UkuAdventures in Echo Park: Stairwalk Adventure Fever Part 1! (Patch Blog)

Dear Blob,

Among my top favorite Eastside Must-See 'n' Do for visitors and myself is Stairwalk Exploration of Elysian Park.  After 7 years of Echo Park living, I am still discovering new stairwalks and shortcuts among the hills and am partial to sharing the magic with fellow fitness 'n' nature-beauty enthusiasts.

A recent whore-hot Saturday found me, after a yoga-nerd-life-changing-class at Yoga-at-the-Raven in Silverlake, meeting Rebekah, who I've known for 17 years, at the Morton Street Elysian Park Entrance for Stairwalk Exploration Part 1. 

Rebekah, Asta (Her dog-in-law) and I started at Academy Road, heading North, on the trail.  Elysian Park was started as an arboretum, and can be a shade-a-riffic walk in the summer heat.  My manpanion, who is from the South, was horrified at Elysian Park's summer yellow and shocked at it's winter green, as it's opposite in Georgia. I think it's beautiful and relaxing all year round and I always find new trails, views and stairwalks.  It has the California dry-grass-smell, which takes me back to teen-summers spent in Northern California at hippie-circus camp.

The Academy Road trail winds up to a little community garden with water for pooches and on clear days has a fab view of the Angeles Forest, Mt. Washington and Downtown.  Smoggy summer days are a bit bleakly-brown and Rebekah and I, discussing reality show pitching, purchasing and producing, hiking in the smog, shared a somewhat smugly-brave and stoic feeling by sacrificing fresh air for our career passions.

Once we hit the community garden (nearby there is also a private home with horses to gawk at) we turned uphill, away from the park and cut through bushes to the asphalt at the very top crest of Park Drive.  Admiring modern homes and succulents, I kept my eyeballs peeled for the tell-tale City Lampposts, which mark the entrances to hidden stairwalks. 

The top of Park drive has several stairwalks and we found one, spotting the silver Jetsonsesque lamppost and hop-trotted down the stairs, ending up near Valentine Street on Avon.  We took a left at the bottom and found the Avon Steps, further down from the Baxter Street stairs or perhaps they are called Valentine Street Stairs. 

We felt fitly sweaty and Asta was like a champion-fitness-showdog, cutely waddling alongside us.  We passed the same jogger twice on different stairwalks; she was much faster than us and amusingly, wore a sweat-headband.

The stairwalks are everywhere in Echo Park and I've recently discovered Mar Vista and Highland Park stairwalks!  It's so exciting to travel Los Angeles streets by foot, passing magic gardens, vintage architecture and old abuelitas tending their gardens.

Rebekah, a longtime Eastside resident had never been to the stairwalks we discovered and amazingly, neither had I, until several years into my Echo Park residence.  Along our Stairwalk Exploration we snapped succulent clippings to take home and plant in our gardens.  Succulents will re-root anywhere and take almost no care.  You can treat a succulent the way a destitute Victorian mother treated her children, leaving them at an orphanage and picking them up 2 years later; the succulents will be a bit bedraggled, but somehow still thriving.

We hiked for about 2 hours, hit 3 stairwalks and 1 dead end.  Surprisingly, we didn't come upon any dead bodies, drunks or suspicious activity, just fellow hikers and a lot of bouganvillea.  Stay tuned for more Stairwalk adventures!

Love The Ukulady

ps:  I saw the most shocking billboard at Glendale Blvd at Fletcher in Silverlake.  It features 3 tipped over glasses of wine, margarita and whiskey, a bunch of blue ecstacy pills and a line of white powder, with the headline:  Played Too hard?  Get Tested.  I am pleased it's an HIV testing ad, but somewhat amazed at the verb choice of Play. 

I am not a parent and grew up in extreme liberal Marin County, complete with garbage bags of pot everywhere and naked hippies; but I take issue with kids passing this billboard and associating the word Play with doing Coke and Speed.

pps:  Reader, I wish I could give exact directions to the stairwalks, but part of their charm and magic is the Stumbling-Uponness of them.  I encourage all Angelenos to explore the Echo and Elysian Park hills and stairwalks.  Just park and wander!