Hike 8B: Near Northwest

Dear Diary,

This page is about two parks and one so-called street end.  It may be a few days until I can tell you about the rest of Ballard; what will remain after this page is more or less downtown Ballard, to my account of which attaches a story that, in turn, makes finishing another page necessary.  So this is the last page for a while which I can write in you, dear Diary.

On January 19, then, after visiting B. F. Day Playground and some Fremont shops, I finally got around, mid-afternoon, to going west.  First stop, as usual:

Ross Playground, or Playfield, or Park

This small park, which I sort of like although so many other people like it more that I can never stay long, well, anyway, I first discussed it June 25 in "History and Parks" part I, which I now see two more people have had the courage to read, and then December 16 in "The Water Fountains of Ballard".

It has restrooms separated by a mosaic that I no more succeeded in photographing in January than any previous time:

Those restrooms were supposed to be closed this winter, by all my sources, and sure enough they were, as you can already see, dear Diary, but let's have the door shots anyway...

Although this park has a baseball field that proclaims "Ross Playfield", it's too small and sports-deficient otherwise for that title, as discussed in some detail January 6 in "What's in a Name?"  But it does have a basketball, um, hoop:

Next comes a park that I've belatedly noticed is on some paths to the Ballard Fred Mayer:

Gilman Playground

which I've told you, dear Diary, about in the same pages as Ross, yes, including "What's in a Name?"  I'm considerably more reconciled to this one's official name after this visit, anyhow, after surveying the evidence for its athletic offerings.  But let's get the restrooms out of the way first.  Like all other park restrooms on the NW street grid, separated by cliffs from both the beaches and the rest of North Seattle, well anyway, Gilman's restrooms are supposed to be closed this winter, but the map I was hiking to check lyingly claimed they were open, with the excuse of "sanican"s, of which this park has several:

I heard two people conversing inside the big one while there.

So here's the restroom building:

And here are the closed doors:

And now maybe we can talk about the sports.  Gilman has provision for four.  It has perfectly ordinary and acceptable tennis courts.  It keeps its moveable goalposts for soccer next to those:

Soccer is, of course, during non-pandemic times, played not there but on the baseball diamond:

And then there's the basketball hoop:

Gilman Playground devotes so much space to sports that, after the example of Ross's three names, I wanted to blame its blandness on the sports, call it a playfield, but it really doesn't have the space to do them right.  Sorry for misleading you, dear Diary.

Gilman Playground does have one distinctive feature.  Probably out of kindness to the homeless people who were back camping there in January, its water fountain ignores city-wide shutdowns.  You may remember, dear Diary, that I found it running last June during the COVID shutdown.  Well, guess what I found in January?

Unfortunately, not much later we got a cold spell, and I warned Rachel Schulkin of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation about this and the other two water fountains I found running in NW, one of which, at Loyal Heights Community Center, I told you, dear Diary, about February 8 in "Hike 4B". I don't know whether whoever keeps turning it back on has done so again this winter.

Because the temperatures where pipes are can be several degrees lower than those where temperatures are usually measured, I'm not sure it's safe to leave ordinary water fountains running over any night forecast to go below 40° F.  That's why it's so shocking to me that the street fountains with their presumably heated pipes have gone to disrepair, and the winter-adapted ones in Cal Anderson and Northacres Parks have been shut off as if they were ordinary.

The Ballard Bridge (15th Ave NW) Street End

You may remember, dear Diary, that in the pages from December 21 on "Street Ends" in north-central and northwest Salmon Bay, I made quite a muddle of this one.  This time, actually on my way back east from Ballard in the late afternoon of January 19, through careful study of the photos included in the GIS info on the street end map, I think I sorted it out.  The "street end" is west, not east, of the bridge.  One has to walk along the eastern edge of a private parking lot to reach it.

So photo 2:  The land the city appears to claim:

Photo 3:  A view over the water:

All for tonight, dear Diary, and until I can get some hiking done.  Happy days!