Building a Baseline, part III: Around Northgate

Dear Diary,

Well, I've finished the spreadsheet, uploaded it and shared it, so if I'm extremely lucky, people can now read or download it from here:

Google Drive link 

The total places I'm trying to visit turn out to be 500 - 323 city owned, 126 from OpenStreetMap, and 51 from The Emerald City Resource Guide. 

Today I don't think I can hike at all; but I can write.  And it turns out, there's a lot of news - to me, at least - in this area.  Here's a map.  I should probably tell you, dear Diary, that while I'm writing on my phone, I'm doing most of the work on my Windows laptop.  (My Linux laptop, on which I'd written you for years, is broken.). So this map represents a learning curve.  It is, of course, based on OpenStreetMap.

I covered several of these places in two parts in the third series of regional hikes in May 2021, so I've felt free to not photograph everything this time.

And now to start, in hiking order:

August 4

The news didn't really start this day. 

Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel (A on map)

I've shown you this Seattle Public Utilities park, I think, several times now.  Its address is 330 NE 100th St, and it stretches north to 103rd, near the exit there from the transit station.  It's in the Thornton Place apartment complex.

This time I hiked all the trails, as promised, and found neither restrooms nor water fountains.  It does have lots of benches, and, being an SPU park, lots of explanatory signs.

So I just settled for two photos.  One sign, and one glimpse of the reason the park exists, the South Fork of Thornton Creek.

Maple Leaf Community Garden (B)

This is one of the two P-patches in North Seattle owned by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  Its address is 529 NE 103rd St.  It's really a P-patch, a shared garden, but has an interesting tower, which I've shown you before, dear Diary, so this time I settled for photographing a bench with words written on it whose sententiousness pleased me.

 

Beaver Pond Natural Area (C)

OK, this is sort of news.  Years ago, dear Diary, I told you about this park, and then told you I'd gotten it all wrong, and the park was actually twice as big as I'd thought.  So it's extremely humiliating to discover that I was wrong then too, and the park is actually four times as big as I'd originally thought, twice as big as my revised version.

As a result, I have much more to tell you, dear Diary, about this park, than will fit here, so see a separate page coming soon.

I should say, though, that my main memory of this park was that it had lots of litter, and I didn't find any this time.  Also, the part I found first is the basis of its address, 10300 5th Ave NE.  Right next to a bus stop.

Northgate Park (D)

I thought, on August 4th, that the water fountain in this quite bland lawn of a park (address for both the park and the community center below:  10510 5th Ave NE) was the only example of our core topic, water fountain or restroom, that I'd find in this area.  This turned out to be wrong.  That said, the fountain was running, and I refilled my bottle there.

Northgate Branch Library (E)

I verified that the restrooms were open and the water fountains running, and that was that.  Address:  10548 5th Ave NE.

Northgate Community Center (F)

The story is pretty much told in the recent part in "Under Construction".

Hubbard Homestead (G)

This one, too:  link.  With a link to a whole part about this park in the regional hike of May 2021.  Address:  11203 5th Ave NE.

Victory Creek Park (H)

The reason I had to tell you, dear Diary, about the strange absence of litter in Beaver Pond Natural Area, is the severe contrast with Victory Creek Park, whose address is 1056 NE Northgate Way.

This is a very weird park.  It's a few benches and a former playground versus a daylit creek, the titular one, a tributary of the South Fork.  As I mentioned in the "Under Construction" page about Hubbard Homestead, it's adjacent to a QFC, usually entered through the parking lot.  I'm not sure whether to admire Parks for sticking to the fact of the daylit creek, or pity the neighbours who might want a more conventional park.  But I can't help wondering whether the litter says what it isn't politically correct to say out loud, that nature isn't the only thing people want out of parks.

At any rate, I made one attempt to photograph the creek, and took a photo meant to illustrate what it's like walking this park's trails.

August 5

The news starts here. 

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area (I)

This is one of 2 1/2 Seattle Parks parks in North Seattle that I couldn't find in 2020-2023, as I'm sure you, dear Diary, remember.  Well, this time it was easy.  The King County Parcel Viewer steered me right there, and the address, 1039 NE 108th St, slots this tiny park in right where it should be, between 1019 and 1223.

See, it's the property on that block that isn't just fenced, it's walled:

I trespassed a bit onto 1223's lawn to find the reason.  Someone had littered a boat there!

August 7

This was the day I spent on Beaver Pond Natural Area.

August 18

Northgate Mall's Central Park (J)

Over the years that Northgate Mall has seemed to consist mostly of construction fences, I've occasionally looked at the mall's  Central Park, but all I remember seeing was a concrete plaza where people were sitting on that trendy "bistro" furniture and presumably discussing shopping strategies.

This time, I decided I owed it to the mall, this odd neighbourhood's centerpiece, to look more carefully.  And lo and behold, one level down, there's a small playfield, there was a girls' team practicing there, 

and what was that behind them?

Now, dear Diary, for good reason it's been an article of faith for me that privately owned parks in North Seattle just don't do plumbing.  But the surprises didn't end there.

Look, ma!  It is possible!  A restroom whose door opens to the outside, not just near Northgate, but actually in Northgate Mall!

Who knows?  Come the next pandemic, this restroom may be open.

Well, a lost park found, and a privately owned outdoor restroom, surprises enough, but there's one more to come.

September 1

King County Veterans Program (K)

On page 137 of The Emerald City Resource Guide, 8th edition, in the chapter "Veteran Services", we read:

Provides emergency financial assistance, housing system coordination, case management, social work, and education and employment resources.  Documents required include proof of service (prior or current) as an active duty or reservist member, documentation of King County residency, and proof of income eligibility for financial assistance. 

This program is at 9725 3rd Ave NE, not at all far south of the transit station, but an office building much too swanky to have sidewalks.

This occasions a certain amount of culture clash with some of the program's clients:

Northgate Station (L)

On September 1st, I bought my bus pass at Roosevelt Station, and then explored the station looking for restrooms, for practice.  So it was a welcome surprise to find the ones at Northgate Station, one of whose addresses is 100 NE 103rd St, the first place I looked.

And, yes, the rules were as I'd vaguely remembered:

But the surprise came after I'd put this phone away.  I saw a security guard escorting a customer or two, no surprise given that procedure, but all the guard seemed to do was push the door open.

That mezzanine is not really outside, but if Sound Transit has actually given up on keeping restrooms locked by default, a pattern that goes way back to before Sound Transit itself existed, to when there used to be token restrooms in suburban transit centres, that's very good news.

Anyway, no more surprises, just an SPU property not big enough to be one of their best.

Northgate Pump Station (M)

Near as I can tell, the only example of SPU park style here, at 400 NE 115th St, is a couple of big, old trees.

But that isn't nothing.

Well, dear Diary, that's my baseline for Northgate:

Northgate Park - running water fountain

Northgate Mall - triple water fountain, the parts for humans and dogs running, the part for bottles not running; gendered single user stalls open

Northgate Station - ungendered single user stalls apparently open, and you may rest assured I'll be checking further on that

Let me rest some before explaining to you my career of error about Beaver Pond Natural Area.  Happy times until then.

Under Construction, part IV: Hubbard Homestead After

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry it's been so long.  I did warn you I had very busy weeks ahead, but also, enough delay meant I had to go back to some places.  For example, the work on Hubbard Homestead's basketball court was expected to be finished in late July, so although I found a fence still there August 4th, it was no big deal - except that I'd only photographed it through that fence.

 

So I went back yesterday, and I'm very glad I did, for reasons we'll get to in another page.  But anyway, replacing the fading half-court I denigrated five years ago with a fresh full court was a Good Deed for the Seattle Kraken, who work near there, to do.

But that wasn't even the main focus of the work.  As that five year old page narrated, the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation tried to move an old playground from Victory Creek Park to this one, only to be shocked by the amazing discovery that old playgrounds are - yes, I know you'll find this hard to believe, dear Diary - but, yes, old playgrounds are old.  Imagine that.  So, having already promised a new playground to Victory Creek Park, which, being adjacent to a QFC, really needs one, Parks also promised a new playground to Hubbard Homestead, and the project page, which is still up, suggests that the Kraken's money is why this project is done and Victory Creek's isn't even on the list yet.

So here's some photos of the new playground, which I regret to say is not remotely too swarmed with kids for me to photograph.  There was one little boy when I took the first photo August 4th, and nobody at all yesterday.

Tomorrow, a surprise.  Until then, dear Diary.

 

A Visit to Hubbard Homestead

Dear Diary,

Hubbard Homestead is a park about one block north of Northgate Mall, and directly north of the building called Northgate North.  It does not include any actual homestead in the sense of a building of its own, or a farmyard, or whatever; the Hubbard family "homestead" (meaning home, or what exactly?) occupied the space from 1913-1968, according to the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation web page, which was probably too late for farming thereabouts anyway.

It does include a fair amount of neat park stuff, though, starting with an astonishing number of wooden benches:

As you can see, dear Diary, those benches are helpfully near a bus stop, a pretty major bus stop, actually.  They are not, however, the park's most popular feature.  That would be its skatebowl.  I'd probably have to get there at dawn to photograph that without including any people.

That said, this is yet another park with a basketball half-court, although the lines are fading:

I fear it's also another park struck by the scourge of graffiti, which for some reason the parks maintenance guys didn't get around to removing over the winter.  I've shown you these stones before, dear Diary, but look at them now:

All that paint still on them, and even a symbol on one.  Shameful.

All this is in the eastern part of the park, the part most familiar to me.  I headed west.  (The park's south is interesting too, but between the skatebowl and some guy who seemed to be all over it, was too challenging to photograph.)

The park also has stone benches, and one extravagant combination of wood and stone:

There's a complex sort of woods at the west end of the park, north of the skatebowl.  The wicked graffiti-doers have struck here too:

By this point I was noticing unusual performance in red and yellow with my phone's camera, so I tried something I don't normally try:

No, I don't know why that sort of worked.

The only picnic tables in the park are north of the woods, and unfortunately are metal.  Maybe that's meant to encourage people to be fast with their picnics, so others can have a chance at the tables.

Another view of the woods:

Now, Hubbard Homestead has been promised a playground.  See, there used to be a playground at Victory Creek Park, a few blocks east.  It was behind the times, though, so the parks department told the neighbourhood it would be cheaper to make a new one than to renovate, and somehow moving it to Hubbard Homestead would be better than leaving it at Victory Creek.  (Though I see a lot more little kids in the quiet blocks around the latter than in the busy, high-traffic ones around the Homestead.)  That playground is not yet built at Hubbard Homestead, though the old one was gone from Victory Creek before I first stepped foot in that park, looking for it.  Sources:  Pinehurst Seattle, parks department, parks department (PDF).

However, Open Street Map already shows a playground at Hubbard Homestead, north of the basketball half-court.  Since I needed to leave via 5th Ave NE in order to reach the next set of parks (which I won't be telling you about tonight, dear Diary), my last stop in the park was to investigate.  It turns out Hubbard Homestead does already have a set of exercise machines, playground equipment for adults and older teens:

But I admit, I'm likely to go on thinking of it primarily as a place to rest when wandering around Northgate.  Good night, dear Diary.

A Hike across the Pinehurst Plateau

Dear Diary,

From downtown Lake City I headed south along Lake City Way NE.  My first destination was a Natural Area on that road that, like Flicker Haven, gets ignored by mappers.  Like most Natural Areas in North Seattle, it's in a lowland, but as I learnt while working on the page about the South Fork of Thornton Creek, a page of "Land and Water" I haven't actually written in you yet, the land goes uphill from it not because of a hill, but because of an eastward salient, between the North and South Forks of Thornton Creek, of the plateau that dominates north-central Seattle.  This eastern mini-plateau is essentially what's under the Pinehurst neighbourhood, so, since I don't know it to have its own name, the choice is pretty obvious.

Oh, and although I got all that from a topographical map, in fact that walk Monday evening did entail going uphill, walking on the flat a long way, and then going downhill.  Score one for cartographers!

This is the least compact hike I've taken in this region, which is why the plateau is the only unifying thing I can think of.  Hubbard Homestead is relatively far from the other Northgate parks, Homewood Natural Area from the other Lake City ones, and the Pinehurst parks aren't all that close to anything.  This was, in other words, a real hike.

I took seventeen photos as I walked from that Natural Area to Hubbard Homestead north of Northgate, and Blogspot has apparently let me, this time, put them all in one page.

Map:

Homewood Natural Area

As I said, this one is ignored by the usual mappers - both Google Maps and Open Street Map just leave it blank (Open Street Map, which usually indicates woods, doesn't even do that there).  The Thornton Creek watershed map (PDF) includes it, though, and there's a Seattle city government page documenting a 2017 sweep (PDF), with lots of photos and a map.  Anyway, it's along the western side of Lake City Way about halfway down the block between NE 117th and 120th Streets.  It has one trail, which goes more or less straight down to the creek.

I haven't entirely ignored it, however; this is the only Natural Area in this region that I'd actually shown you pictures of already, dear Diary, in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!" last November, a picture of its sign and a picture of the North Fork there.  So this time I confined myself to one more photo of the creek:

and took a few random landscape shots:

Since this is the last we'll see of the North Fork in this region's hikes, dear Diary, I feel obligated to note that I still haven't figured out one parks department property listed in the 2020 real property report:  "Thornton Creek - North Branch - Part Esmt", property #416, 6 1/4 acres, supposed address Lake City Way NE.  Now, the thing is, the South Fork does run along LCW for a while, but the North Fork just crosses the street, where Homewood Natural Area is.  I don't know whether this means the city owns 6 1/4 acres specifically of the creek bed from Licorice Fern Natural Area to Homewood, which would explain why so much of that creek is daylit, or what exactly, and none of the maps I use shows this ostensible park.

Pinehurst Pocket Park

My first visit to this park was near or at night, and I was much impressed, but you, dear Diary, weren't to know it; in "Top of the City", part I I just called it "very pleasant" and moved on right away, never to mention it again for months.  So I imagine you were pretty surprised when in "What's in a Name?" I called it out as a quarter-acre or less park that I would've regretted not seeing.  I was kind of surprised too.  So I wasn't sure what to expect on returning.

Well, it isn't the perfect park, and the art I mentioned isn't great art.  But it is an interesting place to rest a bit, with interesting things to look at, which is all I needed that evening, and all I would imagine any of your readers would need to justify a visit.  It's certainly the boutique park of this general area.

I remembered art in a kiosk, which this page attests wasn't a bogus memory, but didn't find the kiosk this time.  What I did see is a sort of inlay in the pavement, sadly dirty after days without rain, but even so more effective than this photo can be:

For a much better photo, see this page, which credits an artist named Sara Mall Johani.  Apparently the inlays are actually meant to enable kids' games.

Also largely for the kids, and apparently also by Johani, a rather exotic model tractor, which the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation page says is in memory of a man who used to drive a steam tractor around the neighbourhood as recently as the 1960s:

The pages I read also credit Johani with pillars I haven't yet noticed.

The park's actual focus, according to the signage on the spot, is not artistic but environmental, so for people uninterested in art, there's that, and here's a landscape in which such people may be able to spot features that didn't interest me:

I was also amused by this:

So all in all, it was a satisfying, if not earth-shaking, reunion.

Pinehurst Playground

This is the only park in this page with public-facing plumbing - a water fountain, which I've found running on every visit so far, including Monday's:

It also has a sanican:

which the city's map of hygiene services persists in falsely claiming is ADA-compliant, although I told the map's makers otherwise months ago:

I've shown you, dear Diary, non-plumbing photos of this park before, well anyway one or two, so this time I photographed the playground:

a grill in front of the baseball field:

and a miscellaneous landscape:

As usual when I've visited, the basketball half-court was too busy to photograph.  I'm starting to think half-courts are probably more common in North Seattle parks than either full courts, or the hoops alone that I thought the norm.

Pinehurst P-Patch

This P-Patch is on the more or less flat, thankfully:

but has somewhat confused signage:

Northgate Pump Station

This Seattle Public Utilities facility is a working one, is not one of their parks, and there's no public access inside the building, but they did put a sign out front, and also parkified the premises quite a bit, so I took one picture:

Note, though, Seattle City Light is, despite its do-gooding, much less of a public-facing landowner, and I would not photograph - have on my last hike not photographed - a Seattle City Light building closed to the public but with similarly parklike landscaping.

Hubbard Homestead

Way back in January, in "Hike 1A", part II, I promised this park, for services abundantly rendered, a full treatment.  But I reached it after sunset, which was hardly the ideal time to try to grok a park.  So I only took one photo as testimony that I hadn't forgotten the promise:

and in fact came back Wednesday.  So assuming I return OK from the errands I have planned for the next few hours, I hope to keep that promise tonight, as the second page I write in you about the Wednesday hikes, dear Diary.  Until then!

Hike 1A: Inconvenients, part II

Dear Diary,

They said this winter would probably be cold and wet.  So far, half right.  It's certainly been wet, and part of my fear of rain comes from the certainty that nothing that gets wet will dry out anytime soon.  But even though I've been shivering a lot, it hasn't been all that cold.  My basic clothing right now, thanks to my own lazy refusal to go change, is absurdly underdressed for winter, and the only reason I'm getting away with it is mild temperatures.

We should, in fact, dear Diary, consider this in relation to your upcoming birthday.  Our wonderful mayor was getting a lot of criticism, last March, because she sent people to closed park restrooms.  Well, that was careless (and it isn't a good thing that her parks department is repeating the mistake this year) but many of those restrooms should in fact have stayed closed; the last night to reach the mid-30s was April 13, one week after she ordered those rooms opened.

Um, so, anyway.  It's been warm.  Most of the time these days, when climbing hills with my cart, I regret it if I don't actually strip down to my seasonally inappropriate T-shirt.  And since it was close to noon, of course that happened yesterday as I climbed Maple Leaf Hill.  I'd tried to use the topographic maps I've downloaded to plan my travels, and it partly worked, but it was still uphill.

N 45th St

But first I have to backtrack a bit; last night I forgot something important.  On my way to Wallingford Playfield I knew I'd pass the street water fountain on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N, in front of QFC.

Now, in "Water Fountains:  Things We've Lost, Part II" on May 1, I boldly claimed that these street fountains stayed on all winter, little dreaming that when winter came I'd still be writing you and accountable for that.  I strongly suspect what allows this to work is heat supplied by nearby institutions, which would explain deference the fountains sometimes show to their neighbours, most obviously the one painted red in front of Bartell Drugs at 5th Ave and Stewart St.

I already knew that the peculiar fountain on 15th Ave NE south of NE 43rd St had stopped running, though not whether that was for the winter or permanently (due to its damage and to construction nearby).  And the street-style fountain on the Burke-Gilman Trail had been shut off, but that happens every winter.

So I made a deal with myself.  If the fountain was working, I'd get the day's groceries at the QFC that probably made that possible.  It was, so I happily, um, well, no, in the rain it was actually a tedious nuisance, but still, I was able to fill my bottles.  And on my way from Wallingford Playfield to Meridian Playground went and got the day's food at QFC.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

I first told you, dear Diary, about this park May 29, in "South to and from Northgate".  The first pictures I showed you were in "Standing Room Only, Part V:  Elsewhere" November 24, but rather more came three days later in "The Kingdom of the Winds".

Between that, and worry that I'd have to deal again with the harasser mentioned in that page, and the fact that the park was crowded enough (though socially distanced) to give me some trouble finding a place to eat the food I'd bought - well, on this visit, I only took the three photos I'd come to take:

Last winter, these rooms were supposed to stay open, and they're on both the current HSD and the outdated Parks maps; no surprises here.

As I got ready to leave, a man with an accent similar to the harasser's, but not similar in voice or appearance, asked me for cash, and I refused.

Northgate Park, Community Center and Library

Turns out the peak of Maple Leaf Hill is actually on Roosevelt, so I went down to 5th Ave NE to avoid it.  I resisted the impulse to hike into Beaver Pond Natural Area to photograph the South Fork of Thornton Creek.  My missions were:  Northgate Community Center, to photograph its closed doors, and Target, to replace my umbrella.

At first I went to what turned out to be the wrong door of the Community Center, where I found something astonishing.

Do you see that, dear Diary?  An actual wooden bench actually sheltered?

Anyway, it was the wrong door, so I went round front.  The postcard shot:

And the closed door:

Now, that sign is arguably not entirely true.  This page offers signup for child care starting Tuesday, September 8, which means 2020, at a bunch of community centres, including four in North Seattle:  Bitter Lake, Meadowbrook, Ravenna-Eckstein - and Northgate.  Considerable physical evidence attests that this care is in fact being provided at Northgate, which would explain all the health check stuff at the door.  (Why check the health of people entering the building if nobody is entering it?)  However, I haven't seen actual kids, so still could be wrong.

Anyway, as I turned to go, I found something else astonishing.

This is not, up to right now, on either the HSD or the Parks map.  Now, the Parks map may be bureaucratically restricted, showing only things Parks pays for; that might explain its omissions both at University Playground and here.  (Though that's not a very helpful sort of map.)  Alternatively, this might be omitted from the Parks map if its physical location is actually the library's property.

But library and park are both city property, so unless this "sanican" unlocked itself and walked to Northgate from a nearby construction site, it's city-funded - which should qualify it for the HSD map.  And I wrote to HSD nearly 24 hours ago now.  I'm mildly surprised their map still omits it.

As to the interior?  Plenty of toilet paper, but dear Diary, did you remember the angle of that doohickey in yesterday's photo?

Another "sanican" without sanitiser.  This makes four now.

Well, I went to Target, and found the last umbrella of the same size and colour that they had.  Then I checked my phone and found that I was nearing my photo limit.  So I went to

Hubbard Homestead

And while I sat on an already mostly dry wooden bench there and played a trick on my phone to let me take more photos, I remembered that I still have not shown you, dear Diary, a single picture of this unassuming park where I have now several times stopped for such utilitarian purposes.  I didn't have time to study the park properly, but hope these two photos conveniently close to where I'd sat will tide you over, dear Diary, until I do.

More stones

A pond.  I hadn't at all remembered a pond.

I need to get moving, dear Diary, but still hope to find time to write another page in you tonight.  We'll see.  [EDIT a few hours later, but technically the next day.  Nope, I've gathered the data but they still don't make sense to me, so not tonight.  Good night, dear Diary.]