Hikes in southern NW: Introduction

Dear Diary,

I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten about you, but I'm just too tired to write much in you tonight.  For the second day in a row I've walked one of my eleven regions, not to mention last night's unplanned hike, and I just got home about twenty minutes ago.  I intend to spend tomorrow housebound and tell you all about it in five pages then.

But the short of it is that I found no water fountains other than the ones I already knew about, in Ross Park and Gilman Playground, and those were behaving as they did all winter and much of last year:  Gilman's ran, Ross's didn't. [1]  So we can add Ross Park's water fountain to the one in B. F. Day Playground and the two in Woodland Park that ran last October, but aren't running now.  The evidence is growing that I'm going to find the exact same water fountains running in North Seattle this spring as I did last spring, and for all I know my favourite will be shut off in summer same as last year too before some, but not all, are finally turned on, same as last year, in late summer.  It baffles me that the city government would think this worked out so well last year that it should be done again, but the alternative is to imagine that they're as reality-challenged as our recent president, and actually still think COVID-19 is spread by contact with infected surfaces outdoors.

Or one can imagine that the four examples I've found, five if you count the Wallingford street fountain which wasn't even shut off for winter but is off now, are somehow a really bad streak, and I'll find all the rest running when I get to them starting this weekend.  Gosh, I hope so.  It would be really hateful to have to spend a second summer yelling into the void of their consciences that human beings need access to water.

We'll see.  But in the meantime I have five pointless hikes in southern Ballard to tell you about tomorrow.  Until then, dear Diary.

EDIT 5/11:  Overview map of the region, courtesy of the Open Street Map project:

[1] The Ballard Locks' botanical gardens are open, and so are at least some restrooms, but the website doesn't say, at least in a quick glance, whether any water fountains are to be found there, and I didn't go far enough in tonight to find out for myself.  I did see Fred Meyer's indoor water fountains running.