Three Hikes in Ravenna, part II: Northeast

Dear Diary,

This part's title is actually untrue:  I've recently made five hikes to this part of Ravenna.  So let's hurry up and get started.  Here's the map:

 

One thing I want you to notice on that map, dear Diary, is that dozens of homeowners north-northeast of Ravenna Park don't have back yards, they have back forest, and near as I can tell (this was the topic of today's hike), they pretty much don't treat it as their property.  That doesn't mean they want you hiking into it, but does mean that in every case I got the chance to look at, there's a pretty sharp dividing line between the areas they actually use, and the areas they seem to be aware they're stewards of.

Today's hike was also a lesson in the reliability of Open Street Map.  Those gray blotches reproduce OSM's map as best I could, because it checked out everywhere I was able to look.

On October 8 (hike #1), I went and visited most of the properties I knew to belong to the City of Seattle in the entire region, including this piece of it.

Olga Park (RB9 on map)

As before, I've numbered the blocks of Ravenna Boulevard with the numbers I used, counting from Ravenna Park towards Green Lake Park, in "Ravenna Boulevard", a much earlier page in you, dear Diary.

I'd forgotten in writing the previous part of this page that I did take one photograph of Ravenna Boulevard, of the specific extra-wide block of it that has the separate name Olga Park.  I took it because I was pleased to see that when Olga Park was swept, they didn't also sweep the sign declaring that name:

Ravenna Park

On this hike, I didn't take many photos in this park, other than of the water fountains and restroom doors.  (As in past hike series, the photos are in a shared folder at my Google Drive.)  I know perfectly well that I've shown you lots of photos of Ravenna Park in the past, dear Diary.  But I was pleased to notice that the alleged construction near the shelter there a) is supposed to be completed fairly soon and b) at the moment isn't fencing off the actual shelter.

Also, you may find this photo of just how the water fountain in "lower" Ravenna Park is malfunctioning mildly amusing:

Also, this time I found about about Ravenna Triangle, a tiny Seattle Department of Transportation property at one of the southeastern corners of gigantic Ravenna Park.  Notice two things about it, dear Diary:  It's nicely landscaped (something SDOT is sometimes good at), and the bench in the photo is on the parks department's side of the property (benches are something I haven't yet noticed SDOT doing).

Ravenna Ravine (A on map)

The core of the area where all those homeowners take care of woods is a reasonably big area where the city does instead.  It's in a maze of dead ends and has no plumbing, so I'm not sure I've visited it since May 2020, when I was telling you, dear Diary, about all the parks in the general vicinity of where I then lived.

So here are more photos of Ravenna Ravine, showing that at least here the city's Department of Parks and Recreation has not installed a new water fountain.  As before, I found it impossible to get further into the park than a few steps.

One reason I set out, last summer, to visit each city property known to me, was that I wanted to find all the Seattle Public Utilities parks.  SPU really likes to parkify its properties.  But it turns out most things with SPU's name on them in North Seattle are not only not parkified, they're invisible - sewers, standpipes, you name it.  However, it sometimes turns out that they're in interesting places, and so it proved this time.  Around the corner from the non-entrance to Ravenna Ravine I'd visited this time and before, on 24th Ave, there's a dead end on 61st St. to which I went looking for the fictional address SPU had used, and there I found a sign:

"Habitat restoration.  Please do not enter or climb on bank.  Thank you!"  Now I belatedly realise that this is actually a dead end into one of the private parts of Ravenna Ravine, not the city park.  So at least one homeowner is taking stewardship seriously.

Park Home Circle (B on map)

This is a pretty good tiny playground for kids, but really shines at Christmas time, when I hope I'll still be housed.  Meanwhile, another photo:

And that was it for my hiking of this area on October 8.  I went south and got onto the Burke-Gilman Trail and away.

On October 12 (hike #2), I came to make up for the one area I hadn't reached before sunset on October 8.

17th Ave NE Center Strip

Yes, that's what SDOT calls one of its more boring parks.  No fine landscaping here.

Two blocks of this park are in the area on this map, three in the one covered in the next part of this page.  I took one photo per block, plus one extra, but that one is south of here.  I didn't get the idea of really varying the shots much until the third block, too.  Sorry, dear Diary; I hope tomorrow to show you more interesting pictures than these.

On October 14 (hike #3), I came back intending to visit the areas I'd noticed as worth attention on Open Street Map.  There was only one of these in this part of Ravenna.

Traffic circle, 17th Ave & 63rd St (C on map)

Wow, wouldn't it be nice if all traffic circles, which I experience as terrifying places where no driver ever signals a turn, were as pleasant as this one!  It's got nice landscaping:

nice paths, adding up to a significant chunk of its area, with one nice bench and several things that clearly belong to that genre of street furniture designed primarily so as to be uncomfortable enough that homeless people won't monopolise them, otherwise known as cutting off your nose to spite your face, well anyway, it's got furniture:

And it's even got a Little Free Library:

The safety cone visible in the second photo and the truck in this third are because it's also now got construction nearby.  A "sanican" is, in fact, across the street from it.  Nevertheless, I found that even as tiny a park as this, even with construction noise, could soothe me, and I recommend it.

So that was the only one I'd noticed on Open Street Map, but as I walked away, I chanced to notice something all on my own.  I'm not very observant, dear Diary, so I was pretty proud of finding it.

Battlement bench (D on map)

No bus goes down 63rd St or, for that matter, 21st Ave, so by Seattle logic, no bench is needed on those streets, but someone saw fit to put one there, and not only that, to give people who sat there something to look at.  I recommend this one, too, to anyone who comes to these parts to see the traffic circle done right.

Yesterday (hike #4), making my second attempt at the map up top, I noticed something on Open Street Map I hadn't noticed before.  Well, actually, a bunch of somethings, so I incorporated them into yesterday's hike.  But again, only one was in this map's area:

Ravenna Trollbooth

Given my own interest in fantasy - I long intended to write a history of it - of course I came and looked.  It isn't actually very easy to find, but fortunately the artist puts the exact address conspicuously on his website.  Anyway, here's a photo:

One result of going six places in Ravenna yesterday was that I forgot to go look more thoroughly at the woods around Ravenna Ravine; another was that I ran out of time to do so.  So I finally convinced myself to come back today (hike #5) and do the job right before writing this.

In the first area, every single place I tried was just as obviously private property as it was woods.  I didn't think I had any business taking photos.

Turns out the easiest path between the areas where streets contact the woods is through Ravenna Park.  So I also investigated two more things I'd noticed in the park as rendered by Open Street Map.  One turned out to be a large slab of concrete on the western side of the park.  The only obvious thing about it was two basketball hoops; a full court would occupy about a third of the space, and I have no clue what the other two thirds were intended for.  The only attractive thing about it was the couple using the basketball hoops, so I took no photos.

The other thing didn't turn out any more attractive, but I figured in case anyone else's curiosity was whetted by "Ravenna Park Sulfur Spring" (F on the map above), I'd better photograph it anyway and save some people the trip.

As I walked away, I did indeed notice a faint smell of sulfur.  Huh.

Anyway.  There are two bridges at the south end of Ravenna Ave as it reaches the park.  One takes people to 61st St northwest of the park, the other to 60th St east of the park.  I thought from Open Street Map and what I remembered from the King County parcel viewer (which for some reason won't load on my phone) that those bridges marked the park's boundary.  So I took photos looking northish from each of them.  This one, G on the map, actually probably looks into private woods:

But once I got home and could look at the parcel viewer again, turned out the other is parks department property, an inaccessible part of Ravenna Park across that bridge from the rest.  H on the map.

A railing of the bridge is visible on the lower left of that photo.

The few remaining places on the east side of the woods were as un-photo-worthy as those on the west had been.

Well, all for tonight, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I hope to finish, or at least nearly finish, surveying the buildings of UW's Seattle campus, and then come home and tell you about the remaining part of Ravenna.  Until then, a good night and a good day.

Park Home Circle Tonight

Dear Diary,

I'm not sure how much good news I'll have for you this week.  I got a surprise tonight.  But there is one piece of good news I can give you right away.

I'd noticed, last December, something funny going on, on the street where Park Home Circle, the 7th-smallest Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation park in North Seattle, is.  But I was still homeless and rather smelly then, and what was going on reminded me too much of my middle-class upbringing to investigate under those circumstances.

Tonight was a different story, so let me show you, dear Diary, how even the 7th-smallest park can bring some joy to some people.

Well, you know me, dear Diary, I do so love to photograph signage.  But I also took a landscape shot:

And even a video:

In other news, I found the water fountains still running tonight at Hing Hay Park - well, small surprise that, a street-style fountain not very far from a building - and, much more surprisingly, at Ravenna Park, the fountain next to the "lower" restrooms.  I even drank from the latter, and found it tasted better than I'd remembered, though both its bowls' drains were blocked by sand.

Happy holidays, dear Diary, and we'll see how much more good news I have for you soon.  Until then, good night and good days.

Ravennawards

Dear Diary,

Something momentous seems to have happened recently, dear Diary, but I greatly fear it's been done all wrong.  It's also partly old news.  I think I should start at the beginning.

Which is a correction I forgot to include in my errata page a few days ago.  Do you remember...

Ravenna Park I

I claimed a plastic stall door in the men's room of Ravenna Park's lower men's room was new, and probably put there because vandals had wrecked the old metal door.

Well, the door could perhaps be new, but the graffiti on it aren't; I recognised several from last summer:

Hope they're visible in those shots.  They're upside down; that much, anyway, has changed since they were made.

I've warned you, dear Diary, about my unreliable memory, and this is an excellent example.

So anyway, this past weekend, I needed to do Number Two in the late afternoons, which meant trips to Ravenna Park.  I decided not to stress the damaged cart with these trips; on Sunday I anyway brought my backpack, but Saturday and Monday not even that.  I decided to use these excursions to visit also the smaller parks more or less near Ravenna, of which there are four.  On Saturday I began with

Ravenna Woods

Two streets lead south from the western end of the lower part of Ravenna Park.  The eastern is Ravenna Place, the western Ravenna Avenue.

Well, if you follow the Avenue south past the dead end notice all the way to 47th St, you reach Ravenna Woods.  Like Inverness Ravine Park, this one lacks the usual signage (as, in fact, do all four of these), but unlike both that park and Thornton Creek Natural Area (EDIT 10/19 Chinook Passage Natural Area), Ravenna Woods has a clearly laid out, gravel, path.  

This continues Ravenna Avenue south to 45th St; just south of the overpass, the woods continue but the path becomes wood chips and makes a sharp right turn.

I remember a miserable night or two, years ago, of verifying that none of these trails lead acceptably back to the street system.

In looking for parks' restrooms and water fountains, I assume they're meant to be found.  Magnuson Park's central restroom is on a gravel path, but it's a path central to the park.  Or to put it another way, plumbing that nobody can find is effectively nonexistent.

There's no visible plumbing on the gravel path, and I don't see the point in checking wood chip trails at all.

I was, therefore, unhappily familiar with these woods, but although they're a terrible way to get somewhere, they aren't such a bad destination in their own right.

I was rather more familiar with a place further north on Ravenna Avenue, where a stair in three parts goes up to 20th.  Before the cart, I used to use that stair, sometimes in the rain, which meant I couldn't put any of my satchels down for its entire height.

This time, even without satchels, I wimped out of the third and easiest part, after climbing the second and hardest, shown above.  The bottom of the stair is next to a P-Patch, at which, Saturday afternoon, someone was watering; so I guess I should count P-Patches in parks (such as Magnuson Park) as examples of plumbing in those parks.

On this excursion I passed two groups of young people who weren't practising social distancing.  One was seventeen men in front of a fraternity house; the other was three men and a woman in front of a shack, behind which lay three tents.  It sure is great that our excellent mayor here in Seattle can be counted on to do the right thing in these cases.  After all, pandemics come and pandemics go, but it's always essential to punish the poor.

Ravenna Boulevard

This is a greenway running from Ravenna Park to Green Lake Park.  I'm familiar with it up to Roosevelt, in which stretch it includes an official park with signage but not listed on the website, Olga Park.  (EDIT 10/19 - Not an official park.)  It does not, however, that I've ever seen, include restrooms or water fountains.  When I go to Green Lake I'll take this route and cover it more fully; as a down payment here are the blocks I normally see on my way from campus to Ravenna Park via 20th, shot from their lower ends.

Park Home Circle

The first two intersections on Ravenna Boulevard are with Park Road, a small semicircle north of the boulevard; at the second the road continues south as 21st Ave.  Park Home Circle is a traffic circle somewhat frivolously placed within the semicircle.  You can see it from the boulevard:

Parents, if you take your kids to this one, have them approach it from the east,

so they can find this micro-park's claim to fame for themselves.

Ravenna Ravine

So I decided Sunday afternoon to finish the job by going to this one.  After all, how hard could it be?

Several weary miles later...  To reach Ravenna Ravine, or anyway what the parks department website calls by that name, you have to start from 25th Ave.  Turn onto 60th St into a micro-neighbourhood festooned with "dead end" signs.  Near the north end of this area's main street, 24th Ave, the address actually given by the website is a forbidding clump of bushes:

but just north of there, an actual trail invites the wayfarer.  Alas, it ends in a cliff a few feet in:

I guess it's clear from the photo that a path seems to lead left (south) there.  I followed this about ten feet south and two feet down before accepting that I'm no longer the intrepid explorer I used to be and clambering, with some difficulty, back to the street.  The path went further, visible every foot or two, almost as wide as my foot.  So I haven't really explored Ravenna Ravine, but I'm pretty confident it lacks restrooms and water fountains.

I'm not clear on to what extent this ravine connects with the ravine further south in Ravenna Park, on which more below.  Remember, the parks department doesn't do maps; Google Maps opines that they're two separate parks with private land between them.

Ravenna Park II

It was just after 8 P.M. when I got back to Ravenna Park's lower restrooms, which were locked.  So I went to the upper restrooms before calling it a night - and found them unlocked.  Not only that, but the men's room had acquired soap, and its clogged toilet had been fixed.  So why was this open when the main restrooms, the lower ones, were locked?

One hint:  Only the women's room was (and is) actually open; the men's room, whose door can be seen from a nearby parking lot, was unlocked but closed.  (The open door in the photo above was propped open by me, only long enough to take the picture.)

Another:  At 1 A.M. that night, I set out to University Playground, Cowen Park, and Ravenna Park, and found only Ravenna Park's upper restrooms unlocked.

A third:  Monday evening, just after 7 P.M., I found Cowen Park's restrooms locked, with the leafpile still at the men's room door; at 7:40 P.M. Ravenna Park's lower restrooms were locked; but at 7:50 the upper ones still weren't.

Finally, today (Tuesday, May 12, 2020), I found Ravenna Park's lower restrooms locked at 11:44 (A.M. PDT), the upper ones unlocked shortly before 12:07 P.M., Cowen Park's locked at 12:22, and University Playground's locked at 1:10.

The conclusion seems inescapable:  This work - not only of opening the rooms, but taking care of them - was done either by parks workers without authorisation, or by,private citizens.

Two months into the pandemic, twenty-four hour access to running water has reached the U-District, but only thanks to renegades or trespassers.

You will respond that this is a good deed for the numerous homeless people in the area who can now find toilets, sinks, and drinking water all in one place.  But that's precisely my point.  Our wonderful mayor would undoubtedly have gotten around to this good deed.  She might even have done so before the end of the pandemic.  And now the opportunity has been stolen from her by some nobodies.  It's lèse-majesté, that's what it is, and I trust she will invoke the full majesty of the law against the perpetrators.  Good deed?  Bah, humbug!

EDIT:  I'm delighted to report that tonight at about 10:30 P.M., when I tried to use the upper Ravenna Park restrooms, I found them locked.  Probably the nightly locker of restrooms got to the park, found the lower ones already locked, and looked around for something else to lock.  So it all worked out for the best.
   Nobody had yet read this page of you, dear Diary, by the time those restrooms were locked.

Ravenna Park III

On Monday, after checking that Cowen Park's restrooms were still locked, I knew it was too late for locked rooms at University Playground to mean anything, and hadn't the heart to go on anyway.  Meanwhile, on this trip I'd noticed what looked like a paved path in the ravine north of Cowen Park, so I wanted to check that out.  I'd been imagining Cowen Park, which is considerably lower than most of the streets that surround it, as a kind of spreading-out of the ravine; is it?

Well, not really but sort of.  Cowen Park is significantly higher ground than the ravine proper, but does provide access to it.  Unfortunately the paved path turned out to be gravel, and for most of its length old, mostly buried gravel.  There was a lot of this:

and enough of this:

that I can't say the ravine lacks running water, but it does lack plumbing.  Someone had tried to live there anyway:

I suspect, but don't know, that that's the result of a sweep.  Now, these days most sweeps are done on the basis that the camps swept are "obstructions".  You might notice that the only thing this camp obstructed was some trees, and wonder about that.  But this shows an inadequate perspective.  Many trees in forests are obstructed by undergrowth, or fallen trees.  Therefore, obstructing trees is a subhuman, vegetative thing to do.  It's for his own good that this camper was swept, to restore him to his rightful place as a human being.  Never let it be said that our wonderful mayor lacks compassion.

Anyway, there were lots of side paths, but the main path leads to the bowl in lower Ravenna Park, which actually is the sort of widening out of the ravine that I'd imagined Cowen Park to be.