I rarely find myself in the southeast corner of the county so when my wife and I had errands in Tualatin, I seized the opportunity, strapped a bike to the car, and planned some sightseeing on the ride home.

Tualatin

I begin at Tualatin Lake for a little lunch. The area is a mix of restaurants, commercial space, hotels, and apartments, organized around a retention pond with a fountain.

Historically, Tualatin was the site of one of the first bridges over the Tualatin River (and originally called Bridgeport despite not being a port). The name was changed to the river in the 1880s to match the new railroad depot.

Today, Tualatin is home to 27,000 people. It has endless strip malls along the interstate corridor and endless suburbs everywhere else. 

From there, I head north along the Hedges Creek Trail to the Pedestrian bridge, the safest way to cross the Tualatin River on a bicycle.

Once across, I find myself somewhere else, entirely.

Durham

Durham describes itself as a small, sylvan community and I can confirm that. Originally a mill and train stop, residents incorporated in 1966 in a successful bid toward limiting industrial development near their homes. The town has about 2000 people and probably five times that many trees.

I make a small diversion through a mess of woodsy sylvan streets to the Durham City Hall, then went west.

King City

King City is a planned community for 55+ adults built in 1964 into the side of a hill. Over 5000 people live in King City. Until this trip, I was only knew of King City from it's prominent place in my election voting packets. 

There's not really a downtown, nearly the entire city limits are residences. Instead, the community golf course is the centerpiece of this place. It looks nice. I'll look into residency when I'm eligible in about a decade.

I leave town and start heading up up up.

Bull Mountain

The summit of Bull Mountain is over 700 feet tall. I've seen worse. The entire dome is residential sprawl of about 9000 people. Even though the roads aren't straight, I keep pointing myself upward until I see water reservoirs, usually a good sign you've reached the top.

After a failed (and arguably underhanded) annexation effort from Tigard in 2004, parts of the hill have gradually been annexed, block by block. The bulk of the mountain remains unincorporated for now, for better or worse.

Murrayhill

Anyone who says that bicycles are slower than cars hasn't seen me down a winding mountain. I don't have two tons of momentum forcing me to slow before each curve so I reach the bottom in just a few minutes.

At this point I join up with the Westside Trail, an impressively lo multipurpose path.

...it's not my favorite. Ultimately, cyclists and cars want the same things: straight smooth roads with no traffic or interruptions. This path has a lot of unnecessary switchbacks, a lot of pedestrians that can't seem to hear me, and a different road crossing every couple of hundred feet that stops me dead.

Look, I appreciate the effort to create safe spaces for non-automobiles but not all cyclists are the same. My goal is usually to travel a long distance quickly and get a good workout. In that case, I'd much prefer a bike lane (or at least a continuous paved shoulder) along a road over a quaint powerlines trail.

In any event, the path travels through Murrayhill. It's a planned "full-service residential and commercial community" built in the late 1980s. It's got plenty of homes and shops and lies entirely within the Beaverton city limits.

I take the same approach as Tualatin and stop at their water retention pond masquerading as a lake.

Back on the Westside trail, heading north I have more fun than I expect. There's two sizeable climbs along the way. If I trained to run a marathon again this would be my hill-training course.

The path passes through an orchard of variegated English holly, which I'm told is invasive in Oregon. If Tualatin Hills Parks & Rec is taking suggestions, there are native equivalents (Oregon grape or pacific yew would be nice).

At TV highway, the trail ends and I head left to my next destination

Huber

Another odd inclusion on WashCo maps, this is an old rail station on the West Side Railroad that begot a small neighborhood. The trains don't stop here anymore but the track remains active.

There are a lot of residences both north and south of the old stop but the location of Huber, itself, is the same over-industrialized commercial space you have come to expect from the TV highway corridor. 

I won't bike on TV highway; the shoulder isn't continuous and traffic too erratic.

Elmonica

My last destination of the day is along a different train line, entirely. I take side streets and head north toward the Max line. I make a quick stop along the way, I stop at the Tualatin Hills Nature Center.

The Tualatin Hills Nature Center is an undercelebrated greenspace in my opinion. It seems to be a popular running destination for Nike employees but I don't hear it discussed in bird watching communities the way I hear about Koll Wetlands or Fern Hill. It is the only semi-urban environment where I have ever seen a pileated woodpecker 

Bikes aren't allowed on the trails (a good idea). I continue to the max line and follow it to Elmonica station.

When the Oregon Electric Railroad was built in the early 1900s, the property owner only gave up the right-of-way on the condition that the station would be named after his daughters. That savvy move means that over a century later, we still know of Eleanore and Monica.

Today, the MAX Blue and Red lines run on the old OER track. When the new lines were built in the 90s, TriMet retained many of the historic locations and names. Elmonica is a sizeable depot in a thriving neighborhood of Beaverton.

From here, I could hop a train to anywhere in the Portland area. Instead, I opt to continue to pedal a few more miles home. The ride ended up being more than I bargained for: a long trip through hilly suburbia, but I enjoyed exploring so many new places.