Hiking time: 218 minutes and 50.84 seconds, or 3 hours and 39 minutes. Many of the original trail names have been renamed, and they've begun opening the new facilities. Walkways provide access to the new Visitor's Center building but it won't physically open until June 28. Also, they've discovered 1,000 cracks in the two 50 million gallon water tanks and that's going to take another year to repair. It will only be three years late opening, for God's sake. What do you want for your tax dollar, anyway?

Powell Butte is a wimpy hike so I didn't need trekking poles and could bring my tripod, which I did. That was very useful because it was very overcast and the forest was dark yet with the camera on the tripod, I was still able to shoot at ISO 100 for low noise photos.

Took 109 photos of which 55 made the cut. The gallery starts out with 4 shots around the house to warm up the whimsy. The forest photos are part whimsy and part experimental. Don't quite know what to make of some of this experimental stuff. Some of it is pretty grotesque and/or funny, depending on your sense of humor. Some of it is definitely on the amusing, delightful, and entertaining side. It entertains me anyhow. Regardless of what you think of them, they were certainly a lot of fun to take. Some of the selfies make me look like a dwarf. Not far from the truth actually, compared to all the pituitary cases walking around these days.

Hike started at the Ellis Street entrance, right on the South Trail (formerly the Pioneer Orchard Trail), left on Summit Lane (formerly Orchard Loop), keep right on Summit Lane to summit, then left on Wildhorse Trail (same name as before), then through opening into the new visitor's center area that used to be fenced off. Walked around that on a bunch of its paved paths, climbing back to the beginning of the Mountain View paved path (same name as before) to Summit Lane to left on Meadowland Trail (formerly Goldfinch Trail), to Elderberry Trail to Cedar Grove Trail back to Ellis Street entrance and car.