Dear Diary,
I was going to tell you the story of the evening of May 27 today, but with the weather so nasty, I'd rather do something more unambiguously cheerful, such as write about a relatively easy and well-documented trail.
Not that it's that well-documented, or I wouldn't write about it at all; it isn't in my core area, and has no plumbing, so why should I care? Because nobody tells you even the basics of what the trail is like, and, having walked it twice, I think someone should.
Officially, the main attraction of the perimeter trail is that it provides views of the golf course, and it does indeed do so often. But I'm not that interested in views of golf courses, so I'll focus on the path underfoot and on the views in the other directions.
I started, each time, at 15th Ave and 135th St. From here, the trail goes along 135th quite a ways. It's mostly gravel, here; I've parked my cart each time I've walked it. Other parts of the trail are gravel, dirt, wood (bridges), and even pavement (but that's far ahead). Looking outward you'll see parked cars, the road, and eventually a divider of shrubbery and/or trees. This is what's south of you when you pass the trail map near 11th Ave. Here's someone else's photo of the map.
135th turns into 10th Ave not far from 11th Ave, and goes south. The trail follows it for a while, even losing the divider briefly, but can't follow it all that long considering we never see the P-Patch; instead the trail gradually curves westward, for the first time opening up real woods on its outer side.
Soon enough, we're probably roughly paralleling 133rd St, going west, but also going downhill, because we soon bridge Thornton Creek. There are paths right up to the creek's banks. Beyond the creek, the trail rises again and passes several houses, presumably on 8th Ct.
Next we reach 5th Ave. This means I-5's traffic noise is pretty much a constant here, but also, currently, Sound Transit is doing a major construction project, presumably light rail. The entire western side of the trail is within view of the site. Woods do eventually build up for a time, which turns out to herald another bridge over the creek, and doesn't last all that long thereafter. The golf course plays a little joke along here, warning trail users to be quiet and not disturb golfers' concentration, as if the highway and builders wouldn't drown out any noise we made.
There's a triangle of woods at the corner of 5th Ave and 145th St, but soon after comes one of the oldest parts of this fairly new trail, what looks just like a regular sidewalk on the south side of 145th from 6th Ave to a spot between 11th and 12th Avenues. For most of this span, the golf course is high above the trail, so there aren't even those views to take in.
The most complicated and interesting part of the trail comes next, however. There are woods on both sides of the trail at re-entry into the park, and for much of this distance the golf course's fence is far from the trail. We go downhill a ways, then walk past 12th Ave, farther than 143rd St. Up again (the trail's only actual stairs, paved, are here), to a wider woods, especially after 12th ends. Eventually we're behind houses again.
A left turn then brings us to 15th again, about where a 138th St could have been. Again we have a paved part of the trail presciently built as if it were a sidewalk long ago. Much of what's behind the fence here is the part of the driving range that golfers usually aren't in.
Signs throughout the trail have the usual parks boilerplate plus one mysterious declaration: something like "Hike at your own risk." Signs above the 135th St parking explain: The risk is from errant golf balls. I don't know how often such balls reach the trail, but I didn't see abandoned balls on either trip, so my own guess is that the risk isn't large.
So this is a really rather weird trail, what with its eight or so blocks of sidewalks, the elephant in the room that nobody online has mentioned, but I found it worth walking.
I mentioned that on both overnight trips I slept, poorly, in a bus shelter. I didn't find the area around Jackson Park at all promising for an unsheltered homeless person. But several people who've pitched tents in the more wooded areas along the trail evidently have found a way, though for who knows how long.
Dear Diary, I learnt yesterday that a man I knew had died eight weeks before. So I'm in sort of a fey mood, not helpful to writing. I have three main plans for the next week: Tell you about the evening of the 27th; update you on the core parks, including Magnuson; and go to the part of north Seattle where addresses have "N"s, looking for the western boundary, if it exists, of the dry water fountain problem. But I won't make promises as to which days each of those might happen. Until then, dear Diary.
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