Hikes 11C and 13: Matthews Beach

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry it's taken me so long, but this is the last page about my January hikes that I have to write.  It also covers the second hike I took housed.

Hike 11C - January 22

As I left Burke-Gilman Playground Park on January 22, the sun was already beginning to go down.  Fortunately, the Burke-Gilman Trail goes, well, not straight, but anyway directly from BGPP to Matthews Beach, so it was a straightforward trip.  All the same, I was racing against time, and ultimately lost.

I didn't even try to photograph the best face of the restroom building.  Those are "sanican"s that are there, but in this case the map I was checking also claimed the restroom was open.  True, I don't remember whether it said one restroom was open, or two were, and that matters because:

one restroom is still boarded up.  The other is not, but I was unable to open it.

I figured maybe someone was camping in it.  It was only 5:50 P.M., after all, and so far too early for a restroom to be locked for the night.  So I waited for someone from the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's maintenance department to show up to lock this one solitary restroom door in far northeastern Seattle that should need locking.

See, this building actually has two pairs of restrooms in it.  I've just shown you, dear Diary, the closed doors of the all-gender single stall restrooms, but what about the multi-user rooms that also feature showers, on the other side?  Well, those are only supposed to open in summer, like the Bathhouse Theater's in Green Lake Park, but unlike those, these don't also open in winter:

So Matthews Beach only had one room meant to be open.  Meadowbrook Playfield had none.  It was probably parks personnel staffing Meadowbrook Pool's restroom access, but probably not maintenance people.  Little Brook Park has the only restroom (singular) in Lake City, it was closed...  Basically, that restroom in Matthews Beach was the only one between Magnuson Park and Northacres Playfield that was supposed to be open.  But it's vulnerable to camping, and I found it locked.

So I stayed, growing increasingly uncomfortable, until about 7:50 P.M.  No parks personnel drove anywhere near the restroom building in that time.  I eventually had to use a "sanican" myself, and having taken off my mask while waiting, forgot to put it back on.  This led to a conversation with a fellow homeless man, a friendlier conversation than one would expect given my mistake.  But still no parks personnel.

After I gave up, I started pushing my cart, which had performed splendidly in the race despite our losing it, down Sand Point Way.  About halfway, right on schedule, the cart's right front wheel jumped off its spokes, just as I could have expected.  I didn't understand the way the back left wheel was malfunctioning, so I didn't know whether changing the wheel would fix the problem, but I did know that I'd had two good front wheels on the cart I'd thrown away about two weeks before.  Oops.  That left back wheel responded to the situation by behaving itself for an hour or so before getting back to its waywardness.

I lived on the streets of Seattle for about six years lugging everything I thought I needed around in satchels that were exposed to the rain and that I couldn't put down while it rained.  I wasn't sure I could stand to go back to that way of life, but more to the point, I needed to carry a lot more during the lockdowns than I had previously.  Sanitiser, detergent, paper towels, lots more books ...  By this point I'd already been co-operating for some time with Maia Robbins, who organised the GoFundMe that's now housed me, but this was the first time I had to face seriously the fact that I couldn't realistically continue living homeless, whether or not the GoFundMe went anywhere.  Not while COVID-19 shut everything down.

So, dear Diary, I didn't hike for you after that until I was housed.  The first hike I took then, hike 12, is the subject of another page, but I did eventually get back to Matthews Beach.

I'd had plenty of time to think about it.  I could see that a parks maintenance guy might think it made no sense to drive all that way to unlock one room, that would probably be blocked by a camper anyway, and then lock it again that night.  I could sympathise.

But that's looking at things exactly backwards.  It is not appropriate to sympathise with the idea that the less someone does, the less one should expect them to do.  Meadowbrook Playfield's restrooms apparently didn't have to close.  Why, then, were they closed?  The shower restrooms at Matthews Beach are in the same building as the ones that were supposed to be open.  And they presumably have access to hot water.  So they're quite obviously winter-safe; why weren't they opened?  Reduce the options to the two all-gender single-stall rooms, and board one of those up, and it can look realistic to forget the other.  But the parks department had no reason at all, in forgetting the other, to forget a significant percentage of the city.

Hike 13 - April 3

Anyway, I went back to Matthews Beach.  I didn't arrive much earlier - 5:30 P.M. - but it was enough later in the year that the sun hadn't yet set.

I stopped along the way to take photos of the nearby bit of the Thornton Creek complex.  Since Matthews Beach is where Thornton Creek enters Lake Washington, the creek there is probably the main, unified creek, but I haven't worked on your "Land and Water" series for months, dear Diary, and am not sure.  In any event, I'd taken pictures of it months earlier and then deleted them by mistake, so although I'd written about "Chinook Passage Natural Area" May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!" and December 1 in "To the Beaches!", I'd yet to show you, dear Diary, a photo.  Well, here are three.

In several places, gaps in the woods that weren't there last May, as best I recall, allow one to see inside the forest a fair way.  My previous attempt to capture that effect in a photo was a dismal failure, and I'm not sure this is any better, but:

Another such gap opened up a view of the creek, although I'm not at all sure my photo actually caught that:

Although it's been several years since the park got a more specific name, its sign hasn't been updated:

Anyway, I finally got back to Matthews Beach, to find the same situation as before, only sunlit.  This time I made extra sure by staying close to the restroom doors - the ones that were supposedly being unlocked and locked this winter - as much as I could, and almost always staying within sight of them.  No parks personnel had shown up by the time I left around 7:45 P.M.

I did move away from the specific door I was observing to take pictures, this time, of all the things I was supposed to on the January hikes.  The building's best face, first.  This building, like the beach one at Golden Gardens, is so extremely wide, or long, that I had to back very far up to take this shot, and I'm not sure how much of the building can actually be seen:

The restrooms that were supposed to be open:

Oh, good.  I'd hoped to show the latch in the photo just above, and it looks like that worked.

The restrooms that weren't supposed to be open, except in an alternate universe in which Seattle's government had thought about how best to serve the public, and I do mean the public - Matthews Beach isn't in an area where homeless people could plausibly live - anyway, the restrooms that weren't supposed to be open this winter, but should've been:

The unobtrusive back door to that women's room that I found for the first time that night:

When I caught them in their lies about Sandel Playground and Loyal Heights Community Center, the places where they'd shown restrooms open that were not, in fact, open, without "sanican"s, the map's makers hurried to correct those.  Of course, the lies about restrooms being open with "sanican"s present weren't really lies, by the warped thinking behind the map, because its fine print didn't actually say those rooms were open; the map wasn't corrected in this respect all winter.  But as far as I know, the map's fine print did say Matthews Beach's actual restrooms were open all winter, and as best I can tell, none were.  Sometime in the two months I was away, someone could have asked the maintenance people whether they were really driving all that way, and fixed the map.  I sent the information by e-mail, long before telling you tonight, dear Diary.  But nobody bothered.

An alternative hypothesis:  Traffic in northeastern Seattle this pandemic winter was so unusually bad that the maintenance guys had to lock Matthews Beach at 5 P.M. to get it done at all.  Um, right.  I want some of that green cheese the moon is made of, too.

The "sanican"s by day:

A sign that I photographed as I left, so I'd know how late it had been, that someone had taped over enough of that it communicated nothing at all:

Would that that map had met the same fate.

Good night, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I hope to tell you about hikes 12 and 14, both made while housed, and neither one really related to checking the map any more.  Until then.

To the Beaches!

Dear Diary,

Today's page was always going to be kind of short - there just aren't that many parks in the part of northeastern Seattle in question.  But last night it got even shorter because I deleted two of the photos by mistake.

Chinook Passage Natural Area

Since I was going to pass this park, introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!", no matter what - 95th St, along which it lies, being the obvious way to get from 35th Ave to the next park - I figured I should take pictures.  Now, if one read yesterday's page "Six Parks in Search of Another" much more closely than it deserves, it would be clear that these were the first photos I took on October 12 since my visit to Lavilla Meadows Natural Area.  (I don't know, by the way, whether Lavilla or LaVilla is correct, but La Villa certainly isn't.)

The photos of Lavilla Meadows were of a lot of undergrowth, plus, in one, a sign.  Now, one of the photos of Chinook Passage was like that, sign plus greenery, but the other was meant to use a streetside break in the wall of trees to show the depth of this two and a half acre forest.  As usual when I try that kind of thing, the photo was a failure.  So for practical purposes the Lavilla Meadows and Chinook Passage photos, next to each other in my chronologically sorted photo bin, looked pretty much alike.  And last night when I deleted from my phone the photos I'd just put into you, dear Diary, I seem to have deleted both pairs.  Sorry, but, well, not very sorry.

Matthews Beach

This 22-acre park was always going to be the main one in this page.  I introduced it in the same page as Chinook Passage, not only without photos, but without enough exploration to convince me I'd found all its water fountains.  All summer I meant to get back - until the rain June 27 started, it was on my list for that day - but it never happened.

But it turns out that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation offers free reservations for groups of picnic tables in some parks, including Matthews Beach, as well as paid reservations for picnic shelters.  And it offers maps of both sets of parks.  So this time I had a map, and no excuse for not doing the job right.

So what did I find?

First of all, the water fountain I found before really is the only one.

Free-standing water fountain near the restrooms - ON, but it tasted bad

Second, the seasonal restrooms were of course locked - I asked Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the department, whether they'd been opened at all this year, but she didn't answer.

Third, more worrisomely, one of the two all-gender stalls that are supposed to be open year round was boarded up, I kid you not:

and the other was locked.  Turns out this was just someone camping in there - I ended up coming back a few days later, and it was open.  But these are the only park restrooms open year round in a vast stretch of North Seattle, with Little Brook and Meadowbrook closed.  (I verified the latter yesterday; the sign announcing the closure was still up, dated November 23.)  In general I prefer the dignity offered by a lockable door, but it worries me that so many of the year round restrooms offer that dignity, since it makes camping in the stalls workable.  (The exceptions, in "NE", are at Dahl and View Ridge Playfields and in Magnuson Park.  All in a row down the middle.)

And what else?

Basically a lot of photogenic waterfront.  Matthews Beach has several trails, but not so many woods, so most parts of the park effectively look lakeward.

The main exception is in the southeast, where Thornton Creek enters the lake.  I'll talk about the woods there in an upcoming page; for now I just want to show you, dear Diary, the map of the watershed that revealed to me the existence of Meadowbrook Pond:

Maple Springs Natural Area

The only other departmental park anywhere near there is, um, different.  It's basically the woods behind dead ends at 40th Ave and 91st St.  I was coming from the north, so I started at 40th:

Well, um, good to know about the wasps, but...

At 91st the signs are clearer:

In other words, this park is closed to the public, because parts of it, which apparently can't be disentangled from the rest, are private land.  I actually find this reassuring; like Waldo Woods, it shows the department trying to preserve land even if it can't open that land up.  In this regard, the department's heart is in the right place.

From there I headed practically straight south to View Ridge Playfield's picnic shelter.  So ended October 12, near the end of this long hike.

Until tomorrow, dear Diary, a good day and a good night.

Go North, Aging Man!

Dear Diary,

I'm very sorry this is late again, but I can't swear it won't happen again, because it probably will, tomorrow night and the one after.  I told you I'd tried to visit the parks of northeastern Seattle when I was in touch with Erica C. Barnett.  Well, it's time to make good on that promise.

Tonight's set is the parks between I-5, Lake City Way, 110th St, and the water, but only the parks shown on my old 2003 Rand McNally map of Seattle.  Unfortunately I lost that map on one of the last visits, so I can't violate its copyright and show you pictures.

Tomorrow I'll use the official list of parks to cover the ones between Lake City Way and I-5, on Thursday whatever I can of the ones west of I-5.  I hope one of those days also to cover parks omitted from the following list because they weren't on my map.

Anyway, I'm not trying to provide full overviews of all these parks, just put the parks I am covering more fully into context.  I wanted to know whether two aspects of the local parks were unusual:

1. Lots of closed restrooms; and 
2. Most water fountains not running.

In this group of parks, both these things are extremely unusual, but in opposite directions.  I only found one more closed pair of restrooms to add to the four I already knew about.  But the two running water fountains I'd already found are all the running water fountains I could find in the parks of this half of northeast Seattle.

I'm using this list to identify year-round restrooms and, by exclusion, seasonal ones.

So to proceed up Sand Point Way from where I sleep to:

1. Burke-Gilman Playground Park.

Restrooms, one pair, open, seasonal.
Water fountain, running.

I arrived at 7:14 A.M. to find the restrooms already open, and the water fountain, which projects from the restroom building, running.  So I did my morning routine, eating the deli salad I'd bought the night before and drawing three bottles of water, drinking one.

Further along Sand Point Way to:

2. Warren G. Magnuson Park.

Three restroom pairs (plus one dead pair and three ghosts), two pairs open, the beach one year-round, the other two seasonal.
At least four water fountains, none running.

I wanted to cover things I'd left out of previous posts this time.  So:

• The dryer still doesn't work in the beach men's room.  (The beach water fountain doesn't project from the building, but is actually inset into it.  It's a mystery to me why that fountain is ever shut off. EDIT 10/19 - Because it isn't inset into the building. I believed this when I wrote it, but it's never been true.)
• There in fact are no "sanicans" near parking lot E4.
• Someone got halfway through updating an events board, leaving the old listings piled next to the board:
  
• I wanted to get a better picture of the ducks.  People kept walking their dogs off-leash along that stretch of shore, breaking two rules at once near as I can tell, and sending the ducks wherever we homeless go when swept (I later saw one pair along the Burke-Gilman Trail), but finally I got a chance:
  

By this time my phone was dying, so I turned it off soon after.  Thus no more times for a long while, and no more pictures at all.

Up Sand Point Way to 95th, before checking the map and finding the turn at 93rd, oops.  This part of the trip provided opportunities to play many entertaining and instructive geographical games such as "Find the Sidewalk".

3. Matthews Beach.

Two pairs of restrooms, one pair open, which is open year-round.
One water fountain, projecting from the restroom building, not running.  I may well have missed more.

The restrooms that are open are two single-user "all-gender" rooms, as at Laurelhurst Community Center.  The ones that are closed are men's and women's, and include showers.  Those could be helpful to the stressed-out employed homeless mentioned in my previous post, but the sign on the women's room door says it's a "seasonal" closure, and I'm sure nobody could want an out-of-season shower.

Back up Sand Point Way to 95th, then along 95th:

4.  Thornton Creek Natural Area.

I not only didn't see any sign of plumbing, I didn't see any sign of trails that might lead to plumbing. (EDIT 10/19 - This part of the massive Thornton Creek complex of Natural Areas was renamed "Chinook Passage Natural Area" in 2019.)

Further along 95th to 35th Ave, then north on that to:

5. Meadowbrook Swimming Pool, Community Center, and Playfield.

Presumably the swimming pool has showers, closed as it is.  The community center is closed too, not keeping its regular 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. hours, except that its child care still runs 8:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. and it offers showers, according to a woman encountered in the parking lot, 2 to 7 P.M.  Presumably people there for either purpose also have access to toilets, sinks and water fountains.  In the playfield behind the building(s),

One restroom pair, open, seasonal
Three water fountains, one projecting from the restroom building, none running

My map confused high school playfields with parks, but skipping on past Nathan Hale, along 110th Street the short distance to 30th Avenue, then down 30th Avenue, which turns into Ravenna Avenue, to 103rd, beyond which my map showed more of Thornton Creek Natural Area. (EDIT 10/19 - This is "Lavilla Meadows Natural Area".)  Still no trails.

On to 98th St, where I crossed to Lake City Way.  The long hike south on Lake City Way took me past much of Thornton Creek's backside, whether it was a Natural Area or just a sort of natural area. (EDIT 10/19 - Apparently the latter.)  The hike also provided many opportunities for such exercises in self-knowledge as "Watch Myself Sunburn".  I bought a bag of tortilla chips, my preferred salt delivery system, at the first food source on my side of the road, a Seven-Eleven.  Finally, at 72nd St and 12th Ave (LCW having been et by I-5):

6. Froula Playground.

I saw no plumbing. (EDIT 10/19 - It's actually a park built on a still-operating reservoir's land. So this was careless of me to say, but it was also careless park-building.)

Not only my old map, but my much less detailed new 2016 map also thinks Roosevelt High School is a park.

But this had brought me to 12th Ave and 65th St; a quick walk along the latter and some fiddling with other streets got me into:

7. Ravenna-Eckstein Park

This is so dominated by a community center that I didn't expect any outdoor plumbing, but I was wrong; near a parkward door in the building is

One water fountain, not running

More fiddling got me to 25th Ave, which I took to 77th St and:

8. Waldo J. Dahl Playfield

One pair of restrooms, open, year-round
One water fountain, I don't remember where, not running

One of the biggest deficiencies Seattle's park men's rooms really have is privacy.  I suppose some of the, for example, missing doors, could be the result of vandalism, but in most cases it seems designed that way, probably to ensure nobody has any fun in there.  (Admittedly, some of the fun thus deterred tends to leave needles behind.)

Anyway, I'd talked myself out of testing men's rooms after Matthews Beach (which passed), but I needed to do Number One pretty badly by this time.  And thus found out that in that men's room, anyone who walks in immediately sees the toilet, and anyone seated on it. (EDIT 10/19 - Not quite true. Anyone who walks in will collide with a wall unless they turn left, and then they'll immediately see the toilet.)   I was lucky, nobody walking in while I was there, but seems to me that's a lawsuit begging to happen.

That men's room was also out of soap, and has no dryer.  Not recommended.

East on 80th St to ... 28th Ave.  Both my maps said 80th went through to 45th Ave; both lied.  So up to 85th St and across, then back down to 80th to actually reach this part of 45th, which I took until it ended. This part of the hike, and the next, were enlivened by an incredible profusion of Little Free Libraries and such, though I didn't find any books I wanted.

9. Inverness Ravine Park.

I left this park convinced I hadn't found it, only to be set right by a friendly neighbour.  Turns out it has three accesses, but two are blocked by blackberry bushes.  The one on 45th is thus the only way in, but only across private land, and until a few years ago the owner blocked it.  So there's no signage, and no such "improvements" as I'm telling you, dear Diary, about, but he said there is "plumbing":  a sewer line runs through the ravine.

Back down 45th all the way to:

10. View Ridge Playfield

One pair of restrooms, open, year-round
One water fountain, not running

This time I decided to ask some people where all the water fountains were hidden.  Turns out there was a water fountain near the restrooms as usual, but it was removed so as "to not spread germs".

Now I'd like to,believe this means the device was, say, hopelessly infested with E. coli, but I actually suspect this is a preview of Seattle's main excuse for discarding its inheritance for the next fifty years.  I mean, "Let's wreck this before the junkies do", or "the homeless", always seemed obviously idiotic, for all that it often won anyway.  But the nihilism behind "to not spread germs" isn't so clear.  (Hint:  "I don't know who's touched this car / house / clothing / food, so I won't use it.")  And in Seattle, I suspect it'll mainly be used, as here, to get rid of public amenities.

Further down 45th, plus some more fiddling:

11. Bryant Playground

One water fountain, not running

I then returned to BGPP (this is when I saw the ducks on the trail).  EDIT:  By this time I was really thirsty, after all, and if I wanted more water, that was where I had to go.

My old map showed a waterfront park in the Windermere complex, Windermere Park, but said it was private.  Now, I don't know it's still private.  I do know that through an imposing gate one can see no buildings, and that the whole block in front of that gate is full of "No Parking" signs except where one black car is parked.  But mainly I know that there's no Seattle Parks signage, which means I don't have to cover this park

From there I went through the local parks, except for BGPP.  But there was a surprise at the first, Laurelhurst Playfield.  A clock seen through a community center window read 7:40; the sun was going down, so this was P.M.  But the restrooms (year-round) were locked.  I knocked on the doors - were both just in,use?  No answer.  Well, the community center had been closed since before the time change - surely it was really 8:40?  That got me out of the park, but six pieces of evidence over the next forty minutes showed the clock really meant 7:40 P.M. PDT.

Between hiking and a stop at the U-Village Safeway, none of the other times were shocking.  Ravenna Park lower (year-round) was locked at 8:56.  (I'd turned my phone back on.)  The Ravenna Park upper (seasonal) men''s room was locked at 9:10, but the women's room wasn't, and I'm sorry, dear Diary, but we have a solution to the mystery of the light in the night.  That light keeps coming on at night, but probably both times I've found doors there unlocked have been the work of non-parks employees such as the persons I found near the women's room that night.

Anyway, Cowen Park's rooms (seasonal) were locked at 9:29, but this time they were brilliantly lit, so I could see that the huge drift of leaves at the men's room doorway hadn't been disturbed.  University Playground's doors (seasonal) were locked shortly after 10 P.M.  But the main reason I re-visited all these parks was to check their water fountains.  None ran except Ravenna upper's, just like last time.

I came back to campus via one last park on my old map, Christie Park.  It was a tiny one at the southwest corner of 43rd St and Roosevelt.  But the Jack Straw Cultural Center is there now, closed.  EDIT:  THIS IS COMPLETELY WRONG.  SEE NEXT POST.

Further on my way, I drank from the street water fountain on 15th Ave just south of 43rd, and noticed that the building whose shrubbery it's in is to be demolished.

What a weird series of events!  Dear Diary, I may not have time today to go to Northgate after all; I haven't even started going through the official list of parks.  So maybe today's proper page will come before midnight after all.