Another Hike in Lake City

Dear Diary,

On Wednesday, May 12, I started by going back to Lake City for several reasons.  First, to see whether anything had changed with regard to Little Brook Park's closed restroom and shut-off water fountain.  Second, because I'd forgotten to check whether Albert Davis Park's water fountain was running while I was there.  And third...

See, I'd started using Open Street Map the day before.  This wasn't really practical on my phone, I had thought, while hiking, because Open Street Map doesn't have a phone app.  (It worked OK when I tried it Wednesday, though, although the auto-locator feature of Google Maps is often important, and OSM lacks that too.)  Also, and more importantly, I dreaded trying to edit images on my phone, so I couldn't really do anything with maps except use them to guide my hikes.  Hence maps showing up in you, dear Diary, a few weeks after I bought a laptop.

Well, one important difference between Open Street Map and Google Maps is that Open Street Map maps woods.  Because I still haven't figured out where one six-acre park property is, as mentioned in the previous page, I was looking for woods.  Now, the only unaccounted-for woods on the North Fork of Thornton Creek, which the property's name indicates, are outside the region I was hiking, between I-5 and Lake City Way, but I figured I should get some practise in looking for Open Street Map's woods so as to be prepared.

So on May 11 and 12 I went carefully through this region and the two I'd already done, looking for green, unaccounted-for, on Open Street Map when I magnified the map such that, usually, five north-south blocks (for example 35th to 40th Streets) filled the screen.  I only found three such places in the second region, southern "NW".  There were eight in the first region, southern "N" and southwestern "NE", all but one in Fremont, and most of those adjacent to Aurora Ave N.  And there were eleven in the region I was going back to, including some vast areas.  So that would be my test.

Here's the unaltered Open Street Map presentation of most of the part of Lake City I was hiking, at the same scale as the maps I've been showing you, dear Diary.  Can you spot the four places I wanted to investigate?

Here's the same map, marked with the places I looked at.  Note that Albert Davis Park is actually off the map to the south.

Finally, here's the front page of the day's newspaper, for recognising it better in the photos from the entire Wednesday hike:

Now let's get started.

Little Brook Park

The only change in the restroom and water fountain is that this time I photographed them with the newspaper I'd brought along.  I've already shown you, dear Diary, the first photo.

Here's the other:

(And isn't it wonderful to see in that headline that a local government actually cares about Seattle's homeless?)

That's all I did in Little Brook Park that day.

Private Yards and Schoolyards

Open Street Map doesn't show, at any level of magnification, people's private front, side, or back yards.  Except when it does.  Northern Lake City includes some very large housing developments.  Some of these have very large yards.  And for some reason Open Street Map thinks two of these are worth singling out in green.  It even names one of them.  If someone goes to "Sherwood dog area" as shown on Open Street Map, one block from Little Brook Park, this is what greets her:

The other, considerably larger, property Open Street Map greens is way off to the west.  I found one of similar size also near Little Brook, but OSM doesn't bother with that one.  The one they do green has this sign:

To be fair, OSM did warn me about the third place, that it was adjacent to a school, I just ignored that.  I didn't bother photographing their sign.

So at this point Open Street Map was 0 for 3, but then...

NE 133rd St trail

This one is in fact parklike and open to the public.  It's the block between 27th and 28th Avenues NE, which are the avenues on either side of the library, Albert Davis Park, and so on, and I can imagine reasons for cutting 133rd off there, but in any event, Lake City is under-parked, so every bit helps, even one as small as a single block of unimproved street.

 

It even has parklike signage, threatening all manner of evildoers but especially negligent dog walkers:

Albert Davis Park

I found a copy of the notice that was given of the sweep:

I did what I came for, and no, of course the water fountain wasn't running.

I observed that the boundaries of the notionally closed park remained unclear even with keep-out tape:

It only occurs to me as I write this that I visited this closed park twice during the week it was closed, a week that was supposed to serve the purpose of getting the park back into shape, both visits were during the day, and I didn't observe a single employee of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation actually present, or at least not - it's not like I've memorised the faces of every parks department staffer - doing anything to improve the park's state.

Near the spot shown in the last photo is one piece of genuinely neat stuff, a "shrine" to Will Rogers at what it claims was the site of his last rodeo:

One thing that does bring to mind, though.  Both Will Rogers and Albert Davis were white men.  But I don't have a clue what Virgil Flaim looked like.  Hmmm.

Anyway, my errands in Lake City done, I took a bus to my next stop, Hubbard Homestead.  Which is the subject of your next page, dear Diary.