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.

A Hike in Victory - and Defeat

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry, this isn't 8 A.M., is it?  That's kind of the point of one of the pages I now probably won't have time to write today.  So let me instead get on with the pages about the city properties of the third region I've hiked in May.  This page covers sites - actually, this time they're all Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks - between Roosevelt Way NE and Lake City Way NE from about NE Northgate Way to about NE 95th St.

A map:

Victory Creek Park

One of my goals for this set of hikes was to "do justice" to the Natural Areas, meaning explore them enough to a) take some good photos and b) explain them reasonably well to your readers, dear Diary.  This page is essentially about how I started to give that goal up, and the start of that start was in Victory Creek Park.

See, I'd forgotten something about that park, which is that every other square foot of it spawns trails.  Walking in that park is a weird combination of running into dead ends, and running into choices of something like a dozen ways to go.  I think Escher is the only person who could ever have mapped it.

Basically, this park is built around the titular creek.  It has trails on each side of the creek.  There are a number of entrances to the park, and when I said in introducing it in "South to and from Northgate" that I'd only found entrances from a QFC parking lot, I was really saying I'd been lazy.  One entrance is beside this bench on Northgate Way:

which is not the bench I photographed in the previously mentioned page as the (I claimed) only bench.  Argh.  Anyway, I took a couple of landscape shots and gave up this time too:

Victory Heights Playground

At least if I couldn't do justice to a small natural area, I could do justice to a small playground.  Its water fountains weren't running, again:

But even before that, I took pictures of this park's tourist attraction, which is playground equipment with translucent panes attached at the top, so that on sunny days there are coloured shadows all over the place.  There are actually two areas of playground with such equipment, but I only took pictures of one:

Finally, I took a couple of landscapes:

I should mention that those water fountains are attached to a school building, which is occupied by a non-public school, though not quite a business:  the Victory Heights Co-Op Preschool.  So if one goes as a tourist, one should be considerate of timing.  I also don't actually know that the parks department owns those water fountains (or the building they're attached to), although its web page for this park lists the water fountains as an amenity.

I then went to one part of 

Kingfisher Natural Area

I wouldn't know a kingfisher by sight, but there's at least one thing kingly about this park:  It's much the largest Natural Area in North Seattle, fifteen acres.  I had that information with me at the time, but didn't look it up; I just looked at the map on Open Street Map, looked at the time - almost 4:30 P.M. - and shook my head.  In "South to and from Northgate" I wrote that at the park's address as given (to this day) by Google, at 17th Ave NE and NE 104th St (these are actually the same street, which turns there), "there's a very obvious trail that runs quite straight down to the creek".  But I didn't go to that address this time, but to the place where NE 105th St dead ends despite having already crossed the creek (the upper dot on the map above).  There, the obvious trail only goes partway to the creek, is steeply downhill, and is not especially straight.  I explored quite a bit from there, led on by Open Street Map's appearing to claim that I could cross 15th Ave NE (present as a bridge overhead) on a trail.  I found a place where someone had abandoned a bunch of books, some of which I might have wanted to read but now sadly water-damaged, and one DVD, which I took.  I also took this photo along the way, I think:

I didn't, of course, find a way across 15th (and the South Fork of Thornton Creek), but did find a way to clamber up to 15th, which was good enough for my purposes, because I'd skipped several places along the way.  I didn't actually find any of those places, but took a photo where I thought one might be:

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area

This is a quarter-acre park which is apparently, according to Thornton Creek watershed maps (such as the one online or the one in the park called Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel), south of the actual confluence, that is, where Victory Creek, the creek of Victory Creek Park, flows into the South Fork, the creek of the WQC and of Kingfisher Natural Area.  Somehow I got the idea that this confluence was directly north of the dead end of 10th Place NE.  So I went to that dead end and found this shrubbery blocking the way:

I figure it's pretty enough shrubbery to be worth showing you, dear Diary, the picture, but it isn't actually blocking the Natural Area, which is east of as well as north of this spot, and whose exact location remains a mystery to me.

Kingfisher Natural Area

So I went back to Kingfisher, specifically its actual official address, which is 1511 NE 105th St.  Which makes it unsurprising that, as I noted with surprise last year, the official park signage is here, such as it minimally is.  I was by this point tired, and very worried about reaching Maple Leaf Reservoir Park before its restrooms shut, both for reasons involving you, dear Diary, and reasons involving my own need to do Number One, which I no longer figure I'm entitled to do in daytime outside, now that I'm housed.  So at 5:30 P.M. I settled for taking two photos of the entrance, which makes everything a little clearer.  This is the lower of the two dots on the map.

And then went on to my next hike, much further south.  I hope I still have time to tell you both about that one and the last one for this region, dear Diary, tonight.

I also had to give up, here, my hope to explore the woods shown by Open Street Map that didn't have obvious explanations.  This hike included massive woods of this sort, along Victory Creek and the South Fork pretty much everywhere between the parks.  Obviously if I wasn't going to clamber around Kingfisher, which I know to be public property, I wasn't going to clamber around areas that might for all I know be private.

Sometime this year I also hope to get back to Kingfisher Natural Area, and for that matter to Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area and Victory Creek Park and Open Street Map's woods, but it won't be soon.

Six Parks in Search of Another

Dear Diary,

It's embarrassing to be so far behind with you that I'm still narrating to you hikes from mid-October, practically summer.  But if it's any consolation, this page and another I plan to write in you today feature photographs taken today.  There was a park mystery, and last night I had to visit the 24-hour restroom at View Ridge Playfield, spent the night in that park's shelter shiveringly trying to sleep, and finally this morning set out to resolve that mystery, plus some smaller mysteries, and take some pictures.  So this page, and the one I intend to write Wednesday, won't all be summer hikes.

On October 12, then, I took 15th Ave from Sacajawea Playground, where I left off in the last page, to Northgate Way.  I'd noticed Patty's Eggnest at its Holman Road location, and that morning I felt rich enough to get breakfast at the Northgate one, an omelet I ate in a bus shelter.  Then I went and splurged some more, at Target, whose elevators had been fixed, getting umbrellas, and a cap to replace one that had fallen off my cart once there were masks under it, boosting it too high.

Which brings me to something important.  I had, both on June 27 while visiting the 'last seven' parks, and on October 12, nine masks.  Three were gifts, and six I bought myself, at Target.  These six are very well designed, because they not only cover my mouth and nose, but for even better protection, my eyes as well.  Unfortunately, my glasses objected to this, and the rainy day June 27, when I first visited the 'last seven' parks, the mask, which I was then wearing for the first time, fought back, in particular by serving as a slide down which the glasses could fall off my nose.

I admit, for the hike that was finally, on October 12, nearing its end, I wimped out and chose one of the three masks I'd been given, instead.

Anyway, fortified by food, I set off again.  This hike had a number of objectives:  First, to check on water fountains in North Seattle.  Second, to replace the photographs of some parks that I'd lost when my phone was stolen in July.  By October 12, that meant mostly what I'd thought, on June 27, were the last seven North Seattle parks I hadn't visited.  Third, to visit parks I'd learnt of since.  And fourth, to settle various questions about parks along the way, and photograph some of those I hadn't photographed before.

Northgate Park

Introduced May 29 in "South to and from Northgate".

Free-standing water fountain more or less mid-park:  NOT RUNNING.

Northgate Park turns out to be oddly bifurcated, its north side full of concrete and, well, weird stuff:

the south, well, not:

I stayed by the Northgate branch of the Seattle Public Library there for a while, catching up on Wi-Fi stuff, but not writing in you, dear Diary.

Maple Leaf Community Garden

This was one of the 'last seven'; in fact, three of those are introduced in this page, and since I covered three in "Lake City Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us!", that leaves only one for the pages ahead.  This one is near 5th Ave on 103rd St, actually across that street from Beaver Pond Natural Area, which, however, I didn't visit this time.

In June when I first visited, I found men working to build it, but by October it was a fully functioning ...

P-patch?

Actually the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation lists in its part of the Seattle real property report (which is where the list of the 'last seven' came from) several P-patches, including two of the 'last seven'.  It isn't usual, and it's worth asking why each time, but it isn't extraordinary.

In this case, my guess is that the Department of Neighborhoods, the usual custodian of P-patches, maybe doesn't have as much experience taking care of gorgeous old buildings, like the tower that dominates this 'park', as the parks department has.

But that's only a guess.

Victory Creek Confluence Natural Area

This next 'last seven' park is where Victory Creek, as in Victory Creek Park a few blocks north, meets the south branch of Thornton Creek.  Or maybe it's just somewhere near the actual confluence.  It's hard to tell, because its size as reported, a quarter acre, is nowhere near the size of the woods around the confluence, and of course there's no signage:

(12/15 edit) There's a video embedded there, but near as I can tell, Blogspot is not currently allowing me to write pages that show readers of you, dear Diary, embedded videos.  (This may be a general thing, or may be specific to me; dunno.)  The other recent page for which this is an issue is "A Problem", which is all about problems with videos and includes a pointer to its video at YouTube.  Here's a pointer to this video at YouTube.  What the video shows is lots of woods, with no sign singling out one quarter-acre as a public park.

So in this page's title, "Six Parks in Search of Another" (with apologies to Pirandello, who wrote a play whose English title I like, but I still haven't read or seen the play), Victory Creek Confluence Natural Areais the "Another".

In case you want to look for yourself, the official address is 1039 NE 108th St, although my Rand McNally map claims the actual confluence is between 11th and 12th Avenues.  The relevant instance of 108th St can be reached from Roosevelt Way.

Victory Creek Park

Introduced in the same page as Northgate Park.  I didn't go back to this frustrating park on this hike, so no, it isn't one of the title's "six parks".  Rather, I found out while writing this page that the frustrating thing about it - the absence of the picnic tables and playground its sign claims it has - was planned (PDF) as far back as 2018, and presumably happened by the time of my first visit in May.

Victory Heights Playground

Introduced in the same page as Northgate and Victory Creek Parks.

Two water fountains attached to the Victory Heights Co-op Preschool - NOT RUNNING

Note that this makes eleven, not ten, water fountain sites in North Seattle attached to heated buildings, and five, not four, of those not running this year.  (See the digression in the recent page "To a Land of Water and Honey".)

This time I took a picture of the translucent playground equipment I thought was neat in May.  Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperative in allowing me also to photograph the coloured shadows they cast.

I actually didn't take any notes about the water fountains on October 12.  So when I was done with Meadowbrook, as narrated below, I came back to Victory Heights.  Well, no, that isn't quite true.  On my October visit, I'd found an entire fantasy trilogy I'd enjoyed, in hardcover at a nearby Little Free Library, but was in no position to carry them away.  I talked myself into coming back to see if they were still there, today, and since I didn't find the book bin before reaching the park ...  The books weren't there when I did find it.  I have two reasons for thinking the water fountains weren't running in October:  1) I remember my relief at finally finding a working fountain at Meadowbrook later that day, and 2) the fountains didn't have much tree litter in them today, but they had too much to have been shut off a week or two ago.

Lavilla Meadows Natural Area

This is the third and last of this page's 'last seven' parks.  It's well hidden, but actually findable.

First, find Fischer Place, a diagonal connecting the Victory Heights neighbourhood with the Meadowbrook one.  Exit Victory Heights; on foot, one can do this at 102nd St.  Cross Lake City Way somewhere that seems safe.  Fischer Place starts opposite 102nd, and goes up to 105th west of 27th Ave.

On Fischer, look for Lavilla Dairy.  Go in back to the parking lot.  Behind the parking lot you should find this:

and this:

It's over four acres, so it's probably all the woods behind Fischer Place.

Meadowbrook Playfield

Introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!".

Free-standing water fountain near the picnic shelter shown two pages ago - ON, and overflowing enough that I couldn't use it.  (Today, however, it was of course NOT RUNNING.)

Water fountain attached to the restroom building west of there - NOT RUNNING October 12; I don't think I bothered today

Free-standing water fountain near the tennis courts, furthest west - ON, and my first chance that day to fill my water bottles; I didn't pass near it today.

The relief a working water fountain gave me that day left me feeling kinda guilty when I left the park without having found a single thing I wanted to photograph.  So when I got there today, I was determined to fix it.

See, the problem is general.  Playfields, in Seattle's hierarchy of parks, are mainly for big grassy areas for sports (specifically baseball), and even though I played in Little League, I don't find these photogenic.  So I always have to more or less do an end run around the park's whole reason for being, find some angle, and Meadowbrook had always seemed angle-free to me.

But the October visit was the first on which (because of Fischer Place) I'd approached along 105th, and noticed a lot of rather un-playfield-like land, greenswards and woods and just disorganised compared to the square playfield norm.

So first of all, yes, there's a brook at Meadowbrook.

It creates something of a view from a well-placed picnic bench:

But a square enough reader might prefer the picture I took first, cynically, figuring playgrounds are always safe, even though I find this one as bland as the rest of the playfield:

(Seattle Public Utilities) Meadowbrook Pond Nature Refuge

This was the mystery I set out to solve this morning.  At Matthews Beach there's a map of the Thornton Creek watershed, and it shows a park right across the street from Meadowbrook Playfield.  I needed another park to make up the six, not wanting to use Hubbard Homestead, which I still haven't photographed and in which I'd most recently done Number One.  So I thought I'd go solve it.

Well, there isn't much mystery.  This park not Parks' of course doesn't have usual parks department signage; it also doesn't actually have much frontage on 35th Ave.  So for someone as unobservant as me to miss it made sense, but it was there all along.

It doesn't have any restrooms or water fountains, but I fell in love with it and took scads of pictures anyway, too many for this page.  In fact, although I'd planned to put one here as a teaser, Blogspot won't let me.  So that's why, dear Diary, I plan to write two pages in you today.