In our first tour, we looked closely at the winding steps near 76th Street and Park Lane South. Those steps led up to the back of the Oak Ridge House. Once that was finished, and we walked back down, we wandered along a path that runs parallel to Park Lane South, behind the playground, where another set of steps awaited us. The map below should give you a better idea of where we walked next:
The jagged red line shows the first set of steps. The two yellow X's mark the start and end of the second set. These steps begin just behind the Mary Whalen Playground, and end on Forest Park Drive, right next to the Oak Ridge House. Here is the view of the path leading towards those steps - the playground (and outside the frame, Park Lane South) are at the right.
Looking down towards Park Lane South, you can see the effect of the recent rains - the grass is almost knee-deep in parts. Below, at right, is a better look at the playground. 
This set of steps is vastly different than the last one. For starters, there's no stone walls on either side, and it's also not nearly as crooked. But it's still interesting nonetheless. We sat for a bit, enjoying the sunshine, and concluded that in our combined 90+ years of living in Woodhaven, we'd never walked up these steps. These steps begin with a small group - and then there's a path of about 25 feet before you reach an even smaller set of steps. But once you reach this second set of steps, you are fully beneath the canopy of leaves.
But from there, it's all uphill as the saying goes. Again, this is a nice area of the park - lots of shade and interesting trees. And a nice stump to sit on!
We had a long march ahead of us (and plans for visiting 2 more staircases after this one), and our water bottle was less than half full - hey, we're optimists! So you can imagine that this set of steps looked a little long. In fact, if you stare at the steps long enough they start to look like they're going down instead of up. Next time we'll bring more water.
Here we are, nearing the top. It's interesting the way they did this -- you get a group of steps, and then a platform -- then more steps and another platform. This pattern is repeated 8 times in the long stretch - with varying numbers of steps. Why did they only put a handrail on one side?
Here's what is actually looks like going down. That could be dangerous if you were on your way home from a pub! Again, though, it's odd that the handrail is only on the one side.
So when you get to the top, you've got woods on one side, and the Oak Ridge House on the other.
Here's one last view of the steps. It's very cinematic, isn't it? If I was making a movie, this would be an angle I'd choose to shoot.
The total number of steps here was 67. One the long series you can see that most rises contained 7 steps - broken up by a few different amounts. The last staircase we visited contained 94 steps, but that one had twists and turns, where this one is straight up.
From the top, we could look out across Forest park Drive and see our next project. These, too, are another set of steps we could not recall climbing. I wonder what we'll find there . . .
If you have any comments, or would like to suggest other projects, drop us a line at info@projectwoodhaven.com or projectwoodhaven@aol.com.
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