A Visit to Hubbard Homestead

Dear Diary,

Hubbard Homestead is a park about one block north of Northgate Mall, and directly north of the building called Northgate North.  It does not include any actual homestead in the sense of a building of its own, or a farmyard, or whatever; the Hubbard family "homestead" (meaning home, or what exactly?) occupied the space from 1913-1968, according to the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation web page, which was probably too late for farming thereabouts anyway.

It does include a fair amount of neat park stuff, though, starting with an astonishing number of wooden benches:

As you can see, dear Diary, those benches are helpfully near a bus stop, a pretty major bus stop, actually.  They are not, however, the park's most popular feature.  That would be its skatebowl.  I'd probably have to get there at dawn to photograph that without including any people.

That said, this is yet another park with a basketball half-court, although the lines are fading:

I fear it's also another park struck by the scourge of graffiti, which for some reason the parks maintenance guys didn't get around to removing over the winter.  I've shown you these stones before, dear Diary, but look at them now:

All that paint still on them, and even a symbol on one.  Shameful.

All this is in the eastern part of the park, the part most familiar to me.  I headed west.  (The park's south is interesting too, but between the skatebowl and some guy who seemed to be all over it, was too challenging to photograph.)

The park also has stone benches, and one extravagant combination of wood and stone:

There's a complex sort of woods at the west end of the park, north of the skatebowl.  The wicked graffiti-doers have struck here too:

By this point I was noticing unusual performance in red and yellow with my phone's camera, so I tried something I don't normally try:

No, I don't know why that sort of worked.

The only picnic tables in the park are north of the woods, and unfortunately are metal.  Maybe that's meant to encourage people to be fast with their picnics, so others can have a chance at the tables.

Another view of the woods:

Now, Hubbard Homestead has been promised a playground.  See, there used to be a playground at Victory Creek Park, a few blocks east.  It was behind the times, though, so the parks department told the neighbourhood it would be cheaper to make a new one than to renovate, and somehow moving it to Hubbard Homestead would be better than leaving it at Victory Creek.  (Though I see a lot more little kids in the quiet blocks around the latter than in the busy, high-traffic ones around the Homestead.)  That playground is not yet built at Hubbard Homestead, though the old one was gone from Victory Creek before I first stepped foot in that park, looking for it.  Sources:  Pinehurst Seattle, parks department, parks department (PDF).

However, Open Street Map already shows a playground at Hubbard Homestead, north of the basketball half-court.  Since I needed to leave via 5th Ave NE in order to reach the next set of parks (which I won't be telling you about tonight, dear Diary), my last stop in the park was to investigate.  It turns out Hubbard Homestead does already have a set of exercise machines, playground equipment for adults and older teens:

But I admit, I'm likely to go on thinking of it primarily as a place to rest when wandering around Northgate.  Good night, dear Diary.