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.

South to and from Northgate

Dear Diary,

Last night I mentioned that I filled two bottles from Northacres Park's winter-hardened water fountains on May 27.  I knew this to be a good idea, you see, because I hadn't filled even one bottle at them on May 15, and, wow, did I suffer for that.  There's one more pair of restrooms ahead, open, but not one running water fountain out of only four candidates.

From Northacres Playfield I went, both days, back to 1st Ave, and took it south to 117th St, which passes over I-5 to become another instance of 1st Ave.  My map claims there are several ways to leave this 1st Ave between I-5 and Northgate Way, but I think the only one that's actually open is 116th St, and it was blocked by construction on May 15.  So that day I had to trudge along the edge of a very tedious housing development, getting thirstier all the time, blaming the builders for blocking the exits at 115th and 112th ...  Anyway, I strongly recommend anyone taking this path on foot escape via 116th if at all possible.  In a car, you're stuck with 1st, because there's a stairway in 3rd.  Ultimately you get to

Hubbard Homestead

Visited May 15 and 27; no plumbing

Of course with a name like that I envisioned a historical site, and I was astonished when I got there and realised I was familiar with this history-ignoring park, as you are too if you've caught the Route 41 southward from north of Northgate.  It's basically Northgate North's back yard.  The 3rd Ave end has a skatepark, the 5th Ave one benches and a basketball hoop or two.  In between, a waving field of tallgrass for which a playground is planned, and I can only hope a water fountain too.

Northgate Park

Visited May 15 and 27; one water fountain, not running both times

This is much like Albert Davis Park, sandwiched between a library and a community center, but much bigger, and without (at least both times I visited) campers.  Much of the added space is grassy.

Beaver Pond Natural Area

Visited May 15 and briefly May 27; no plumbing

This is the sacrificial goat of the Thornton Creek system.  It's right across 5th Ave from the mall, and it was never going to be a quiet place to watch undisturbed wild things.  So they built a nice, easy trail, which has four entrances.  The one on 105th St west of 8th Ave doesn't have stairs, but all the others - 104th west of 8th, 104th east of 5th, and 103rd east of 5th - do have stairs.  This trail keeps you at a little distance from the creek, so unsurprisingly I found at least two short probably-unofficial trails that go right up to the banks; one starts behind the bus shelter on 5th near 103rd.  There are reputedly actual beavers.

The Natural Area extends northeast of the trail system, but I've found no entrances or maps, and strongly doubt any plumbing is hidden there.

Victory Creek Park

Visited May 15 for something like an hour, and much more briefly May 27; probably no plumbing

This park confuses me.  It has a sign anmouncing some amenities that have pretty well established meanings in Seattle's park system:

The children's play area should mean at least a little playground equipment, and the picnic area should have at least one picnic table.  But the only thing I found even remotely resembling either of these is, um, this:

What I did find is a small park consisting mostly of yet another creek, with woods around it laced with trails.  Now, I can't imagine that the parks department is lying here, so what can explain this?  I think it's obvious:  The amenities are underground, and I just never found their entrance.  If you wish to explore this possibility, all entrances to the park that I found are from a parking lot at the QFC on Northgate Way.

Another possibility:  That's a fake sign.  Once I saw such a one naming the micro-park at Olive and Denny "Four Car Park".  This one gets the name right but the amenities wrong.  Note the atypical typefaces used.

Anyway, the reason I cared is that in Seattle's parks water fountains are strongly attracted to playgrounds.  So if you ever do find the play area, let me know whether it has one, would you?

Speaking of which, 

Victory Heights Playground

Visited May 15 and 27; one water fountain, not running either time

This is one of two parks in a sort of pocket neighbourhood south of Northgate Way; this one is down 19th Ave from there.  It's next to Victory Heights Cooperative School, and the water fountain is attached to the school building.  The playground equipment has several translucent panels high up, that on sunny days cast beautiful coloured shadows.

Kingfisher Natural Area

Visited, from different angles, May 15 and 27; probably no plumbing

At the address Google gives this one, where 17th Ave turns into 104th St, there's a very obvious trail that runs quite straight down to the creek.  Initially I settled for that, but I started to wonder, and on the 27th decided to use my head start to explore more thoroughly.  I started on 15th Ave, and found at 104th St signs naming the place (absent at the alleged main address) and announcing a trail.  This turned vertical almost immediately, and, fed up with shying away from such trails, I parked the cart and went in.  Some time later - probably a quarter or even half an hour - I found an unofficial exit where another 17th Ave dead ends north of 100th St.  My trail was easy to discern, but it met many other trails, I know of no map, and I think anything from a water fountain to the original Crystal Palace could be hidden here, but probably isn't.  The trail I spent that time on is relatively hard, I was very glad I'd brought my umbrella, and frankly amazed I escaped not covered in mud.  So I promptly gave up on any more thorough exploration.

On the 15th, though confounded by map errors, I managed to exit the neighbourhood of Victory Heights to Lake City Way, took it to 98th St, and then went south on 20th Ave.  This may be the steepest street I've ever climbed, and I can't recommend doing it while pushing a cart and dying of thirst.  Maple Leaf is actually one of Seattle's tallest hills, and our next park faces south from near the peak.

Sacajawea Playground

Visited May 15; no plumbing

This is another park that stretches the meaning of Seattle parks' terminology.  Sacajawea Elementary School, behind the park, has some playground equipment, but the park has none.  It's mostly a grassy indentation in the hillside, surrounded by trees, with one giant tree in the middle.  I saw some teenagers there, but no kids.

Downhill, at 82nd St, we get to the only one of these parks with a restroom.  I took 15th Ave to it on May 15, but on May 27, skipping Sacajawea, went back to Roosevelt before starting south, which was a much more bearable slope.

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

Visited May 15 and 27; one pair of restrooms, open both times, and one water fountain (I think), not running both times

This isn't actually a very big park, but it seems limitless.  There's a bunch of sport space toward the 14th Ave side, while the Roosevelt side has the playground and restrooms, with the water fountain well hidden north of the latter.  I used the men's room on the 15th and it worked fine.

I also finally got desperate enough that day to try something I imagine your readers, dear Diary, have probably wondered at my not doing long since:  drinking from the sink.  See, I grew up with a fiberglass hot water heater, which taught me to worry about pipes; I figure if the parks people give us both sinks and water fountains, they must have a reason for doing so.

On the 27th, coming south on Roosevelt, I discovered the park's upstairs, which has yet more sport space plus lots of grass space for future sports or present comtemplation.  I found, however, no plumbing upstairs.  The upstairs does have, on clear days, great views of the city and the mountains; I saw both Mount Rainier and the Cascades.

Both days, I continued down Roosevelt to 75th St (on the 15th buying a can of soda from the Peruvian restaurant on the way).  On the 26th I'd taken a bus to Lake City, my first time taking the cart on one, so on the 27th, after visiting the Safeway there (and using its men's room), I caught a bus back to campus.  On the 15th, however, I was there for a little park hidden on Banner Place south of 75th.

Rainbow Point

Visited May 15; no plumbing

This is a small park nestled between major roads; it basically exists for its views, with plants strategically placed to edit the roads out of those views.  Not a bad place to sit a while.

From there I trudged down Roosevelt to 65th St to cross I-5 for the tour's last park.

NE 60th Street Park

Visited May 15; no plumbing

Since I-5 curves, it repeatedly creates awkward bits of land where it meets grid-pattern streets, and one of those is a small triangular park.  At its north end it's wide enough to look like woods; at its south end it's just a line of trees.  I saw hints at the north end that someone might have lived there.

Then I hiked south to 50th St to re-cross I-5 and head for campus.

So ends my story of May 14 and 15, but there's one more chapter to the May 26 and 27 tale, which I hope to tell tomorrow.  Until then, dear Diary.