To the Beaches!

Dear Diary,

Today's page was always going to be kind of short - there just aren't that many parks in the part of northeastern Seattle in question.  But last night it got even shorter because I deleted two of the photos by mistake.

Chinook Passage Natural Area

Since I was going to pass this park, introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!", no matter what - 95th St, along which it lies, being the obvious way to get from 35th Ave to the next park - I figured I should take pictures.  Now, if one read yesterday's page "Six Parks in Search of Another" much more closely than it deserves, it would be clear that these were the first photos I took on October 12 since my visit to Lavilla Meadows Natural Area.  (I don't know, by the way, whether Lavilla or LaVilla is correct, but La Villa certainly isn't.)

The photos of Lavilla Meadows were of a lot of undergrowth, plus, in one, a sign.  Now, one of the photos of Chinook Passage was like that, sign plus greenery, but the other was meant to use a streetside break in the wall of trees to show the depth of this two and a half acre forest.  As usual when I try that kind of thing, the photo was a failure.  So for practical purposes the Lavilla Meadows and Chinook Passage photos, next to each other in my chronologically sorted photo bin, looked pretty much alike.  And last night when I deleted from my phone the photos I'd just put into you, dear Diary, I seem to have deleted both pairs.  Sorry, but, well, not very sorry.

Matthews Beach

This 22-acre park was always going to be the main one in this page.  I introduced it in the same page as Chinook Passage, not only without photos, but without enough exploration to convince me I'd found all its water fountains.  All summer I meant to get back - until the rain June 27 started, it was on my list for that day - but it never happened.

But it turns out that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation offers free reservations for groups of picnic tables in some parks, including Matthews Beach, as well as paid reservations for picnic shelters.  And it offers maps of both sets of parks.  So this time I had a map, and no excuse for not doing the job right.

So what did I find?

First of all, the water fountain I found before really is the only one.

Free-standing water fountain near the restrooms - ON, but it tasted bad

Second, the seasonal restrooms were of course locked - I asked Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the department, whether they'd been opened at all this year, but she didn't answer.

Third, more worrisomely, one of the two all-gender stalls that are supposed to be open year round was boarded up, I kid you not:

and the other was locked.  Turns out this was just someone camping in there - I ended up coming back a few days later, and it was open.  But these are the only park restrooms open year round in a vast stretch of North Seattle, with Little Brook and Meadowbrook closed.  (I verified the latter yesterday; the sign announcing the closure was still up, dated November 23.)  In general I prefer the dignity offered by a lockable door, but it worries me that so many of the year round restrooms offer that dignity, since it makes camping in the stalls workable.  (The exceptions, in "NE", are at Dahl and View Ridge Playfields and in Magnuson Park.  All in a row down the middle.)

And what else?

Basically a lot of photogenic waterfront.  Matthews Beach has several trails, but not so many woods, so most parts of the park effectively look lakeward.

The main exception is in the southeast, where Thornton Creek enters the lake.  I'll talk about the woods there in an upcoming page; for now I just want to show you, dear Diary, the map of the watershed that revealed to me the existence of Meadowbrook Pond:

Maple Springs Natural Area

The only other departmental park anywhere near there is, um, different.  It's basically the woods behind dead ends at 40th Ave and 91st St.  I was coming from the north, so I started at 40th:

Well, um, good to know about the wasps, but...

At 91st the signs are clearer:

In other words, this park is closed to the public, because parts of it, which apparently can't be disentangled from the rest, are private land.  I actually find this reassuring; like Waldo Woods, it shows the department trying to preserve land even if it can't open that land up.  In this regard, the department's heart is in the right place.

From there I headed practically straight south to View Ridge Playfield's picnic shelter.  So ended October 12, near the end of this long hike.

Until tomorrow, dear Diary, a good day and a good night.