If you’re a skater, travel often includes a few skatepark visits. This summer, this skater was lucky enough to visit parks as close to Central Oregon as Monmouth and Corvallis, and as far away as Illinois.

And thanks to being an early riser, over Labor Day weekend, I skated four Portland parks, two of which I’d somehow never been to before. Stumptown is ground zero of the modern skatepark era, and over those three days, I visited four solid Portland-area skateparks, including Burnside, the DIY park that reignited park building and concrete skateparks as public spaces. It also has a pretty great morning old-guy crew, who, like myself, enjoy starting their days rolling on concrete.

Glenhaven Skatepark

Day one of my tour began near the airport Holiday Inn, where my wife and I stayed a night: Glenhaven Skatepark (2831 NE 82nd Ave.) a Northeast Portland gem 11,000 square feet in size featuring a brick bank, a bowl, a pool, a lengthy street area, and some mellow quarter pipes, some tight ones and a punk wall. Built in 2007 by Dreamland Skateparks, the once-smooth concrete is now a bit rough, which seems to be a hazard of aging parks west of the Cascades, I’m guessing due to moisture. But Glenhaven still has great flow, and if you go early in the morning, you might run into the Portland early bird crew of older skaters. I love skating with those guys.

Burnside Skatepark

The next morning, I joined a couple of them at the skatepark that started it all — meaning the 25-year-or-so-long concrete skatepark revival. That would be Burnside Skatepark, which began its life better known as The Burnside Project in the 1990s and drew the respect of the city — not to mention dozens of professional skaters who made the trip to Portland — to such an extent it was grandfathered in among the city’s public skateparks. Its builders would go on to form some of the most famous skatepark companies going, Grindline and Dreamland Skateparks.

Burnside, located near the Willamette River under the eastern portion of the bridge that bears that name, frequently shows up in pro skaters’ video parts. Word to the wise: Pros have a way of annihilating terrain that makes it look easy to skate. Burnside is not easy to skate, which is probably why that Sunday marked only my second time ever skating there. Humbling though it may be, it’s amazing to skate at what has been a major skateboarding landmark for three and a half decades. With a seismic rebuild of the Burnside Bridge starting in 2027, the skatepark is slated to close for up to five years. Don’t wait as long as I did. Get there while you can.

Gabriel Skatepark

On Labor Day, my third consecutive morning of skating, I dragged myself out of the hotel early and made my way to the small Gabriel Skatepark (SW 45th Avenue and Vermont Street) in southwest Portland. As I drove there in a typical Portland semi-drizzle, I questioned my sanity. This 10,000-square-foot park was built in 2008, but somehow seems much older with some of its more challenging nooks and crannies. When I go to a skatepark that I think is subpar by today’s standards, I try to imagine how I’d have felt stumbling upon it in 1983, when I was 15 and there were no public skateparks. It would have felt like Shangri-La.

I generally avoid wet concrete, but a couple of the a.m. crew were rolling around just fine, so I opted for my board with softer, grippier wheels and took a few runs. Basically a sprawling bowl, a good portion of its walls had some great snake-run-like curves built into them, leading to a deep end whose transitions seemed drawn by an unsteady hand. Overall, I’d say Gabriel was worth the drive through a verdant neighborhood, just for the novelty, but I wouldn’t put it high on my list of parks I want to revisit.

Tigard Skatepark

Upon hearing I’d never been to nearby Jim Griffith Memorial Skatepark, less formally known as Tigard Skatepark (13125 SW Hall Blvd.), the guys I was skating with suggested we head that way. About 12 minutes later, I arrived at this gem of a park that along with Burnside, Klamath Falls and Lincoln City, helped put Oregon on the world stage.

Now here was the park for me. If ever I had a single, recurring complaint about skateparks in general, it’s how tight the transitions are. Instead of a friendly 9-foot or 10-foot radius, they’re often steep like backyard pools — and not very similar to the mellower ramps I grew up skating, which are also a little more beginner friendly. Not so Tigard, which has three bowls — a slightly tight but shallow mini-bowl; a midsize with a deeper pocket; and a giant, sprawling bowl with a volcano, above which sits the park’s famed T-Rex sculpture. There are also some features wrapping around the park that could hold a street skater’s attention, but this is definitely a park bowl skaters will love.