Few Restrooms Closed, Only One Water Fountain Running in Today's Hike

Dear Diary,

Today I visited eight parks.  I only walked through the Wallingford Steps, but in each of the others there's a water fountain or (more usually) both a fountain and restrooms, and I took pictures of these with today's newspaper in each one.

I'm not going to spend the rest of the night uploading those pictures to Blogspot.  I've just uploaded them all to my Google Drive account, and it appears that the following link enables anyone who wishes to see those photos to see them.

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

Aside from not boring you and anyone who reads you with endless door shots, this has the great advantage that the date and time information that is the bulk of each photo's meta-information is preserved intact.  On top of which, each photo has tonight as its last-modified date, and each photo has today's newspaper in it.  I finally have redundantly dated photos for you, dear Diary, only I can't show them to you directly in your pages to accomplish that.  Sorry!

Anyway, then, as of this afternoon and early evening, here's a summary of the results by function:

Water fountain running at Sunset Place, which is in Northwest.  All the other parks I got to are in North, and no water fountain known to me was running in any of those.  They are:  Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, B. F. Day Playground, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Restrooms closed at Woodland Park (Citywide Athletics Building, which the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation nicknames "Rio") and at Green Lake Park (Community Center, women's room only).  Both closures had explanations posted, and were not simply the result of negligence.  All the other restrooms I visited were open, including ones in Meridian Playground, Wallingford Playfield, Gas Works Park, Woodland Park and Green Lake Park.

Results by park:

Meridian Playground - restrooms open (as usual, except that they close in winter), water fountain hopelessly damaged in a way that suggests metal thievery, as it has been since I first saw it last year.  I also decided to take notes on men's rooms on this series of hikes, and the men's room at Meridian has one toilet, one urinal, one sink, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.  I tried at least one sink for each men's room this kind of note is attached to, found it not of the kind that mostly sprays users' clothes, and found any dryer mentioned working.

Street fountain on N 45th St near Wallingford Ave N - still not running, as it has been since late March; before that, as far as I knew, it ran throughout the pandemic, incuding winter.  I took a picture, but either it didn't actually get taken, or I deleted it accidentally from my phone.  (My phone's camera has recently eliminated a feature that helped me know whether it really took a picture, so I periodically have to go through deleting duplicate and triplicate photos.)  When I take another photo of it, there'll be a folder at Google Drive for that photo.

Wallingford Playfield - restrooms open (as usual), water fountain recently repaired but still not running; last year it was hopelessly damaged.  The men's room at Wallingford has the same things as the one at Meridian.  I did not note, this time, at either of these parks, whether the toilet stalls had doors.

Gas Works Park - restrooms open (they're officially open 24 hours at least during the pandemic), water fountain not running; it still shows no sign of damage, but hasn't, as far as I know, run since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, and one soap dispenser.

B. F. Day Playground - water fountain not running.  It gave a trickle last spring and was running last autumn.

Sunset Place - water fountain running.  It ran both last spring and last autumn.

Woodland Park - By region:

• Northwest - There's a single water fountain near the entrance to the park at Phinney Ave N and N 59th St.  It's too damaged to use, as it has been since I found it last autumn, but the style of the damage suggests that it may have been disabled by parks staff rather than by metal thieves.
• Lawn bowling - A restroom building is right next to one of the lawn bowling greens near the park entrance at Aurora Ave N and West Green Lake Way N; its restrooms were limitedly open in winter, but last year were unpredictably 24 hours.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, one sink, no dryer, and one soap dispenser.  One water fountain is under its eaves, within the usually locked bowling green; it wasn't running last autumn.  Another is some distance away, near shelter 6; it ran last autumn, but isn't running now.  Neither looks damaged.
  
• Pink Palace - Some way south of the lawn bowling restrooms this quite pink building is at the top of a hill.  It has two water fountains attached to it which haven't run since the pandemic began and still don't; they don't look damaged.  The restrooms have been open most nights I've been near them since the pandemic began.  The men's room has two toilet stalls with doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and one soap dispenser.
  
• 50th - Northwest of Woodland Park Ave N and N 50th St there's a restroom building which has been open 24 hours somewhat less reliably than the Pink Palace.  The men's room has two toilets without stall doors, one urinal, two sinks, one dryer, and would have a soap dispenser except that someone has stolen it.  Right out front of the men's room is a really old-fashioned water fountain which hasn't run since the pandemic began, but has been disabled since at least last autumn in a way reminiscent of the northwest fountain.  The same is true of a water fountain directly north of Woodland Park Ave N, which is of the same make as the northwest fountain and disabled in the same ways.
• Citywide Athletics Building (again, "Rio") - Two water fountains are on either side of the home plate of the big baseball diamond at the park's southeast corner.  They have both been hopelessly disabled, probably by metal thieves and maybe by the same bunch as at Meridian Playground, since the pandemic began.  North of the baseball diamond is the Citywide Athletics Building.  It has restrooms that open to the outside, and are normally open in winter, but since January have been posted as closed due to vandalism, which forced the parks department to do some juggling.
• Cloverleaf - With the big baseball diamond as field #1, the four Leo Lassen Fields are #3-#6, vaguely resembling a four-leafed clover.  A building with the address 5427 East Green Lake Way N in the middle of the cloverleaf holds two restrooms with doors that open to the outside.  These normally close in winter, but this winter were open with limited hours.  They were open today.  The water fountain attached to the building gave a trickle last May, and ran last October - that's only two in the park, the other being near shelter 6 - but isn't running now.  A girls' game was going on, resulting in a real crowd near this building, so I didn't take notes on the men's room, and thereafter stopped partly from forgetting, partly from rain.
  

Green Lake Park - By region; all restrooms can be open all year:

• Small Craft Center (nicknamed "Shellhouse" by the parks department), near the southern end of the lake.  Most of last year, I think these restrooms were open 24 hours, but the people who work there were unhappy with the results, and as of winter, it closes, though later than most park restrooms.  Two water fountains attached to two buildings ran last year (in spring as well as fall), but haven't been started yet this year.
• 64th St (nicknamed "65th St" by the parks department).  These restrooms were usually open 24 hours last year, and are now the designated 24 hour restrooms of this park.  I've never found a water fountain near them.  On the way there I saw geese escorting their goslings:
  
  
  
• Community Center.  The Green Lake Community Center and Evans Pool have been undergoing inscrutable construction work that got a lot more scrutable sometime between January and now with the erection of a sign that explains that they're doing "stabilization" work now, with the hope to buy time until mid-decade, to allow a more thorough planning of the replacement.
  
  The restrooms have been unpredictably open, but in recent visits ("Hikes 12 and 14" and today) the men's room has been open but not the women's.  Today the men's room had both warm and cold water, but it's a good idea to make sure it at least has cold running water before using it.  The water fountain trailward of the building ran last fall, but doesn't run now.
  
• Wading pool, at the north end of the park.  These restrooms have usually been the official 24 hour restrooms of the park, and are still usually open 24 hours.  Two water fountains attached to the building ran last fall, but not now; I didn't find the free-standing double fountain not far away then, so haven't observed it running.
• Theatre, the building known as the Bathhouse or Bath House Theater, the company inside it the Seattle Public Theater (parks department nickname "Bath House" or "Bathhouse").   I didn't find these restrooms open last May or October; they're supposed to open in summer for the theatre season, and by different people expected to open in winter too.  I first found them open in January and had to eat some crow about it; they're open now too, which they definitely oughtn't normally be.  So much as I complain about the parks department ignoring the pandemic in their decision-making, this is a notable exception.  Anyway, there's a free-standing double fountain in front of the men's room, and two fountains attached in back of the women's room; I'm pretty sure all ran last October, but none run now.

And since I got that far only after 7 P.M. (closing times for the Bathhouse, Community Center and Shellhouse restrooms seem to be between 8 and 9 P.M.), it was too late to go on to the parks of Greenwood, so that's as far as I got in "N" today.

More about the hikes I'm now trying to plan tomorrow, dear Diary; it's been quiet time for a quarter hour again.  Good night.

A Hike along Ballard's South Shore

Dear Diary,

Whew!  Almost done.  Just some hiking along Shilshole...

EDIT 5/11:  Map:

Well, but first, an old friend.

Salmon Bay Phase I and 

Salmon Bay Phase II

We've encountered this pleasant place at least twice before, dear Diary:  in "The Ballard Seacoast", part I, as Salmon Bay Natural Area; then in "Street Ends: Shilshole Bay", as the 34th Ave NW Street End.  Now above we see its name, or rather names, in the 2020 real property report.

Yet another photo of the place:

And I thought I'd photographed its signage before, but if so, I haven't showed it to you, dear Diary, so here it is:

It was fairly crowded, and I was worried about sunset coming, so I set off again.  The next two stops are also street ends, and are ten blocks apart each.

But I got distracted along the way.  At 30th, by the entrance to

The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and Carl S. English Jr Botanical Garden

Well, even before that, I had another try at photographing one of the tall reddish conifers that I suspect of being redwoods:

 

But then at the gate at 30th, I was gobsmacked to find it open.  Turns out it's back to regular hours:

and if the city ever slows down in the mistreatment of my former and perhaps future peers, so I can spare the time, I'd really like to go back there, tour the place, and tell you all about it, dear Diary.

Last time I visited the 28th Ave NW street end (as recounted in "Street Ends: North-west Salmon Bay"), there was a homeless madwoman there, and I complained that she'd obstructed my photography, so I considered trying again.  But there was another young woman there this time, and although she was to all appearances sane (and housed), I just put it off again.

Ship Canal Water Quality Project

Do you remember, dear Diary, how (in the same previous page), under the influence of a false understanding of street ends, I professed uncertainty in identifying the 24th Ave NW street end?  Well, it turns out the alternative I thought was probably wrong was actually spectacularly wrong.  The building uphill from the actual street end, adjacent to the supposed one, is apparently the headquarters of the whole tunnel-building project.  And its backyard is yet another of the construction sites.

I was dithering about what to photograph when I noticed two geese:

and decided to get out of their way, after taking one photo to prove I'd been there:

Now, near as I can tell, there's been a vast amount of street work going on in Ballard to fix the "missing link" of the Burke-Gilman Trail.  So I decided to try to take the Trail from this site to the last one, instead of Shilshole.  That worked out poorly; I probably wasn't on the actual trail, but anyway came up to a fence that sternly warned against trespassing on the gravel wasteland beyond, as if anyone would want to.  Suddenly Shilshole, right next door, seemed much more appealing.

Shilshole Ave NW itself is actually not that bad, if one knows in advance that all the sidewalks are on the north side of the street.  It's just that it's usually unpleasant before one gets onto it, and it's usually unpleasant after one leaves it, too, walking in the street, on gravel, into oncoming cars' paths, and other nuisances.  This time my negative thoughts as I left Shilshole turned toward the fact that I'd lately kept running into geese, but never ducks any more.  Had we humans just gotten too obtrusive again, and all the ducks I'd seen last year had gone into hiding?  As I thought this, I am truly not making this up, I noticed someone yelling rather loudly ahead of me, over and over, and as I came closer the yells sounded more and more like quacks, and lo:

This particular duck was genuinely aggravated about something, and wouldn't let me get any closer, but I was still thrilled to see it, and continued in a much more cheerful frame of mind to my last stop:

14th Ave NW Boat Ramp

This park hasn't had a "sanican" like its peer on Sunnyside Ave N in the past, and it hasn't acquired one either, let alone a water fountain:

I told you, dear Diary, much too long ago now, that I had errands in Ballard.  They were both in the shopping along Leary, and I'd run one before going north to Greg's Garden and Gilman Playground.  The other was getting groceries at Fred Meyer, and so, having as it turned out beaten sunset by fifteen minutes, I turned to grocery shopping, and getting home in the much greater cold than when I'd set out, and other things that you, as my parks diary, needn't hear about.

It'll be a little while before my next hike.  Happy days until then, dear Diary.

All in the Dry Month of May

Dear Diary,

Hooray!  Just two pages left of today's hike.  This one covers Fremont, understood as the area between Stone Way N and 1st Ave NW, farther north than feels like Fremont to me, all the way from the Ship Canal to N 50th St.  This means five parks run by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation.  Same as last year, only one has a water fountain, and none has a restroom.

EDIT 5/11:  Map:

Troll's Knoll Park

My errand on N 36th St put me north of the waterfront, but close to Fremont's two stairway parks.  This one, however, isn't a stairway park like the Wallingford Steps, but a ramp park.  Look:

At the top of the ramp is a P-Patch, and I suppose I should've checked to make sure no water fountain had been installed there since I last visited in June ("At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?") and took no photos.  But the park's web page mentions no amenities, except the central one:  it can get anyone, feet, wheels or both, from N 36th to 38th Streets.  In a pleasant environment, too.

A. B. Ernst Park

I'd forgotten how helpful the park web pages can be.  It had dawned on me I should pay more attention to the people the parks are named for, and this one turns out to be an early park commissioner who, quoth the web page, helped implement the Olmsted plans that resulted in, for example, Ravenna Park and Boulevard.

Anyway, this has been a stairs park, climbing from N 34th to 35th Streets, parkier than the Wallingford Steps, but, in my opinion, cursed with concrete benches instead of a mosaic as its landing focus.  A construction project was to have started by now that would have gotten rid of those benches and the steps, in favour of a ramp all the way as at Troll's Knoll.  I've written about this park a bit more than most of those that lack plumbing, because of this:  June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe" and June 21 in "Past Work and Gas Works", with photos.  So I was very surprised and mildly displeased that I could climb the stairs:

all the way to the top, where I could read the explanation:

We'll soon see a project that doesn't have this kind of sign.  Why do access projects like this and the work planned years ago to improve the entrances to Gas Works Park take a back seat in comparison?

The Burke-Gilman Trail

The parks of Wallingford and Fremont, as of various other neighbourhoods, include this trail, and in my general enthusiasm for taking photos today, I didn't forget this one.

I had to take stairs, again, to get to it from Troll Ave N.  At the bottom of those stairs I found a mini-park.  Since the street it's on is loudly proclaimed to be a private street, I'm guessing this is a private park; no doubt to discourage people, whether general public or employees, from lingering, the only furniture it has is, um, a picture frame:

Google Maps shows a conspicuously vast splotch of green just north of the trail, somewhat further west, and I was very curious what it could be.  It turned out not to be so vast after all, and it's just the fenced-in landscaping of Adobe's building there:

At least they spent a bit to make the fence abutting the trail a little prettier.

The reason I was taking the trail is that it goes right to and through the next park, and this brings me to a sort of apology I owe, dear Diary.  On January 19, in "Water and Water", about the Lake Washington Ship Canal, I wrote in part:

"Because essentially all the [Fremont] Cut's width is reserved for navigation, which bars piers, boaters don't show it much love, and its only North Seattle street end is the uninteresting one under the Fremont Bridge, with opportunities for more passed up at Phinney Ave N and 2nd Ave NW, at least."

This is preposterous.  The whole point of the street end program was to make private land public.  But by the time that program got going in the 1990s, the Burke-Gilman Trail and this next park occupied the entire north waterfront of the Fremont Cut.  So there wouldn't have been any point to street ends at those two spots.  Harrumph.

So here's that park, which has everything except plumbing:

Fremont Canal Park

The first time I visited this park last June, I was having trouble getting to the parks department web pages, which is what I blamed for the fact that I only looked at the eastern half of the park (the half with the topiary dinosaurs), and only described that half June 9 in "At the Centre of the Universe, Does Gas Work?"  The other half (the one with furniture hidden in small topiary bushes), I presented June 25 in "History and Parks" part I.  So this park has gotten a bit more photography from me than others, and I was lazy today, taking only a generic shot down the trail:

At least I singled it out for praise January 6 in "What's in a Name?", pairing it with a park so obviously meant as its opposite that I kind of have to wonder what chemicals were involved in planning Fremont's too-few, too-small, parks that punch so much above their weight.  That is, pairing it with

Fremont Peak Park

Today I learnt that while Palatine Ave N is a through street from 50th to 44th, which is enough to get to this park, it is not a through street from 44th to the canal.  Oops.

Anyway, this park also isn't exactly on a peak, the way Fremont Canal Park is exactly on a canal.  The peak is two blocks east, on Phinney Ave N.  Fremont Peak Park is well down the western slope.  But it's still plenty high up.

It's weird in a rather appealing way, and I took some photos of that for "At the Centre", so this time I decided instead to focus on dumb obvious stuff.  Here's the entrance:

And here's a view:

I did walk both Fremont Canal and Fremont Peak Parks end to end in case there were new water fountains, but neither saw any nor any signs of them.

B. F. Day Playground

B. F. Day was a realtor, says the parks department web page, who donated the land to build a school, land on which I suspect the park also sits.

This is the biggest park in Fremont, and the only one with plumbing, in the form of a water fountain.  Last October, that fountain ran, while none of those in the bigger parks of Wallingford did.  Anyway, its plumbing means I've visited it rather more often than most of these (the Trail and therefore Fremont Canal Park are different).  I introduced it June 9 in "At the Centre" and came back to it October 8 in "South of North Once More", part I, with photos and a story that I then had to retract March 21 in "Hike 8A" (more photos).  Here are yet more:

A landscape, of course.

No water, of course.

And whereas in January the "sanican" that had been here was gone, probably lent to Northgate Park, where there was a Curative COVID testing site, it's back now, and in a place obviously built for it, that I didn't notice in January and so offered a probably incorrect memory of where it had been:

This park has playground improvements planned.  Not, mind, the installation of a new playground, but improvements to an existing one.  I showed, either October or January, a photo of a revised schedule, a sign still there today.  That schedule claimed construction would happen in 2021, but it's now May and nothing's happening.  So I don't actually know that playgrounds are more important to the parks department than access, but the contrast between the signs suggests that that's the case.

What a dreary note to end on, dear Diary.  I have a better one.  A while back, I noted that I find that ducks improve almost any situation.  Geese not so much - it's hard to ignore their indiscriminately scattered Numbers Two, and they're more aggressive.  But still, two geese in Fremont Canal Park were remarkably indifferent to me today, so I took their picture:

Next page:  a start on Woodland Park.

Street Ends: Lake Washington - North

Dear Diary,

It turns out I'd remembered myself as more heroic than I actually am.  On October 20, the day I went to the Morningside Substation Site, aka Wedgwood Community Park, I did get to Matthews Beach, Magnuson Park, and the two street ends in between, but I did not also get several miles further north to the other two street ends this page discusses.  I didn't actually pull that off until the 28th.

That said, I'm circling North Seattle here, so the last shall be first.

Speaking of which.  Several of the pages I've written in you lately have ended on unhappy notes.  Arguably this page will too, but the series as a whole will not.  A sizeable share of the North Seattle street ends that aren't accessible to the public are in this very first page.  In contrast, everything I plan for the last page is wide open.

NE 135th St Street End

Photos taken October 28.

Photo 1 - The street that ends.

Photo 2 - The land area the city is claiming.

NE 130th St Street End

This small beach was introduced under this very name in "Top of the City, Part I" some time ago.  It was in the map adopted in 1993, but is no longer considered part of the street end program, possibly because it's been transferred to the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Photo 1

 Photo 2

Photo 3 - The view over the water

Fair warning:  I don't think there's that much blue in the sky in any of the rest of the photos 3.

University Lake Shore Place

As long as I was up there, I thought I should photograph this pretentiously named bit of slope over the Burke-Gilman Trail.

I don't actually know that the bench is in this "park" rather than the trail.

The rest of the photos are from October 20.

NE 90th Place Street End

Photo 1

Photo 2

The city says this street end is adjacent to Matthews Beach.  If you look closely, you can see what I think is a storage area.  Assuming the resident of that house is paying the fee required for use of a street end, what that person is really paying for is not storage space but privacy.  The city has considerately left the southern end of the park nearly impassable with vegetation and streams, but someone still considered it necessary to put up a fence:

NE 85th St Street End

In several places in North Seattle, street signs are posted without actual streets to point to.  At least some of these amount to claims of street ends.

Photo 1

Well, hmmm.  I didn't actually take notes on either the 20th or the 28th, so have had to reconstruct my movements mostly from the photos' order, and only after first writing this page in you, dear Diary, did I realise that this photo probably represents the ending of the real easternmost NE 85th St, visited sort of on the way north.

Photo 2

Just keep in mind, dear Diary, that the fees presumably paid by the people using some of the street ends are what pays for the upkeep of the rest, and even this ending needn't really be unhappy.

Actually, well, I was in Matthews Beach that day, and it's a lot harder to be unhappy, I always think, around ducks.

To the Beaches!

Dear Diary,

Today's page was always going to be kind of short - there just aren't that many parks in the part of northeastern Seattle in question.  But last night it got even shorter because I deleted two of the photos by mistake.

Chinook Passage Natural Area

Since I was going to pass this park, introduced May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!", no matter what - 95th St, along which it lies, being the obvious way to get from 35th Ave to the next park - I figured I should take pictures.  Now, if one read yesterday's page "Six Parks in Search of Another" much more closely than it deserves, it would be clear that these were the first photos I took on October 12 since my visit to Lavilla Meadows Natural Area.  (I don't know, by the way, whether Lavilla or LaVilla is correct, but La Villa certainly isn't.)

The photos of Lavilla Meadows were of a lot of undergrowth, plus, in one, a sign.  Now, one of the photos of Chinook Passage was like that, sign plus greenery, but the other was meant to use a streetside break in the wall of trees to show the depth of this two and a half acre forest.  As usual when I try that kind of thing, the photo was a failure.  So for practical purposes the Lavilla Meadows and Chinook Passage photos, next to each other in my chronologically sorted photo bin, looked pretty much alike.  And last night when I deleted from my phone the photos I'd just put into you, dear Diary, I seem to have deleted both pairs.  Sorry, but, well, not very sorry.

Matthews Beach

This 22-acre park was always going to be the main one in this page.  I introduced it in the same page as Chinook Passage, not only without photos, but without enough exploration to convince me I'd found all its water fountains.  All summer I meant to get back - until the rain June 27 started, it was on my list for that day - but it never happened.

But it turns out that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation offers free reservations for groups of picnic tables in some parks, including Matthews Beach, as well as paid reservations for picnic shelters.  And it offers maps of both sets of parks.  So this time I had a map, and no excuse for not doing the job right.

So what did I find?

First of all, the water fountain I found before really is the only one.

Free-standing water fountain near the restrooms - ON, but it tasted bad

Second, the seasonal restrooms were of course locked - I asked Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the department, whether they'd been opened at all this year, but she didn't answer.

Third, more worrisomely, one of the two all-gender stalls that are supposed to be open year round was boarded up, I kid you not:

and the other was locked.  Turns out this was just someone camping in there - I ended up coming back a few days later, and it was open.  But these are the only park restrooms open year round in a vast stretch of North Seattle, with Little Brook and Meadowbrook closed.  (I verified the latter yesterday; the sign announcing the closure was still up, dated November 23.)  In general I prefer the dignity offered by a lockable door, but it worries me that so many of the year round restrooms offer that dignity, since it makes camping in the stalls workable.  (The exceptions, in "NE", are at Dahl and View Ridge Playfields and in Magnuson Park.  All in a row down the middle.)

And what else?

Basically a lot of photogenic waterfront.  Matthews Beach has several trails, but not so many woods, so most parts of the park effectively look lakeward.

The main exception is in the southeast, where Thornton Creek enters the lake.  I'll talk about the woods there in an upcoming page; for now I just want to show you, dear Diary, the map of the watershed that revealed to me the existence of Meadowbrook Pond:

Maple Springs Natural Area

The only other departmental park anywhere near there is, um, different.  It's basically the woods behind dead ends at 40th Ave and 91st St.  I was coming from the north, so I started at 40th:

Well, um, good to know about the wasps, but...

At 91st the signs are clearer:

In other words, this park is closed to the public, because parts of it, which apparently can't be disentangled from the rest, are private land.  I actually find this reassuring; like Waldo Woods, it shows the department trying to preserve land even if it can't open that land up.  In this regard, the department's heart is in the right place.

From there I headed practically straight south to View Ridge Playfield's picnic shelter.  So ended October 12, near the end of this long hike.

Until tomorrow, dear Diary, a good day and a good night.

Fritz Hedges Waterway Park

Dear Diary,

Last week, I went on a tour of the places the city of Seattle claims as "street ends" in North Seattle.  I still have three to tackle, so won't be telling you more about them tonight, but anyway, I wanted to present them through a more or less consistent and comprehensible approach to photographs.  And it so happens that one of them, arguably the city's most audacious claim in North Seattle, is right next to the new park.  So having gotten there October 13 too late to take pictures - and seen FHWP all fenced in as always - it probably took me less than an hour, on my return the next day, to notice that the fences were down.

So I took some more photos.

Here's the actual waterway, that is, setup for launching and landing boats.

This is just a view along the length of the park.

Unfortunately, as in the expanded Christie Park, all the furniture is metal.  But at least in this park, unlike Christie, it's all painted my favourite colour.

Here I tried an action shot, with a bit more success than usual for me.  Yes, of course the local Canada geese have investigated and adopted the new place.

The beach.

The park's pier.

A view from that pier.

More poorly photographed birds.

There is neither a water fountain nor a restroom I can find.

Next to the waterway is a small parking lot.  No sign says who it's for, but it looks like it's meant for the park.

I found a 2015 article about the planning of this park:

Planning A New Portage Bay Park in the University District by Stephen Fesler for The Urbanist.

It says that in public meetings there was consensus for public restrooms, but not for a parking lot.  It's good to know that the planners were more foresighted than that.  After all, we humans won't always have bodies, but surely we'll always have automobiles.