October 3, 2012
by David Ryan
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A Backcountry Wandering

I hope that the book The Gentle Art of Wandering and the posts in this blog have shown you that you can wander anywhere and that almost every area has something special to offer when it comes to wandering. For example Los Angeles has its public stairways while New Mexico has its wide open and almost empty backcountry. Both are great walking experiences.

To provide an example of what you can expect on a backcountry wandering, the dogs and I went wandering in a tract of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land northwest of Albuquerque a few days ago. We went there to record the locations of several archaeology sites that we had seen before.

Because I am a BLM volunteer, I cannot give you exact locations. But if you are interested in finding archaeological sites in New Mexico, you can start by checking out a sandy ridgeline or a finger of land coming off of a sandstone mesa. If you let yourself see, you just might stumble on to a few sites.

There are some earlier posts in this blog that can give you some background on dealing with roads and other items in the backcountry.

We did have to drive on a dirt road to reach our destination. In this case the road was fine. 

Had the road been wet we probably would have chosen a different destination. The addition of rain would make this road a nightmare. Continue Reading →

September 21, 2012
by David Ryan
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A Walk on the Sidewalk Streets of Venice, California

The previous post concluded with Bob Inman and me finishing our walk in Rustic Canyon and heading for the beachfront community of Venice a few miles to the south. Rather than heading for the beach and boardwalk, we headed a bit inland to the sidewalk streets of Venice.

The sidewalk streets are just what they sound like; the streets are a single sidewalk. Vehicle access to a house is through the alley. These streets, like the rest of Venice, were developed by Abbot Kinney in the early part of the last century as part of an oceanfront resort community. What may have been a quaint concept 100 years ago may now be visionary. According to a recent New York Times article, walkability is now an extremely important factor in a home’s value, and it’s hard to get more walkable than living on a sidewalk. (Click here to read the article.)

As mentioned in the previous post, Bob Inman will be including the sidewalk streets and other pedestrian friendly passages in the next edition of his stairway guide.

Here’s what we saw on the sidewalk streets:

We approached the sidewalk street from a cross street. You can see the street sign and the sidewalk going off to the right.

Continue Reading →

September 17, 2012
by David Ryan
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Stair Wandering in Rustic Canyon (Los Angeles) with Bob Inman

A few days ago I had the opportunity to go on a walk with Bob Inman. Bob is the author of A Guide to the Public Stairways of Los Angeles. The book describes over 260 public stairways within the city limits of Los Angeles.

If you’ve read any of the other posts in this blog about public stairways, you know that they are great places to wander and for exploring a neighborhood. I was especially excited to walk with Bob as he has an incredible knack for finding stairways and pedestrian friendly passages. I knew that there was much I could learn from him.

Bob and I met in downtown Santa Monica and immediately went down a stairway and overpass combination that took us off the bluff and down to the beach. We took a right and headed north to the Los Angeles – Santa Monica border. There we headed inland along Ocean Avenue. If you are interested in doing a similar walk, you can look at the section in Bob’s book about Rustic Canyon. Charles Fleming also has a Rustic Canyon walk in his book Secret Stairs: A Walking Guide to the Historic Staircases of Los Angeles.

As we walked up Ocean, we spotted a staircase on the other side of the street. It turned out that that particular staircase is not in the current edition of Bob’s guidebook. We decided to go up the stairs to see if they connected to anything else. When we turned right we ran into a dead end. When we turned left, we found a long walk that ended at another staircase that took us back Ocean.

This staircase on Ocean Avenue is not in the current version of the guidebook. It will be in the next edition.

Continue Reading →