The park is much too tiny to be able to handle a sudden influx of
visitors. So if you're looking for a place to picnic with Mom on Sunday or a
spot for that family reunion or post-softball cookout, stick with your
favorites.
Go on over to Alton Baker Park. Drop in at those nifty sites along the
McKenzie River at Hendrick's Bridge Wayside east of Springfield (but be
prepared for the $3 use fee).
But sometime this summer, maybe on a weekday lunch break or some other
time when most people are busy working and you really do need to get away,
head on up to Willamette Heights.
Take a picnic basket, or just a bottle of water and a book.
It's the sweetest secret picnic place we know of.
The four-acre park, with its open hillside overlooking the Willamette
River and the hills that mark the southern boundary of the Willamette
Valley, offers few amenities. No climbing structure for the kids, no rest-
rooms, no outfield, no perfectly manicured rose garden.
But it does have a picnic table nestled under the large, spreading
branches of a maple tree. It has a lone bench to take in the view of the
winding river below. It has an open area for tossing a ball or playing a
lazy game of tag.
And if the sun is just a bit too much, there's a short trail that circles
down and around the hill. It runs through deciduous trees that shade a fairy
tale woodland floor rife just now with camas lilies, wild iris and other
blooming things that Team Best of ... has the wit to admire if not name.
(A brief warning: Stay on the trail; there's poison oak in some of the
open areas.)
There are plenty of fine neighborhood retreats scattered through
Springfield and Eugene - Emerald Park off Howard Avenue in the River Road
area or Charnel Mulligan just off Charnelton Street, to name just two. Open
yet cozy, they invite us in and insist that we linger.
Willamette Heights, tucked away on a hill that most of us don't even
notice as we're zooming around on errands, is an oasis of green worth
slowing down for. Just don't everybody show up all at once.