Details of southern NE Seattle, part II

Dear Diary,

This page is for the rest of yesterday's hike.  As in previous pages, photos of open or closed restroom doors (actually, open for the remaining parks), and running or inert water fountains (actually, inert for the remaining parks), are in a public folder at my Google Drive, URL:

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

Also, as in all the hikes with these boring page titles, I tried to remember to test each restroom I could legitimately enter by drawing water in the sink and trying to make it splash me, then trying to use any dryer available to dry off.  I only mention these tests when I forgot them, or when either sink, dryer or both behaved badly.

Christie Park

Last year, this expanded park opened with a running water fountain.  This year it's more ordinary.

It's quite a long way to the next park - Christie Park is at 9th Ave NE and NE 43rd St, Laurelhurst Playfield at 45th to 48th Avenues NE and NE 41st to 45th Streets.  So I digressed quite a bit along the way.

First I went to

University Temple

This building, besides being a church, hosted an amazing number of non-profits, including the Roots shelter for young homeless people.  Since Roots offered showers, eventually it also hosted the University District location of the Urban Rest Stop.  It's a gorgeous old building, and I'm kind of amazed it didn't get landmarked as a way to stop its demolition, but while photographs of it are fairly numerous online, photos of the board on NE 43rd St that listed all the non-profits, which I found almost as inspiring as the soaring steeple, don't seem to be online.  I'll put one here if I'm still able.

Anyway, it's been fenced in, though it's not yet the pile of rubble I predicted in April it would take for certain parties to admit that it's gone.

Here's the Urban Rest Stop's doorway, still standing but no longer accessible for the four shower rooms and one additional restroom still offered by the charity's website (though at least they no longer pretend that this location has a meaningful calendar, as they did until recently; unfortunately, the Internet Archive doesn't preserve the calendar, and I wasn't mean enough to take a screenshot) - um, right, and also still offered by the lying map I spent January hiking to check.  As I said, here's that doorway:

And here's the water fountain I treated as a street fountain, but which is obviously on private property, and probably a private fountain offered by this very long generous church.  The fountain lacked a drainpipe all last year, but still ran until winter.

The University of Washington Campus

This is where I spent most of my days, and many of my nights (awake) from September 2014 to February 2020, mostly indoors during the days and evenings.  I also spent most of my days and quite a few of my nights (awake and asleep) here from April 2020 to January 2021, when not hiking for you, dear Diary, or for my own survival, mostly outdoors at all times.  I looked at both the benches on which I spent most of the latter months, but was much more interested in the five buildings through which I could spend 365 days per year inside.  None of those buildings is yet admitting the general public.  Two are clearly open to random undergrads - Suzzallo Library and the Husky Union Building.  The latter is also open to invited members of the general public, and perhaps to customers (with appointments) of the few open businesses.  One of the buildings I haven't publicly named is open to students who have specific business there, through faculty members' intervention.  The other two (Savery Hall and the other I haven't named) are officially not open at all, which means they're open to those who have offices in them.

I'm going to steal a punchline from what I'd intended to be one of your last pages, dear Diary, because in the present situation it's morally unconscionable to continue to keep this to myself.  The UW campus's outdoors is largely a cascade of parks, interrupted mostly by buildings and parking lots, but despite the huge area covered when one adds all these parks up, it's like all other private parks known to me in North Seattle.  It offers no restrooms with doors that open to the outside, and no outdoor water fountains.  It should be ashamed of itself, what with the vast amount of construction it's been doing during this pandemic, that it has done nothing to change that.  I'm told that bags full of human Number Two can often be found in an underground parking area as a result.

I have to qualify this punch line a slight bit.  East of Sakuma Viewpoint, at Brooklyn Ave NE and NE Boat St, which the University claims as a park and the City claims as a street end, is a restaurant called Agua Verde Cafe.  Back behind this restaurant are its restrooms, which have doors that open to the outside.  They also have locks, which are the push-button kind.  Employees reputedly have to escort people to those restrooms, and when I first went there, the restaurant was closed for the holidays.

The doors were definitely locked on December 22, when I took those photos.  I haven't gone there since, not even yesterday, although since it's possible that they prop the doors open while the restaurant is open (unlikely though that seems), I should get back there and find out.

Also on campus, northeast of there, is a golf driving range, which doesn't have a website.  It's near the intersection of Canal Road and Clark Road.  When this is open, it is open to the public (unlike most of the UW's athletic facilities), and that includes its restrooms, whose doors open to the inside.  It was open last summer, much of which I spent near it on the East Campus, although I never actually used those restrooms.  However, it was closed all last winter, which is when I mainly hiked the campus, and this month it's open only four days per week, Thursday through Sunday.  It also keeps approximately business hours.  I have no photos yet.

I've found nothing else on the UW campus.

Laurelhurst Community Center and Playfield

None of the three water fountains in the Playfield were running yesterday.

The restrooms in the Community Center, with doors that open to the outside, each have one toilet, one sink, one dryer, one soap dispenser, and no urinal.  The doors can only be locked through the push buttons in the door knobs; the apparent bolts above those do nothing.  (Yes, I used these.  I hadn't, after all, been near an open restroom I could acceptably enter since lunch.)

The Laurelhurst Community Center's doorway signage hasn't yet changed since last year:

I'd remembered complaining to you, dear Diary, sometime last year, that I could never get from Magnuson Park to University Playground and all the rest of the parks then local to me (including this one, actually closest to where I then slept) in one day, that is, within the restroom open hours.  I can't find that line now, and did find that I'd done exactly that April 24, as reported in "Magnuson Park: Things We've Lost, part I" and "Our Main Characters".  With my cart, that time.  But I didn't remember that then, and I was feeling pretty proud of myself for having finished the day's task early (5:30 P.M.) despite all the digressions.  I'd been wondering if I could finish the four parks of the 60s and 70s as well, thus making the last hike almost a formality, and decided "Yes, I can!"

So I hightailed it north to, um,

SUN Park

The name of this park is an acronym for a twee slogan; that's why it's capitalised.  Last year it was a private park which I used to introduce the two "Ballard Seacoast" pages, but according to the City of Seattle's 2021 Real Property Report (PDF) it's now an official Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park, although it doesn't have any official signage yet.  It fits somewhat awkwardly among the official parks of North Seattle, because it's mostly a demonstration garden, like the Center for Urban Horticulture at the UW (about a mile from this park), or parts of the Woodland Park Rose Garden - one not a Seattle park, the other under private management.  But it does already have one parkish amenity:

Unsheltered benches!  (OK, I'm not sure the log in the middle photo is meant as a bench, but the other two certainly are.)  Maybe officialness will bring others - a trash can?  A water fountain?  Naah, that's way too much to hope for.

Anyway, after that brief break, I really did hurry north to

Bryant Playground

Let me shorten this a bit:  I've still never seen any water fountain at any of these four parks, the only four parks with water fountains in a fairly wide area, produce water, and that includes last night.

View Ridge Playfield

This one's restrooms are unofficially, but for years now, open 24 hours, so I wasn't surprised to find them open.  I was surprised I was able to find where the main water fountain used to be (this photo is at the Google Drive folder):

It was between the restrooms and the water area of the playground.  It was removed, according to one of the mothers I spoke with at the playground last May, when the removal was recent, "to not spread germs".

This, and the rush I was in, distracted me from my usual check of the men's room.  However, I spent a fair amount of time at this park last year between July (when my phone was stolen) and November (when I got UW Wi-Fi for my new phone), getting Wi-Fi by day at the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library, using the men's room here, and sleeping at one or the other.  From that, I'm pretty certain this park's men's room has one toilet without a stall door, one urinal with its own stall (not sure about how wide it is), one sink, one dryer, one soap dispenser; the sink doesn't usually splash my clothing and the dryer worked last time I used it.

Anyway, onward I trudged.  One big difference the cart makes is that hills are much easier to take, such as the hill along 30th Ave NE.

Dahl Playfield

The men's room here has a profound privacy problem, and when it's hosed down, the water pools around the sink to several inches' depth.  The rest of the park is a playfield, and I've had to work pretty hard to find anything to like about it.

But that's because I hadn't bothered to look at the playground yet.  There's a genuinely cool stone garden of sorts near it.

Anyone who happens to be around 25th Ave NE and NE 77th St should definitely take a look at it.

The Dahl Playfield men's room, which was still open a few minutes before 7 P.M., has one toilet without a stall door, one urinal, one sink, one soap dispenser, and no dryer.

Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center and Park

The Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center has the same excuse for not informing anyone of anything that the Green Lake and Magnuson ones do - construction - but here, as at Magnuson, they chose otherwise.

However, none of these signs yet address the possibility of re-opening.

All for now, dear Diary.  I think it's probably already too late to go to the remaining three parks, and tomorrow it's supposed to be pouring rain, so we'll see when I can get to those.  Until then, happy days and good nights.

Hike 1B: Mid-Northeast, part I

Dear Diary,

Gosh, I'm sorry.  It's been four - no, five now - days, hasn't it?  But I put off telling you about these parks because I expected to finish with the area soon; but then Wednesday I took so many pictures that it seemed best to split them anyway.  So this page is about two parks I visited fairly late Sunday.  The next is about one of those parks again, and a third one, as I visited them Wednesday morning.

I originally hoped to do these three, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, and Magnuson Park in one day.  "Mid-Northeast" then would've meant parks north of 65th St and south of 85th St in northeast Seattle.  But as it turned out those other two parks got separated, so what's left is "mid" east-west as well as north-south.

Dahl Playfield

A playfield whose men's room has a serious privacy problem - I was always going to have a problematic relationship with Waldo J. Dahl Playfield, but it's close enough that I've told you bits and pieces about it often enough anyway, dear Diary.  Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man", then featured October 2 and 3 in "A Thank You" and the first two parts of "Water Fountains - An Interim Report", and finally getting a bit more attention December 15 in "The End of the Tour".  Remembering that as more extensive than it actually was, I meant to keep my visit to Dahl Playfield strictly business.  Everyone said its restrooms would be open; were they?

But I'd ignored Target's restrooms, incensed that they continue to pretend their water fountains are "out of order", so the last restroom I'd been near was Maple Leaf Reservoir Park's, not actually very far horizontally but hours before.  The whole way east and south, taking creek action shots I'll probably never use, my need to do Number Two got stronger and stronger.

So...  Here's the restroom building:

And here's the open door of the men's room:

And, um, ...

here are my shoes in the inches of water sitting in the deepest part of the room, near the sink, which unfortunately is not where the room's drain is.

It had rained inches in the preceding days, so I wondered if this was overflow.  That finally led me to the women's room:

Notice the dry floor.  Turned out the women's room had a slight stoop outside, enough to keep most rain out.  Did the men's?  Yes.  What I'd had to wade through was a cleaning technique, not an act of God.  The men's room had been hosed down.

So it seems I'll continue to have a problematic relationship with Dahl Playfield.  But everyone was right; the restrooms were open.

Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center and Park

The postcard shot:

The closed door:

The water fountain out back, no longer surrounded by "DANGER" tape.  I don't know whether it would have run this year; either outcome, this coming spring, will be a surprise:

But something was bothering me, and I came back to Ravenna-Eckstein three days later.

The End of the Tour

Dear Diary,

How have you been?  I see you've had a lot of visitors the last day or two.  I hope they were all wearing masks.  I was busy doing something I thought I had to finish in one big heave, but I'm sorry I neglected you for so long, especially since I'm still telling you about my hikes in mid-October.

At least this page should finish one of the hikes.  The previous page, "To the Beaches!" all of two weeks ago, left me trying to sleep at View Ridge Playfield's picnic shelter the night of October 12.  I woke there October 13, verified that the water fountain still wasn't running, and continued north to 75th St, getting food at the Safeway at 35th Ave.  Continuing along 75th, I stopped at 30th to take a photo of Maple Leaf hill:

Well, at least that's what I was trying to show.

My destination, way over at 25th Ave, was

Dahl Playfield

I wanted to do three things:

• verify that the water fountain still wasn't running (it wasn't)
• take a photo
• and take a video.

The photo had to do with a mistake I'd repeatedly made.  I've visited this park just enough to have picked out a preferred spot in it, one of a pair of picnic tables near the path from the park entrance to the restrooms.  Just south of those tables, a thin screen of ?saplings separates the tables from what, in the summer, had looked like a child-sized trail, and I'd thought, "how remarkably thoughtful!"

When I visited earlier in October to begin my water fountain census, of course I found out that this was actually a creek bed, dry in summer but, well, not in fall.

Finally the video.  When I came here on June 27 I think I took one, but then deleted it.  This time I didn't even take it.  But my past failures to describe correctly what makes the men's room at Dahl Playfield uniquely non-private, even compared to other restrooms without stall doors, weighed on me, and some time later I shot this one.  I'll try to embed it, but since I flagged this one as age-restricted from getgo, and my embedded videos aren't working properly, I don't have much hope where this one is concerned.

So here's a link to my demonstration that there's no privacy for men at Dahl Playfield.

Anyway.  There's a reason I've visited Dahl Playfield so often.  See, it's right across the street from the last of the "last seven" parks, as I then thought they were, that I visited on June 27:

Picardo Farm

Have you ever wondered what the "P" in "P-Patch", the name in Seattle for community garden spots, means?

Around the middle of the 20th century, there were still farms in the Ravenna neighbourhood, but by the 1960s only one was left, and it was on its last legs.  Neighbourhood activists worked out a deal by which the city bought the farm, and parceled it out into individual garden spaces.  When people in other areas demanded their own places, the name of the farm's family - Picardo - got attached.  Hence P-Patch.

I mentioned re Maple Leaf Community Garden (in "Six Parks in Search of Another") that most P-Patches are assigned by the city to the Department of Neighborhoods, which runs the program in all of them, and that when a P-Patch was instead accounted to the Department of Parks and Recreation, it was worth asking why.  In this case, I think it's inertia.  I don't know that the DoN even existed when the city bought Picardo Farm; it certainly didn't get the property, which has, I assume, been treated as belonging to Parks ever since.

One of the many distinctive things about Picardo Farm is its size:

Another is its plumbing.  It doesn't have a water fountain, but oh mama, does it ever have a sink:

Near the sink is the sign explaining the history I probably butchered above:

Continuing east to the northeast corner, we reach ... well, not plumbing, not exactly, but a restroom nonetheless:

If you Google "Picardo Farm", one of the first things you hear about - one of the main things they brag about - is their "composting toilet", shown above.  I didn't find it in June, but whenever I did, it was ringed with signs admonishing visitors to use sanitiser, which was offered on a nearby table.  Now, I would think that a good idea regardless of the pandemic, but when I returned in mid-October the table, sanitiser, and, I think, some of the signs were gone.

Did I mention that Picardo Farm is big?  Three acres, not large for a park, but huge for a P-Patch.  Not that parks that size normally get plumbing or restrooms, either.  So of course Picardo Farm also has a picnic shelter:

Well, enough.  Picardo Farm really is a P-Patch, which means the rules governing visitors from the general public differ from those applicable in parks; in particular, the hours are shorter.  (Which is one reason why I didn't yell and scream about the restroom earlier; Dahl Playfield, even with less privacy, has a sink and longer hours, and is clearly preferable.)  Visitors should read and heed those rules.

Roosevelt Land-Banked Site

When I looked up the address, 1321 66th St, I was sure the parks department had made yet another deal for, well, this:

But it's only a fifth of an acre, which even I know is too small for a football field, and the address turns out to be across the street:

I don't know whether the department plans to put a park there after the construction office closes, or to trade the land for some other parcel, but anyway, my Rand McNally maps are still wrong about Roosevelt High School being park land.

I headed from there toward Wallingford, for reasons I'll get to soon, but stopped along the way to visit

Froula Playground

Like Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space, this park is built next to a reservoir, but offers not a drop to drink, so I tend not to pay it much mind, but thought I should make up for saying virtually nothing about a place so close to the UW - 12th Ave and 72nd St - by taking a picture:

Note the concrete seat in the foreground.  This place just keeps finding new ways to disappoint me.

There are two parks department parks left that I haven't told you, dear Diary, about yet, even though both are in "NE".  I reached one on October 14, the other October 20.  I wanted to finish the job in this page, but to start and then run up against Blogspot limits would be worse than just starting a new page from getgo, so I'll stop here for now.  Until the next page, dear Diary.

Water Fountains - an Interim Report, Part II

Dear Diary,

The last page I wrote in you re-introduced in some detail, by location, characteristics, and where I'd written about them before, sixteen water fountains and what I found of them on a mostly night hike September 17.  This page reports on eleven of those fountains as seen again September 28.  None had changed status, among on, off or damaged.

September 28

As on the 17th, a hike from the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library to the UW campus, but this time mostly by day, with a somewhat better charged phone, so I could take some pictures.  It was still way too hot for me for hiking, so I only reached eleven of the sixteen fountains covered on the 17th, and wound up in a different part of campus.  I took some pictures for specific reasons, but mainly in a misguided attempt to convey how I saw the northern parks, of which I've shown you, dear Diary, few pictures so far.  It seems I see mainly grass in them.  Sorry.

Dahl Playfield - NOT RUNNING

Although on this visit I actually found some neat stuff here - a sort of micro-scale woods with a path through it - I definitely see this park mainly as big grassy swards meant for athletic use, so this time I wanted a picture of grass:

Ravenna-Eckstein Park - Probably NOT RUNNING, but officially DANGEROUS, believe it or not:

I think of this park as crowded with features that usually in turn crowd it with people.  I have no idea how trying to photograph that without including the people got me so much grass:

Bryant Playground - NOT RUNNING

I think of this park as topographically challenged:

View Ridge Playfield - NOT RUNNING

Of course, I went to the spot from which I once shot a night view to shoot a day one:

Enough of that.  The two remaining parks in this page, you've already, dear Diary, seen in plenty of photos.  I still took some in Magnuson Park, but not in Laurelhurst Playfield.  I also took one on the way.  Since my previous trip's route to Magnuson Park, along 65th St, had resulted in wailing and lamentation, I tried 75th St this time, and thus found another park not Parks', near 50th Ave.  This is a Seattle Public Utilities site across 75th from the Sand Point Country Club.  For some reason they've gone to a lot of trouble to gussy it up, but have then slapped a fence around most of it:

Of course there were also tears and the gnashing of teeth along this route - not on 75th, and not in the neighbourhood of switchbacks between 75th and Sand Point Way, but rather in the epic struggle to walk the three blocks from 77th to 74th Sts along Sand Point, a part of it not designed for the human form.

But in the fullness of time, yea, I reached

Magnuson Park

Playground fountain - NOT RUNNING

I still haven't seen the restroom more or less tied to this fountain - though actually pretty far away - open, though in fairness I also haven't looked during calendrical summer.  Yet another door shot:

Central fountain - ON; a shot of it overshooting its bowl:

Beach fountain - ON; a shot of the adjacent shower:

Southern fountain - has gone from USABLY to UNUSABLY DAMAGED.  A shot; if you compare it to the one from April, the main difference is a white part you can see in that shot, but not below:

Finally,

Laurelhurst Playfield - all fountains ON

My phone was by then really low on power, and by the time I'd rested, night was falling, so I left and ended the hike.

Next part, probably this evening, downtown and Capitol Hill.

A Thank You

 Dear Diary,

A few weeks ago, as you may have heard, Seattle won the coveted award for Most Polluted Major City Air for several days running thanks to wildfire smoke.  Early in the smoke's ownership of the city, I walked north to the Northeast branch of the Seattle Public Library and stayed near there for several days.  The closest park restroom to there is, conveniently enough, the one at View Ridge Playfield that's open 24 hours.

The day I came north, September 11, our wonderful mayor wisely closed the parks so nobody would be tempted to go outside.  Since I normally lack a place where I can be inside these days, I was in a rule-breaking frame of mind and went to View Ridge Playfield anyway.  That day, the men's room was open, but out of toilet paper; the women's room was closed for repairs.

So on Friday, and Saturday morning, I used Safeway's restroom (this is the one at 35th Ave and 75th St).  But Saturday evening I felt guilty about trying again, and wasn't sure it wouldn't be locked, so instead I looked for one of those individually wrapped rolls of institutional toilet paper.  Not at that Safeway.  With trepidation I went to the playfield - where the paper had in fact been refilled, and I could do Number Two in peace.

On Monday - we're up to the 14th now - I noticed that the women's room had been re-opened.

On Thursday the 17th, the last day the parks were closed, I got kind of stir-crazy, and even though the air was still not fit to breathe, set out on a hike, which the next page I'll write in you, dear Diary, will explain.  I started at 5 P.M., and set out from the library for Dahl Playfield.

Now, I'd thought of basically three possibilities for how the closure would have affected the park restrooms we unsheltered homeless are supposed to rely on.  To be honest, I expected:

1. Closure.  The parks closure announcement seemed to have come late in the day, so I figured the restrooms had already been closed (except the 24-hour ones), and would just stay that way.

But Dahl Playfield's restroom was open.  (Much to my personal relief at the time, may I add.)  So that theory wasn't true.  My next idea:

2. All open.  Maybe someone had thought of us, and had left the restrooms unlocked the entire time.

I liked that theory for two reasons:  it would be safe for parks staff, and it would provide evidence that more restrooms could be opened 24 hours.  It was quite a while before the hike allowed me to test this theory - the next restrooms I saw were View Ridge's, and the ones after that were Magnuson Park's.  Since any hike to Magnuson Park is twice as far as any equal distance hike to any other destination, well, it was quite a while.  But after days of struggle - well, OK, an hour or three - I found Magnuson Park's restrooms all closed.  So that left only the least probable hypothesis standing:

3.  Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation had, with respect to restrooms, simply ignored the closure, continuing to unlock, clean, stock, and lock them daily.

While this wasn't my preferred result, it did mean two things:  we hadn't been forgotten in this closure; and whatever risks I undertook by staying outside those days, a whole bunch of parks workers undertook worse, by working outside much of each day.

Thanks are wholly inadequate, but still necessary.  So thank you, maintenance workers for Parks and Recreation.  I owe you.

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.