highland Park, remarkable for their Stone-Age Era wall paintings. Then, I ran into typical streets trouble; colonized streets. This time, it was Glenview Place. I recognize that residents want to make the most of their living space, and a small, dead-end road is an ideal choice for extending your space, for parking, for car washing, for cookouts, for putting greens. However, it is a bit annoying to find public roads plastered with “Private Property” and “No Trespassing” signs a quarter mile before the end. Grrr!

Nonetheless, the pleasant morning made up for the irritation and returned the way I came, this time scaling down Violin Way until it wrapped around St. Marie Street and Chinn Way. Shaking off the dust from Highland Park, I entered the meat of my course in Larimer. I had laid out a route to do all of Indiana Way, finish a section between Larimer Avenue and Negley Run Road, then zig-zag across Larimer to Lincoln.

It isn’t actually that far. Indiana Way starts out well, makes it past the autobody shop and then disintegrates into a sidewalk along a playground. Orange Street, however, doesn’t really didn’t go through, I had to bushwhack through tall weeds and under broken trees to do it. That, of course, roused the local dogs, and by the time I stopped to take a picture of Orange Street, their howls were unnerving. It was also disappointing to see that a house with newly installed windows had already had its new windows broken. Then, a faded blue and white full sized van crept past me, going not more than 15 mph. Fine, residential area, old guys go slow. Continuing down Lenora, I passed this van as the driver slowly parked. Lenora ends, aptly, at Orphan Street which is high above Negley Run Road. This whole area seemed rather orphaned, honestly.

Now on a mission to complete the remaining little streets, what should slowly drive by, but the blue and white van. There was a veritable traffic jam as I tried to cross the street, while the van slowly made a right and sporty car quickly came up behind it. At this point I had just about had enough. Why was this guy driving so slowly? At any rate, I figured I could do this section later and zipped onto the other side of the street. I came up Victor Way as it squeezed past two houses en route to Rapidan Way, but two cars up on blocks for repairs impeded my progress to Renfrew Street, so I adjusted my route and crossed over to Lowell. Coming down Lowell, what should I see but the blue and white van slowly coming down the street! Ugh, three times a charm, so I bolted over to Lincoln Avenue, where I caught a picture of the faded glory of the Elks Club.

Lincoln crosses high above Washington Boulevard, but below a set of train tracks. I was surprised to still see icicles below the rusty trestle. The far side of Washington Boulevard is fairly spread out with long alleys and steeply rising hills. It seems I always find cemeteries on hilltops, and this was no exception. There’s also a juvenile detention center, a defunct veteran’s complex and Job Corp, which seems to be a campus tech school of some sort. Their website is pretty flowery, but the grounds were thoroughly fenced in.

At this point, I made my way back to Highland Park via Negley Run Road. Under the Meadow Street Bridge, soaring high above, defunct steps stood out against the brown winter leaves.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: