Few Restrooms Closed, Only One Water Fountain Running in Today's Hike

Dear Diary,

Today I visited eight parks.  I only walked through the Wallingford Steps, but in each of the others there's a water fountain or (more usually) both a fountain and restrooms, and I took pictures of these with today's newspaper in each one.

I'm not going to spend the rest of the night uploading those pictures to Blogspot.  I've just uploaded them all to my Google Drive account, and it appears that the following link enables anyone who wishes to see those photos to see them.

<https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1cfrNdJI9NVY3ux7OoGI7B8Vg3Klq3liT?usp=sharing>

Aside from not boring you and anyone who reads you with endless door shots, this has the great advantage that the date and time information that is the bulk of each photo's meta-information is preserved intact.  On top of which, each photo has tonight as its last-modified date, and each photo has today's newspaper in it.  I finally have redundantly dated photos for you, dear Diary, only I can't show them to you directly in your pages to accomplish that.  Sorry!

Anyway, then, as of this afternoon and early evening, here's a summary of the results by function:

Water fountain running at Sunset Place, which is in Northwest.  All the other parks I got to are in North, and no water fountain known to me was running in any of those.  They are:  Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, B. F. Day Playground, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Restrooms closed at Woodland Park (Citywide Athletics Building, which the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation nicknames "Rio") and at Green Lake Park (Community Center, women's room only).  Both closures had explanations posted, and were not simply the result of negligence.  All the other restrooms I visited were open, including ones in Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Results by park:

Meridian Playground - restrooms open (as usual, except that they close in winter), water fountain hopelessly damaged in a way that suggests metal thievery, as it has been since I first saw it last year.  I also decided to take notes on men's rooms on this series of hikes, and the men's room at Meridian has one toilet, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  I tried at least one sink for each men's room this kind of note is attached to, found it not of the kind that mostly sprays users' clothes, and found any dryer mentioned working.

Street fountain on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N - still not running, as it has been since late March; before that, as far as I knew, it ran throughout the pandemic, incuding winter.  I took a picture, but either it didn't actually get taken, or I deleted it accidentally from my phone.  (My phone's camera has recently eliminated a feature that helped me know whether it really took a picture, so I periodically have to go through deleting duplicate and triplicate photos.)  When I take another photo of it, there'll be a folder at Google Drive for that photo.

Wallingford Playfield - restrooms open (as usual), water fountain recently repaired but still not running; last year it was hopelessly damaged.  The men's room at Wallingford has the same things as the one at Meridian.  I did not note, this time, at either of these parks, whether the toilet stalls had doors.

Gas Works Park - restrooms open (they're officially open 24 hours at least during the pandemic), water fountain not running; it still shows no sign of damage, but hasn't, as far as I know, run since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, and one soap dispenser.

B. F. Day Playground - water fountain not running.  It gave a trickle last spring and was running last autumn.

Sunset Place - water fountain running.  It ran both last spring and last autumn.

Woodland Park - By region:

• Northwest - There's a single water fountain near the entrance to the park at Phinney Ave N and N 59th St.  It's too damaged to use, as it has been since I found it last autumn, but the style of the damage suggests that it may have been disabled by parks staff rather than by metal thieves.
• Lawn bowling - A restroom building is right next to one of the lawn bowling greens near the park entrance at Aurora Ave N and West Green Lake Way N; its restrooms were limitedly open in winter, but last year were unpredictably 24 hours.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, no dryer, and one soap dispenser.  One water fountain is under its eaves, within the usually locked bowling green; it wasn't running last autumn.  Another is some distance away, near shelter 6; it ran last autumn, but isn't running now.  Neither looks damaged.
  
• Pink Palace - Some way south of the lawn bowling restrooms this quite pink building is at the top of a hill.  It has two water fountains attached to it which haven't run since the pandemic began and still don't; they don't look damaged.  The restrooms have been open most nights I've been near them since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilet stalls with doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.
  
• 50th - Northwest of Woodland Park Ave N and N 50th St there's a restroom building which has been open 24 hours somewhat less reliably than the Pink Palace.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and would have a soap dispenser except that someone has stolen it.  Right out front of the men's room is a really old-fashioned water fountain which hasn't run since the pandemic began, but has been disabled since at least last autumn in a way reminiscent of the northwest fountain.  The same is true of a water fountain directly north of Woodland Park Ave N, which is of the same make as the northwest fountain and disabled in the same ways.
• Citywide Athletics Building (again, "Rio") - Two water fountains are on either side of the home plate of the big baseball diamond at the park's southeast corner.  They have both been hopelessly disabled, probably by metal thieves and maybe by the same bunch as at Meridian Playground, since the pandemic began.  North of the baseball diamond is the Citywide Athletics Building.  It has restrooms that open to the outside, and are normally open in winter, but since January have been posted as closed due to vandalism, which forced the parks department to do some juggling.
• Cloverleaf - With the big baseball diamond as field #1, the four Leo Lassen Fields are #3-#6, vaguely resembling a four-leafed clover.  A building with the address 5427 East Green Lake Way N in the middle of the cloverleaf holds two restrooms with doors that open to the outside.  These normally close in winter, but this winter were open with limited hours.  They were open today.  The water fountain attached to the building gave a trickle last May, and ran last October - that's only two in the park, the other being near shelter 6 - but isn't running now.  A girls' game was going on, resulting in a real crowd near this building, so I didn't take notes on the men's room, and thereafter stopped partly from forgetting, partly from rain.
  

Green Lake Park - By region; all restrooms can be open all year:

• Small Craft Center (nicknamed "Shellhouse" by the parks department), near the southern end of the lake.  Most of last year, I think these restrooms were open 24 hours, but the people who work there were unhappy with the results, and as of winter, it closes, though later than most park restrooms.  Two water fountains attached to two buildings ran last year (in spring as well as fall), but haven't been started yet this year.
• 64th St (nicknamed "65th St" by the parks department).  These restrooms were usually open 24 hours last year, and are now the designated 24 hour restrooms of this park.  I've never found a water fountain near them.  On the way there I saw geese escorting their goslings:
  
  
  
• Community Center.  The Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool have been undergoing inscrutable construction work that got a lot more scrutable sometime between January and now with the erection of a sign that explains that they're doing "stabilization" work now, with the hope to buy time until mid-decade, to allow a more thorough planning of the replacement.
  
  The restrooms have been unpredictably open, but in recent visits ("Hikes 12 and 14" and today) the men's room has been open but not the women's.  Today the men's room had both warm and cold water, but it's a good idea to make sure it at least has cold running water before using it.  The water fountain trailward of the building ran last fall, but doesn't run now.
  
• Wading pool, at the north end of the park.  These restrooms have usually been the official 24 hour restrooms of the park, and are still usually open 24 hours.  Two water fountains attached to the building ran last fall, but not now; I didn't find the free-standing double fountain not far away then, so haven't observed it running.
• Theatre, the building known as the Bathhouse or Bath House Theater, the company inside it the Seattle Public Theater (parks department nickname "Bath House" or "Bathhouse").   I didn't find these restrooms open last May or October; they're supposed to open in summer for the theatre season, and by different people expected to open in winter too.  I first found them open in January and had to eat some crow about it; they're open now too, which they definitely oughtn't normally be.  So much as I complain about the parks department ignoring the pandemic in their decision-making, this is a notable exception.  Anyway, there's a free-standing double fountain in front of the men's room, and two fountains attached in back of the women's room; I'm pretty sure all ran last October, but none run now.

And since I got that far only after 7 P.M. (closing times for the Bathhouse, Community Center and Shellhouse restrooms seem to be between 8 and 9 P.M.), it was too late to go on to the parks of Greenwood, so that's as far as I got in "N" today.

More about the hikes I'm now trying to plan tomorrow, dear Diary; it's been quiet time for a quarter hour again.  Good night.

Another Hike in Fremont

Dear Diary,

This is the last page in which I'm telling you about my hikes yesterday.  This one covers Fremont, understood as reaching from N 50th St to the Ship Canal, and from Stone Way N to 1st Ave NW, but not including some sites near the Ship Canal covered in the previous page.

This page's predecessor, covering the parks of that area, is "All in the Dry Month of May".

EDIT 5/11:  Map:

The Seattle Public Library, Fremont branch

This is a much more photogenic library than Wallingford's:

but just as closed:

Troll's Knoll Park

This is the third place I had to re-visit from Saturday's hike, this one because I hadn't gone to its top to verify that no water fountain had been installed.  Well, none has:

Notice that that's a P-Patch, dear Diary.  But it isn't in the list I compiled from the 2021 real property report.  By this point in this hike it was becoming clear to me that if I really wanted to explore the P-Patches, SPU parks, and so forth fully this time, I should go to their websites for a second opinion.

But I wasn't going to do that on the road, so proceeded north.

Fire Station No. 9

I wasn't sure whether to include the active fire stations in what I told you about, dear Diary, because I don't think of them as places the public visits all that much.  During the years I lived on Roosevelt Way NE, I didn't once go into the fire station there.  They're places where people live, having to be ready for anything, and seems to me random strangers barging in just wouldn't help with that.

But it turns out in Seattle the fire department offers blood pressure checks, of all things, to the public.  So here goes.  An attempt at a postcard shot:

The not quite closed doors:

Fremont P-Patch

A typical photo:

A non-typical photo:

Parcel at 4707 Woodland Park Ave N

I mentioned two pages back that I thought Google Maps had probably lied in claiming to know where 398 NE 40th St was.  Here's why:  It put that address, which doesn't belong to any building, into the middle of NE 40th St.  Well, this address doesn't belong to any building either, and it did the same thing; but there's no median in Woodland Park Ave N there to confuse the issue.

There are traffic islands at a bunch of nearby intersections:

they're all prettily landscaped (though my phone's difficulties with colour make that less obvious), and maybe they all add up to the 1,055 square feet claimed for property number 84 (!) in Seattle's real property reports, but I doubt it.

Anyway, by this point I was tired, hungry, thirsty, and beginning to need to do Number One.  Especially thirsty, and since I hadn't found a working water fountain yet, I hurried home.

But that night I had to go back to NE 40th St, as also recounted two pages back, so I figured I should go back to confirm that B. F. Day Playground's water fountain still wasn't running.  Which it wasn't:

This is one of three water fountains that were running last October but aren't running now, that I encountered Saturday.  The next step is to go to other parts of North Seattle to get more information, and I expect to start that today.  Until later, dear Diary.

All in the Dry Month of May

Dear Diary,

Hooray!  Just two pages left of today's hike.  This one covers Fremont, understood as the area between Stone Way N and 1st Ave NW, farther north than feels like Fremont to me, all the way from the Ship Canal to N 50th St.  This means five parks run by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  Same as last year, only one has a water fountain, and none has a restroom.

EDIT 5/11:  Map:

Troll's Knoll Park

My errand on N 36th St put me north of the waterfront, but close to Fremont's two stairway parks.  This one, however, isn't a stairway park like the Wallingford Steps, but a ramp park.  Look:

At the top of the ramp is a P-Patch, and I suppose I should've checked to make sure no water fountain had been installed there since I last visited in June ("At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?") and took no photos.  But the park's web page mentions no amenities, except the central one:  it can get anyone, feet, wheels or both, from N 36th to 38th Streets.  In a pleasant environment, too.

A. B. Ernst Park

I'd forgotten how helpful the park web pages can be.  It had dawned on me I should pay more attention to the people the parks are named for, and this one turns out to be an early park commissioner who, quoth the web page, helped implement the Olmsted plans that resulted in, for example, Ravenna Park and Boulevard.

Anyway, this has been a stairs park, climbing from N 34th to 35th Streets, parkier than the Wallingford Steps, but, in my opinion, cursed with concrete benches instead of a mosaic as its landing focus.  A construction project was to have started by now that would have gotten rid of those benches and the steps, in favour of a ramp all the way as at Troll's Knoll.  I've written about this park a bit more than most of those that lack plumbing, because of this:  June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe" and June 21 in "Past Work and Gas Works", with photos.  So I was very surprised and mildly displeased that I could climb the stairs:

all the way to the top, where I could read the explanation:

We'll soon see a project that doesn't have this kind of sign.  Why do access projects like this and the work planned years ago to improve the entrances to Gas Works Park take a back seat in comparison?

The Burke-Gilman Trail

The parks of Wallingford and Fremont, as of various other neighbourhoods, include this trail, and in my general enthusiasm for taking photos today, I didn't forget this one.

I had to take stairs, again, to get to it from Troll Ave N.  At the bottom of those stairs I found a mini-park.  Since the street it's on is loudly proclaimed to be a private street, I'm guessing this is a private park; no doubt to discourage people, whether general public or employees, from lingering, the only furniture it has is, um, a picture frame:

Google Maps shows a conspicuously vast splotch of green just north of the trail, somewhat further west, and I was very curious what it could be.  It turned out not to be so vast after all, and it's just the fenced-in landscaping of Adobe's building there:

At least they spent a bit to make the fence abutting the trail a little prettier.

The reason I was taking the trail is that it goes right to and through the next park, and this brings me to a sort of apology I owe, dear Diary.  On January 19, in "Water and Water", about the Lake Washington Ship Canal, I wrote in part:

"Because essentially all the [Fremont] Cut's width is reserved for navigation, which bars piers, boaters don't show it much love, and its only North Seattle street end is the uninteresting one under the Fremont Bridge, with opportunities for more passed up at Phinney Ave N and 2nd Ave NW, at least."

This is preposterous.  The whole point of the street end program was to make private land public.  But by the time that program got going in the 1990s, the Burke-Gilman Trail and this next park occupied the entire north waterfront of the Fremont Cut.  So there wouldn't have been any point to street ends at those two spots.  Harrumph.

So here's that park, which has everything except plumbing:

Fremont Canal Park

The first time I visited this park last June, I was having trouble getting to the parks department web pages, which is what I blamed for the fact that I only looked at the eastern half of the park (the half with the topiary dinosaurs), and only described that half June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?"  The other half (the one with furniture hidden in small topiary bushes), I presented June 25 in "History and Parks" part I.  So this park has gotten a bit more photography from me than others, and I was lazy today, taking only a generic shot down the trail:

At least I singled it out for praise January 6 in "What's in a Name?", pairing it with a park so obviously meant as its opposite that I kind of have to wonder what chemicals were involved in planning Fremont's too-few, too-small, parks that punch so much above their weight.  That is, pairing it with

Fremont Peak Park

Today I learnt that while Palatine Ave N is a through street from 50th to 44th, which is enough to get to this park, it is not a through street from 44th to the canal.  Oops.

Anyway, this park also isn't exactly on a peak, the way Fremont Canal Park is exactly on a canal.  The peak is two blocks east, on Phinney Ave N.  Fremont Peak Park is well down the western slope.  But it's still plenty high up.

It's weird in a rather appealing way, and I took some photos of that for "At the Centre", so this time I decided instead to focus on dumb obvious stuff.  Here's the entrance:

And here's a view:

I did walk both Fremont Canal and Fremont Peak Parks end to end in case there were new water fountains, but neither saw any nor any signs of them.

B. F. Day Playground

B. F. Day was a realtor, says the parks department web page, who donated the land to build a school, land on which I suspect the park also sits.

This is the biggest park in Fremont, and the only one with plumbing, in the form of a water fountain.  Last October, that fountain ran, while none of those in the bigger parks of Wallingford did.  Anyway, its plumbing means I've visited it rather more often than most of these (the Trail and therefore Fremont Canal Park are different).  I introduced it June 9 in "At the Centre" and came back to it October 8 in "South of North Once More", part I, with photos and a story that I then had to retract March 21 in "Hike 8A" (more photos).  Here are yet more:

A landscape, of course.

No water, of course.

And whereas in January the "sanican" that had been here was gone, probably lent to Northgate Park, where there was a Curative COVID testing site, it's back now, and in a place obviously built for it, that I didn't notice in January and so offered a probably incorrect memory of where it had been:

This park has playground improvements planned.  Not, mind, the installation of a new playground, but improvements to an existing one.  I showed, either October or January, a photo of a revised schedule, a sign still there today.  That schedule claimed construction would happen in 2021, but it's now May and nothing's happening.  So I don't actually know that playgrounds are more important to the parks department than access, but the contrast between the signs suggests that that's the case.

What a dreary note to end on, dear Diary.  I have a better one.  A while back, I noted that I find that ducks improve almost any situation.  Geese not so much - it's hard to ignore their indiscriminately scattered Numbers Two, and they're more aggressive.  But still, two geese in Fremont Canal Park were remarkably indifferent to me today, so I took their picture:

Next page:  a start on Woodland Park.

Hike 8A: Near North

Dear Diary,

On January 19 I set off for Ballard.  My plan was always to visit the three parks in this page along the way, which is why I designated Wallingford Playfield and Meridian Playground, too far up the wrong hill, as "inconvenient" right from the start.

And although all these hikes were kind of predictable once I had decoded the map, from the city's Department of Human Services, of restrooms supposedly open this winter, the map these hikes were meant to check, a decoding described in "How to Lie to the Homeless" too many days ago - still they were part of the task.  They'll also get a bit more interesting after this page, which hasn't much story to it.  Sorry, dear Diary.

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

This small park is also presented as a street end by those who deal with those.  I've told you about it, therefore, dear Diary, in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?" on June 9, and again in "Street Ends:  North Lake Union" December 21.  But neither park nor street end brought me there on January 19; instead, the presence of a city-funded "sanican" did.

While I was there, for some reason I thought I hadn't photographed the view from the shore in October, so I took another photo.  I think it's slightly worse than the one in the street ends page, but anyhow:

In these hikes I'll take what beauty I can get.

Yes, this stop was kinda trivial, or so it seems.  But a lot of people appeared to be living, that day in January, in the parking areas across Northlake Way from this "sanican", and not all of them had RVs.  I really have no idea how much daily use the thing gets, but wouldn't be surprised if it were significant.

At this hour, today, the map correctly reports that this park hosts one "sanican", that it isn't ADA and doesn't offer hand-washing.  I think that map, all in all, represents a deliberate attempt to lie to Seattle's homeless, but it's so constructed that it also tells a fair bit of truth, and this is an example.

Gas Works Park

This is one of North Seattle's marquee parks, dear Diary, though the smallest of those.  So I've told you about it in plenty of pages.  See, besides "At the Centre":  June 21, "Past Work and Gas Works"; September 6, "Cal Anderson Park Is Not a Park"; October 8, "South of North Once More", part I; and November 23, "Standing Room Only", part III.

This park's restrooms have been announced as 24 hours, so it was no surprise at all to find them open in broad daylight:

The, um, least unattractive side of the restroom building:

From there I climbed up the right hill, by way of Troll's Knoll Park (stopping along the way to replace the photograph of the Troll my stolen phone had held) to 

B. F. Day Playground

This smallish park has figured in two of the same pages as Gas Works Park, "At the Centre" and "South of North".  And in the latter, dear Diary, I mocked it unfairly.  I showed photos of a sign saying the playground equipment was open and another saying the playground was closed, and made fun of the mixed message.  Problem is, the sign saying the playground is closed actually refers to a different playground, that of the school next door, which actually is closed.  Sorry!

To try to make up for that, I looked at the basketball court and got a pleasant surprise:  two baskets facing each other from a reasonable distance:

But the reason I was there was that the map had initially shown a "sanican" there, but then had retracted the claim, so I wanted to see for myself.  Well, here's where it used to be:

My guess is that with no ball games happening there, but COVID testing happening at Northgate Park, the city decided there was a greater need elsewhere.

Anyway, after that I went to Ballard, but I'm out of time to tell you about that tonight, dear Diary.

At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?

Dear Diary,

Two pages back, I wrote about the parks with "N" addresses, as opposed to "NE" or "NW", between about 45th and 80th Streets.  I neglected to mention two things.

First, I spent the night of June 5 in bus shelters near Meridian Playground.  So I saw that park both at night and in the morning, and saw Woodland Park mainly in the morning and afternoon of June 6.

Second, park restroom stalls without doors are pretty much the default in that area, though there are certainly exceptions.

OK, then, it's time to move south.  Since I'd just finished (ha) with Woodland Park, I stayed that far west, so started with Fremont, which has no large parks, and only one water fountain.  Fremont has much more folklore than most Seattle neighbourhoods, most of which I suspect I'll never get, not being a baby boomer.  In particular, it's called the centre of the universe.  Well, then, the centre is seriously under-parked.

Small Fremont Parks

The only kind there is.

Fremont Peak Park

I reached this by going south on Greenwood until I could switch to Palatine.  This is a silly route even if, like me, you're coming from Woodland Park.  Much better to just take 45th St to its end, and then turn south a little.  Anyway, this park is primarily about its view, which I found boring, but it has a sort of mini-Stonehenge meant to tell the seasons:

which looks cool whether or not it works.  The park knows this, too, using circle imagery in a couple of other places.

Fremont Canal Park

Verizon pretended to be unable to retrieve the parks department website most of the afternoon of the 6th, so I didn't learn until I was much further on the trip that I'd ignored this park's western half.  It spans two long blocks between the Burke-Gilman Trail, which there runs alongside the Ship Canal, and the street (Canal Street).  The eastern block is full of dinosaurs:

OK, yeah, topiary ones, but still.  The western block is in "NW" anyway.  By this point it was clear enough that I'll have to go to Ballard after all, so I'll just look at that block then.

A. B. Ernst Park

This is next to the Fremont branch library.  It's basically a transformed stairway:  riotous vegetation all around it, and the upper half turned into a gentle ramp, along which are some weird tiers.  It's apparently slated for expansion (and presumably construction), so if this interests you more than it does me, you might want to hurry there.

Troll's Knoll Park

No, this doesn't include the famous sculpture by, um, Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter and Ross Whitehead, which is about the only bit of Fremont folklore that works for me.  It's to the left, as you face the troll, where all those concrete bollards are that you always see people leaning against.  The park apparently wants to move those people way uphill to a small grassy strip next to a P-Patch; fortunately, instead the kids and the gardeners stay at a distance.  The park is more successful in its claimed ambition to assist people in getting uphill; it features a fully paved, gently sloped trail with lots of switchbacks that took me from 36th St almost to 38th.

B. F. Day Playground

This park is, at 2 1/3 acres, not only the biggest in Fremont, but bigger than the other four put together.  This gets it not only a water fountain, but one that gave a tablespoon of water before going dry when I tried it.  It also, at the opposite end of the park, has a "sanican", not something I saw many of in this trip.  It's easiest entered from Linden Ave, just south of 41st St.

Four or More Wallingford Parks

Wallingford Playfield

This is bigger than all the Fremont parks added together.  That is, it's 4 1/2 acres.  By this point I wasn't up for much exploring; the park is easy to find along Wallingford Ave at 42nd St, the open restrooms and non-functional water fountain easy to find within.

A Detour

This was as close as I'd gotten to a supermarket all day, so I went and bought my daily salad, and also a bottle of water.  Which latter made me feel very stupid when I found this in front of the store:

The Wallingford Steps

Exactly what it sounds like:  stairs by which Wallingford Ave continues to the canal.  Or anyway to the next park.  What makes it a park is the usual luxurious plantings, plus some gussied-up landings, of which this one, by Benson Shaw and Clark Weigman, has pride of place:

Gas Works Park

I think every time I've visited this park I've been in a hurry, tired (as this time), or both, so I've never really explored it.  Maybe I'll try to do it justice before I finish writing you, dear Diary, but it isn't actually that close to the U-District - along Meridian same as the playground by that name, but way south.  Anyway, this is the closest to the U-District of the parks whose restrooms have been opened 24 hours, not that I've tested that.  I did want to use those rooms, but a look at the way both men's toilet seats appeared to be decorated with Number Two dissuaded me.  The water fountain attached to the restroom building isn't running.  But I don't know whether there are other restrooms or water fountains elsewhere in the park.

Waterways?

Either at the eastern end of Gas Works Park, or adjacent to it, are Waterways 18 and 19.  The parks department website doesn't list them.  The City of Seattle real estate report (PDF) I'm using for areas lists 19 but not 18.  I didn't explore either at all thoroughly:  I couldn't bring my cart, and my getting anywhere near one enraged the nearby crows.  They don't look like the kinds of parks, or parts of parks, that have restrooms or water fountains.

Sunnyside Ave N Boat Ramp

This is officially closed, but still has a "sanican".  It's hard to reach from Gas Works Park, along the sidewalks-optional Northlake Way; I suggest taking 36th St instead.  Geese were in possession when I arrived, but took offense at me and left, giving me a chance for another mediocre duck photo:

From there I caught the Burke-Gilman Trail straight to University Village and Safeway.  I'd forgotten, at the Wallingford QFC, that I no longer have the handy cutlery my backpack held.  Safeway was in a panic because a rally was getting close, and closed early, so I never did get to a toilet that night, but it worked out OK (and I did get a fork to eat the salad).

For the past two weeks I've been aware that it isn't the right time to state my own grievances.  And the inspiring sight of thousands of people cooperating in marching down (NE) 45th St does nothing to make my course of action seem nobler.  Dear Diary, I had hopes at the start that powerful people might read you, and might do things as a result.  Maybe that's still possible, but probably not before I finish writing you.

As my energy allows, here's what I think is left.  There are eight parks left in "N" between 80th and 145th Streets.  That real estate report alerted me to six parks I hadn't known about in the northern parts of "NE", though four are Natural Areas, unlikely to offer restrooms or water fountains.  And since I still haven't found an area with water fountains consistently on, such that I could say the problem is local, I might as well endure the forty-odd parks of "NW" so I can sort of talk about North Seattle as a whole.

But this all assumes we aren't going back to the days of randomly closed park restrooms.  And assumes that the rain will occasionally pause for a day or two.

Sorry, dear Diary.  I just don't know how much longer until I finish you.