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Dear Diary,

Today I finished visiting the nearby parks with water fountains.  For some I had more specific goals, but in general I wanted to get up to date on their water fountains and, where applicable, their restrooms, and also wanted to take some pictures.

The only change since the last time I did this is one I've taken for granted, in writing in you, for weeks, dear Diary.  This is that the restrooms in upper Ravenna Park have gone from usually locked, sometimes open 24 hours, to normal park restrooms, open reasonably early, closed far too early.  Otherwise, the three remaining locked restrooms (in Cowen and Magnuson Parks and in University Playground) remain locked, all the rest are open, and hardly any water fountains are running.

The first day, I got up and went, as usual,to

Burke-Gilman Playground Park

This is a smallish park (7 acres) which is nevertheless in three parts.  The one I've focused on has the restrooms (open) and water fountain (running; my main water source for the past two months) as well as a playground and the "neat stuff" I've posted pictures of already.  This time I wanted to replace the "door shots" that early in you, dear Diary, provided evidence of restrooms open or closed, with shots meant to document how much privacy the men's rooms' users could expect.  BGPP is by this standard mediocre:  the only toilet stall has a heavy door which stays closed when pulled to, but can't be latched, let alone locked; there's no sign the existing door ever had such features.

The men's room also is still out of soap; it's now been over a week.

I also wanted to flip my previous standard for "neat stuff", that it be near the restrooms.  So I looked for "neat stuff" elsewhere, and in BGPP that means the other two parts.  This park has a ravine:

which is actually where I first looked for the restrooms, even though its trail is gravel.  So this park also taught me what I wrote a while ago, that parks normally don't try to hide their plumbing.

After breakfast, I travelled on

The Burke-Gilman Trail

I normally don't mention this, but it is in fact technically a Seattle park, and as I mentioned some time ago, it does have a (badly damaged) water fountain that I've photographed several times already.  Here's yet another:

Someone has tried to console the thirsty with candy.

I usually turn shortly after this fountain to go to Safeway (yes, the one that was attacked two days ago, though I didn't know that then).  From there I took 45th to

Laurelhurst Community Center and Playfield

This park is twice the size of BGPP and much more sports-oriented.  The restrooms are built into the community center, but open to the outside; they have many little features more typical of building than of field restrooms, of which the most important by far is that the sinks give hot water.  The two rooms are single-user and all-gender.  They have two visible locking mechanisms.  The one that looks like a deadbolt does nothing; I don't know whether the one included in the latch works, or whether these doors latch but don't lock.

The three water fountains are near the tennis courts and behind the two baseball diamonds.  I've yet to find any of them running.

At the far end of the park from the restrooms is a bridge, whose whole purpose, I suspect, is to allow kids from Laurelhurst Elementary to reach the park without crossing a street:

After eating lunch and (ah, luxury) washing my deli container, I took that bridge to 47th Ave, and that north to Sand Point Way, which I left at 65th for

Magnuson Park

This is one of Seattle's largest parks, though the effect is a little vitiated by its northwestern part being heavily built up.  It has three existing pairs of restrooms, a derelict building that used to host another pair, and three spots where an old map claims restrooms once were.  Here I failed to find "neat stuff" far from the restrooms.  I thought of Promontory Point, but it's actually pretty dull, except for its views of Lake Washington:

which of course also exists close to the "beach" restrooms.

North along the shore from the Point, the derelict restroom building's leak has been stopped.  The water thus saved has not been put into any of the park's four water fountains known to me.

Further north are the beach restrooms.  The stalls in these (I ventured to glance into the women's room) look like they had doors, which have been removed.  The dryer in the men's room still doesn't work.

My other failure to find "neat stuff" far from these restrooms is "Fin Art", a sculpture field (by John T. Young) mainly north of them, but reaching far enough south to be seen from them:

Going west on the Cross Park Trail, we get to the central restrooms.  I see no evidence that the stalls in the men's room here ever had doors:

Further west, near the entrance, is another set, still locked:

I recently compiled a list of North Seattle community centers, and was surprised to have ignored one in Magnuson Park.  It turns out to have been the building those restrooms are in, "The Brig", so although I didn't know it was officially a community center, I'd already followed my usual procedure, circling it looking for signs of pandemic life, and as usual not finding any.

After some fiddling around, I managed to escape Magnuson Park at 70th St to enter the View Ridge neighbourhood.  This turned out to be a mistake;  that ridge is all too real, and there were several scarily steep blocks.  But eventually, on the ridge's gentler western downslope, I reached

View Ridge Playfield

EXTENSIVELY EDITED; I'D FORGOTTEN THE RESTROOMS

This is one of three parks I added to this trip so as to make eventually updating the parks further north easier.  Of these three, only this one has restrooms; none have functioning water fountains.  They aren't core parks for me as the nearer ones are (and Magnuson, because it's the nearest big park to me).  But I didn't want to single them out to get no photos.  So I decided to take one photo of each, from beside its water fountain.  View Ridge Playfield suffers from this because its main water fountain has been removed "to not spread germs", according to women I asked about it, and the one that's left is behind the edge of a baseball diamond's fence:

Because I find the explanation I've heard for the water fountain's removal disturbing, I'm biased against this park.  This seems to have led me, on this trip, to forget that it has restrooms.  This is doubly embarrassing because on June 6 (the day of the edits), I was informed by a parks employee that VIEW RIDGE PLAYFIELD'S RESTROOMS ARE NOW OPEN 24 HOURS.  Given that, it seems a safe bet that they were open the day I forgot them (June 2).

From there I took 45th Ave to 65th St, then 65th to

Bryant Neighborhood Playground

A little (3 acres) and largely vertical park.  It was a little difficult to find an angle that didn't include people here:

Further along 45th, I eventually reached

Ravenna-Eckstein Park

Another 3-acre park, built around another community center.  This one's only sign of life is that it may be providing free newspapers to the neighbourhood.  The water fountain is behind the building.

I've already told the story of how finishing in one day went down in flames when Ravenna Park's restrooms proved to have closed early.  So the next day (June 3) I got up and took Sand Point Way to 

Burke-Gilman Playground Park

The third part of this park is sort of a mini-park, all grass and basketball court, that you can see from the Burke-Gilman Trail, on which are these two sculptures by Anna MacDonald:

The words on the first are "Not Yet", the second "Already".

The Burke-Gilman Trail

This time I shot from beside the fountain:

Surprise!  Yes, it is possible to get bored with green.

I take a fairly complicated route to lower

Ravenna Park

This, at fifty acres, is easily the biggest of these except for Magnuson Park.  It comes in three parts:  the lower, which features lots of complicated detail elements from which most of the "neat stuff" I've already photographed have come; the upper, which is on a rather larger scale; and the ravine, photos of which are in the last part of the page titled "Ravennawards".  Both the lower and the upper parts have restrooms that are now normally open by day, and the upper has a working water fountain, with rather hard water.  Both men's rooms have doors that latch and lock:

Also, I was mistaken when I said some time ago that the upper restrooms had no dryers.  Turns out these, which I'd thought maybe controlled since-removed showers,  are old-fashioned but working dryers:

Obviously this time I had to get "neat stuff" from the upper park, and here are two bits.  One is an actual sink in a picnic shelter.  Unfortunately it isn't on, perhaps because picnics aren't currently allowed, perhaps because it isn't sink season?

The other is a century-old bridge, for 20th Ave over Ravenna Creek, that's on the National Register of Historic Places:

Whew.  Across that bridge and on via 62nd St and 15th Ave to

Cowen Park

I've complained already about this park's gravel and stairs, and grudgingly admitted a couple of things would have been neat if they'd been in "a more reasonable park".  Here's an example far from the restrooms:

You probably can't tell, but this notice board balances better than most park notice boards the demands of the present - to the right, which I apparently failed to include (the sun's angle made this shot hard), are three 2020 notices - with the weird insistence park notice boards have on preserving past ephemera - here including at least one sign from 2012.  If it could be reached on pavement, it'd be pretty neat.

Cowen Park also has one thing I have to admit is cool enough to be neat even where it is.  This is a sort of low-risk thrill-ride version of a swing.  It doesn't photograph well, unfortunately, but I tried it today and found it scary fun.

Cowen Park's restrooms remain locked.  I don't remember their having the discernibly latchable and lockable stall doors they have now, but we've already established (at the start of "Ravennawards") that my memory for restroom doors is unreliable.

I noticed, this time, evidence of a ventilation system in the building, further mystifying me as to why Cowen Park's restrooms are seasonal.

On by a complicated route (these two parks are linked as near each other and both with closed restrooms, but they're actually pretty far apart for "near") to

University Playground

Here, again, the restrooms remain locked, not that my photo can prove that:

And the water fountain remains shut off.  As at Albert Davis Park in Lake City, the homeless people camping here have put some space between themselves.  (I haven't been ignoring encampments in the other parks in this post; I haven't noticed any.)  That said, while this park is over twice as big as Albert Davis Park, it is, at less than three acres, the smallest so far in this page, and I really don't know of any "neat stuff" I haven't already pointed out.  So let me instead correct mistakes I then made.  I should have named Richard Beyer as the sculptor of this:

and should also have noted that the artist intended it as Sasquatch, not a troll (though to my eye he actually made a troll). To my surprise, this sculpture has its own Wikipedia article.

Finally, straight down 8th Ave to 

Christie Park

This small park recently doubled in size, which prompted a complete revision.  Apparently the old park had basketball and a water fountain, or at least that's how I now interpret the parks department's web page on the park.  The new park, according to two men I found working there today, will not include a water fountain.  I'm very impressed by how much progress the work has made since my last visit, not so long ago; the park will probably open before, dear Diary, I finish writing you.