Three Hikes in Ravenna, part I: Northwest

Dear Diary,

This page is about a bunch of places shown on this map:

I visited these places in three hikes.  The first hike was October 8, when I only visited places I knew to be owned by the City of Seattle, most listed in the 2020 real property report (27-page PDF).  I walked the whole length of Ravenna Boulevard that day, but photographed none of it, because very early on I devoted a whole page in you to it, with lots of photos, dear Diary.  The islands as shown on this map are keyed to that page's numbering of them.

Cowen Park

As already mentioned in the introduction to this set of hikes, Cowen Park's restrooms remain closed, and its water fountain continues to run.  There's still a "sanican" there.

I made a list of pages in you, dear Diary, a long time ago, and noted which ones had photos of which parks.  One of my purposes in these hikes was to take more photos, primarily landscape shots.  As of that list, I'd photographed none of Cowen Park's landscape, and although I think I've shown you one or two such photos since, considering that this was one of the parks I started with, I figured more couldn't hurt.  The first shows a view from the roof of the restroom building, aimed south of the playground; it shows the water fountain, the "sanican", and, rather blurrily under a tree, the bench at which a squirrel once attacked me and my stuff.  The second is a glance at the enormous greensward that dominates the more accessible half of this park.

Beck Place (F on map)

This is a trivial traffic triangle SDOT lists in the real property report as over 2000 square feet.  I don't know where all those square feet are hidden.

The second hike was yesterday, meaning October 14.  Its main purpose was to visit areas depicted by Open Street Map as potentially interesting.  I also went back to all the park plumbing, making sure nothing had changed in the intervening week, but nothing had.

East of I-5, area 1 (A on map)

This is a mostly grassy area, with some trees, south of the bus stop and east of the parking lot under I-5.

Ravenna Boulevard triangle 1 (D on map)

This triangle is just south of Ravenna Boulevard and west of 11th Ave NE.  It's very well kept, with a bunch of coniferous seedlings protected by flowerpots, short grass that those seedlings, when they get tall, will doom, and so on.

Ravenna Boulevard triangle 2 (E on map)

Huh.  I thought I'd complained about this one in the Ravenna Boulevard page, but evidently not.  Walking the south side of Ravenna Boulevard, as I do nowadays to get from where I live to this area, there's one place where one either has to cross a street in the middle of a block, or walk on dirt.  It's this triangle, separated by a street from the block south.

The third hike was tonight, a little too late for the photos I took; sorry, dear Diary, but I really want to get some pages out.  The hike's purpose was to walk both sides of I-5, the west just to get the map above right, the east to find these areas.

East of I-5, area 2 (B on map)

I've shown this as vast, but I really have no idea how far it goes, because it rises very steeply maybe a few dozen yards south of Ravenna Boulevard, and I have no way of guessing what it's like beyond that cliff.  For all I know the rest of it could actually be private houses.

Ravenna Boulevard triangle 3 (C on map)

This one is adjacent to a house, so I took its photo last because I wasn't sure it wasn't just their yard.  But no, it's actually public property, and dear Diary, I hope you can see something in this rather dark photo.  It isn't as neat as the 11th Ave one, but it also isn't as unkempt as the 12th Ave one.

East of I-5, area 3 (G on map)

Most of the west side of I-5 in this area is more or less accessible, with just one fenced-off section.  The east side is quite different.  People have built closer to it, and the fence is continuous from 65th to 55th at least.  But the area between I-5 (more precisely, the exit that debouches at 8th Ave NE and NE 62nd St) and the houses widens a bit south from 59th, and one can walk all the way around the Mormon church from there.  I saw reason to think the church at least did the landscaping of the part of the path adjacent to their parking lot, although I'm not sure they own it, so I coloured it in black as a private park (really, a landscaped path).  Anyway, here's the only real I-5 find between 65th and 55th in this area.

That's the northern end.  The landscaping consists mostly of the trees seen to the south.

And that's all I'm going to tell you from this map tonight, dear Diary; it's way into quiet time, but luckily I have no next-door neighbour at the moment.  Tomorrow I hope to hike some more and also tell you the rest of the Ravenna parts of the hikes.  Until then, sweet dreams, dear Diary.