Dear Diary,
Yesterday and today I hiked mostly for another set of pages I hope to write in you this month, but yesterday I also took the opportunity to visit a couple of isolated parks with plumbing, and both days I visited parks that are on reservoir grounds but, mysteriously, don't have plumbing of their own.
I told you, dear Diary, that I didn't expect the remainder of the hikes to paint as rosy a baseline picture as the first hike, through most of the NW parks, had. I just hadn't expected things to go downhill quite so fast. In the two parks I visited yesterday, I found two closed restrooms and one missing water fountain. However, one water fountain I hadn't found working in the past is now working. Still, it's a problem that isolated parks in northernmost Seattle offer even fewer restrooms than the tiny numbers the City of Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has put there in the past.
Bitter Lake Playfield
Unlike Ballard Playground and Loyal Heights Playfield, whose restrooms are built into the Community Centers those parks contain, at Bitter Lake Playfield, there's a separate restroom building. I've been told in the past that these restrooms were open 24 hours, presumably because they're so far from other parks with restrooms, and thus inconvenient to service. (What I've seen with my own eyes is that they stayed open quite late, but I've yet to incorporate this park into any of my "all night long" hikes to really verify.) However, in the past, they weren't open all year.
Last year, I visited those restrooms in early March, and they weren't open yet. I complained because there was supposed to be a project to replace those restrooms (though not in such a way that the new ones could stay open all year), and it hadn't happened yet.
So of course this year I visited just about ready to explode, and I'm complaining because the project isn't done yet, and I had to use the "sanican"s instead.
To be fair, because the water fountain was running, I was able to use the soap from the hand-washing machine and the water from the water fountain to wash my hands, in much the same way as I'd described in "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford", also about this park, nearly four years ago, but with far fewer mishaps this time. Yes, in the ideal world the hand-washing machine would also provide water, but one can't have everything.
In any event, the parks department currently says "SPR anticipates the restroom and remainder of electrical work for the tennis court lights to be completed by mid-July", but, well, that didn't happen:
So I wondered if the department were simply running out the clock until the restrooms would have to close anyway. Again in the ideal world, since we were told that the parks department was making a financial plan to enable all its restrooms to be open year-round, the delay could be while the contractor tries to figure out a way to fit heat into whatever space is available. But in this real world, I doubt that's actually what's going on.
In any event, there's a water fountain missing. It used to be roughly here:
adjacent to the then-playground area. Maybe I missed it - the new playground area was in use the whole time, and I didn't want to intrude. There are several photographs of it at the Google Drive folder, which also includes all the above photos; it has a round bowl, unlike the square-bowled double fountain that's definitely still there and that helped me wash my hands.
Carkeek Park
I was much less desperate when I visited Carkeek Park, which is fortunate because it's much further from the street grid than Bitter Lake Playfield is. I found all its water fountains running. Even the archaic stone-clad one at the Environmental Learning Center, which I've never found running before, now gives super-abundant water:
I didn't try to use that arching stream, but did fill my bottle from both of the others. The one in the playground area gave fairly brownish-tinted water, which I threw away and replaced with water from the fountain in the Eddie McAbee entrance area, which was still mildly tinted but proved drinkable.
So that's the good news. The bad news is that when Carkeek Park was planned, it was planned for two restroom pairs, but for one of those two to have doors that opened indoors. As happens to all park buildings given enough time, the buildings those restrooms were in have closed to the public, and so Carkeek Park is left with only one restroom pair. Last winter I celebrated because a building had re-opened to the public, but it turns out to have been a temporary expedient while a building in a different park was being renovated.
"No Public Restroom". They know what they're doing is wrong, and this is their response?
Dear Diary, does any of your readers think I'm blowing smoke? The freaking map provided to visitors to Carkeek Park specifically displays a symbol it clearly identifies with restrooms, and displays it in connection with these buildings.
The good news, I suppose, is that they aren't adding insult to injury any more. In the past there was a "sanican" in that area, but it was locked, because it was being used to store science projects for the school using the buildings. It's no longer there. It's pleasant to think that someone got a severe talking-to about the proper use of equipment the City of Seattle pays rent for.
Bitter Lake Reservoir Park
This is a weird park. It's fundamentally a creation of Seattle Public Utilities, and I've actually spent a fair amount of time trying and failing to find the actual boundary between public and non-public areas there. So I don't have a clue how big it is, and that's weird. (For example, I know that Carkeek Park is very much the biggest one-restroom park in north Seattle.) Also, it has fitness equipment I've never seen used, and a playground I haven't seen much used - quite unlike old or new at Bitter Lake Playfield.
They're aware that that playground isn't popular, and they're planning to renovate it, with a major stage to be reached in, of course, mid-July past, oops.
And yet the park as a whole is so popular that probably the single park photo I've most wanted to show you, dear Diary, but have been unable to, is the photo of its grand entrance from above, because every time I've been there, someone has always been in the frame. At the moment that viewpoint is even grander, because the rowan trees framing it are in fruit, and while rowan berries are poisonous, they sure are pretty. Alas, my phone has trouble photographing red, so their beauty is wasted in this substitute photo.
Froula Park
It has come to my attention that I've been misnaming this park. I like to give parks the best name I can give them. Most notably, the park the parks department calls "Ross Playground" is "Ross Playfield" on its scoreboard, and "Ross Park" on its park sign. So I call it Ross Park. Well, um, on the park sign of the park the parks department calls "Froula Playground", this is what we find:
My apologies.
I've also neglected this park more than I should have. This time I saw a sign that I didn't remember, and certainly didn't tell you about, dear Diary.
Apparently Roosevelt Reservoir has hidden depths, if you'll pardon the pun, dear Diary. Why did they feel the need to post that sign, and when did they do so? Was that restroom ever open? To whom?
It's hard to imagine Froula anything having mysteries, but it clearly does.
It also has swings. I found years ago, long before your birth, dear Diary, that I actually still enjoy swinging. But I got few opportunities to do it at University Playground, then near where I slept, because I was rarely OK with leaving my stuff unattended in order to use the swings, given the kinds of people I usually saw at that park. Froula Park's swings are all too high off the ground for me to climb into easily, so they aren't really a solution, but I'll keep looking.
All for now, dear Diary. I hope tomorrow to start writing in you the other series I've been hiking for, but we'll see. Happy days and nights until we meet again.
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