North of 3rd between Grant and Gay,  north of 6th between Gay and Main, west of Main, south of 9th Ave., east of Grant

Total for today: 26,700 steps and 4:37 time.

Today is my last day walking before the half-way point of the year.  I feel like I’m pretty much on schedule for completing my walk by the end of the year.  Check out the June Progress Report blog for my totals so far and map of my progress.

Not altogether coincidentally, I am also going to be featured in the Times-Call newspaper on Sunday, 6/30/13.  Photographer Lewis Geyer met me to take pictures during my walk at about 6:45 am, and then reporter Whitney Bryen met Jennifer and I at our dental  office a little after 8 am to interview us, and also walk with us for about 45 minutes.

Somewhat appropriately, I just finished reading a book I had recommended to me… A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins.  Peter walked from New England down to New Orleans during mid-1970’s, and then later continued on to the West Coast.  It was a pretty good book, with interesting things he did and saw on his stops along the way.  He is a little prone to hyperbole in his writing style, however.  A follow-up book, A Walk West, is written along with his new bride that joined him in the New Orleans to the West Coast part of his journey.

 

Peter Jenkins wiki

Matt Green also walked all the way across the United States a few years, and now he is walking every street of every borough of New York City.  He expects it will take him about two years to do it.  His blog has some very nice pictures taken during his walk, which you might enjoy if you want to see more of NYC.  And I like his sense of humor  on his captions

Matt Green walking NYC

And one more blog I find to be really fascinating is AmusingPlanet.com.    It has amazing pictures from all over the world.

AmusingPlanet

But enough of all this… time to go to today’s walk.  I picked this area today because my wife’s dental office is located there, so it made it a convenient place to meet up with the Times-Call people.  So here’s a shameless plug for our dental office…

 

Now I kind of got carried away with photos today, so don’t feel bad if you don’t have the endurance to look at all of them.  Usually I only put in about half this many.  But I find the older areas of town tend to have more things that I find noteworthy to photograph.

There were several tile/mosaic pieces of artwork in the alleys here, which I have not seen  in any of part of town I’ve covered so far…

 

 

 

 

I also really like this front yard artwork…

 

There were several houses that had the old sunken driveways going down into garages.  I have also not seen this in any area of town that I’ve covered so far.  It don’t know if anybody actually parks cars in any of these, but it seems like it would be really hard to get out of after an snowstorm or ice storm.

 

 

Roosevelt Park was named after Teddy Roosevelt, who gave a speech there at one time.  I had it in my mind that it was around 1912, after he had been president, when he was running for president again on the Bull Moose party ticket.  But I found out today that it was actually in 1900, when he was vice-president under McKinley.

Teddy Roosevelt wiki

 

 

Roosevelt Park has a lot of things going on.  The first picture below is Mrs. Longmont Streetwalker Jennifer Scheidies and Times-Call reporter Whitney Bryen, posing with a statue in the park.  It always looks like an alligator to me, but apparently it’s actually a giraffe.  The next few pictures are the ‘lost objects’ that Mrs. Giraffe lost in the park.

There is also a kid’s wading pool, a pretty amazing rose garden, an ice skating / concert pavilion, a Senior Center, recreation center, and playground.  The Statue of Liberty replica is right near the rec center.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some nice houses in the western part of today’s walk…

Here’s a few of the businesses in the 8th and Main area.  In my April 6 blog (Historic East Longmont) you will see a picture I took of a giant baseball bat carved out of word… with ‘Home Run’ inscribed into the base.  It just occurred to me today that that may have been the former home of Home Run Heating… it’s only a few blocks away from the picture below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and now another thirty pictures or so to finish things out.  Thanks for sticking it out to the end.  I promise you I usually don’t have this many photos.