New hikes of North Seattle

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I started my first hikes of North Seattle in over a year.  I thought I'd last hiked North Seattle's parks, etc. in January 2021, but found today that I'd at least visited the ones I already knew to have water fountains in May 2021.

Earlier that month, however, I set out on a different set of hikes from the one I completed.  The premise of these others was that I had access to a list of properties owned or leased by the City of Seattle, and I should go visit those that are in North Seattle.  I should go back to all the parks because a water fountain could have appeared in any of them, and also because I'd been re-reading your pages and realising I hadn't taken park appreciation photos of way too many.  And I should visit the others, as I previously visited the waterways and street ends of North Seattle, because they too could have water fountains, or even restrooms.  I divided North Seattle into eleven decidedly unequal regions and started hiking.  Soon thereafter, I looked at Open Street Map, noticed a bunch of green spaces that weren't on my list, and added those too.

So the lists I'm working from now are as follows:

1. Parks

2. P-patches

3. Other sites listed in Seattle's 2020 real property report

4. Waterways (in one region) and street ends (in seven), because now, unlike in May 2021, it's been quite a while since I last visited these.

Plus Open Street Map additions whenever I get around to looking for them.

And the purposes are restrooms and water fountains as always, but also, specific to this series of hikes, park appreciation, especially for those parks I've previously neglected, as well as those hidden behind implausible names in the real property report.

Here are the eleven regions:

The ones I've already done these hikes for are the one at the top with a big "49" in it, and the three at the bottom labelled "32", "43", and "33".  However, I'm pretty sure I didn't complete the Open Street Map stuff in "49", and I didn't even look in Open Street Map for "33" yet.

Hiking near and through the University of Washington campus yesterday also reminded me that this series of hikes focusing on city-owned land was very incomplete.  I initially gave, as examples of government-owned places the hikes wouldn't take me, post offices and schools.  Obviously adults shouldn't in general expect to find useable running water in schools, but the fact that the post offices also don't provide it is more puzzling.  In any event, the fact is that I haven't been able to find property lists for other entities - not the county, not the state, not the nation, not the schools, not the port, you name it.  The UW offers an online map that, near as I can tell, can't be exported in any more efficient way than screen shots.  I'm increasingly tempted for downtown just to hammer on the King County parcel viewer, but I'm not remotely obsessive enough to do that for all of North Seattle.

Regardless, UW is a giant hole in yesterday's work, and I should address it before telling you, dear Diary, about those hikes.  I'll probably go tomorrow up north somewhere far from campus, and work on listing the places on campus to visit soon thereafter.

Meanwhile, for the three regions I visited last May, I intend to do much more cursory hikes this time, focusing on places meaningfully open to the public, especially parks.  Here, for the benefit of anyone who wasn't reading your pages that far back, are links to the pages about those hikes.

Region 1 - Fremont and Wallingford

• "While Strolling in the Parks One Day, part I" - Wallingford parks
  
• "While Strolling in the Parks One Day, part II" - Lake Union's north shore
  
• "All in the Dry Month of May" - Fremont parks
  
• "Another Hike in Wallingford" - non-parks
• "A Hike Near the I-5 Bridge" - non-parks in what used to be Latona village
  
• "Another Hike along Lake Union and the Fremont Cut" - non-parks, one very public and not very well known, and one park
• "Another Hike in Fremont" - non-parks and one park

Region 2 - Southern Ballard

• "Hikes in southern NW: Introduction"
• "A Hike along Difficult Market Street" - non-parks
• "A Hike in Ross" (the area around Ross Park, once Ross village)
  
• "A Hike in Southeastern Ballard"
• "A Hike along Easy Market Street"
• "A Hike along Ballard's South Shore"

Region 3 - I-5 to Lake City Way

• "A Tale of Three Lake Cities"
• "Almost done..."
• "A Visit to Little Brook Park"
• "A Hike in Jackson Park, part I"
• "A Hike in Jackson Park, part II"
• "A Hike near Jackson Park"
• "A Hike in Downtown Lake City, part I"
• "A Hike in Downtown Lake City, part II"
• "A Hike across the Pinehurst Plateau"
• "Another Hike in Lake City"
• "A Visit to Hubbard Homestead"
• "A Hike in Northgate, part I"
• "A Hike in Northgate, part II"
• "A Hike in Victory - and Defeat"
• "A Hike in Maple Leaf"
• "A Hike along Banner"

All for now, dear Diary.  Happy days and nights until we meet again.