Hikes 12 and 14: All Night Long, Redux

Dear Diary,

We're entering a new era.  This is the second page, not the first, about hikes I've taken since getting housed - more specifically, hikes I've taken without my cart.  But this is also more or less the first page since December not mainly concerned with the lies put forward by the city government in the form of a map purporting to show restrooms open this past winter.  The map's still there, mind, and I'll check its summer edition starting soon, but for now we're free of it.

In hike 12, I re-visited most of the park restrooms in North Seattle that I thought might be open all night; that hike extended from March 25 to March 26.  In hike 14, I followed up things I thought I'd seen in Woodland Park that night, going there in the evening but with light still in the sky, April 4.  So "All Night Long" really applies mostly to hike 12, but I did pay that topic a bit of attention in hike 14, and it made no sense to split the two hikes up.  Anyway, here goes.

Hike 12 - March 25 to 26

I took only a few photos on this very long hike at night.

Woodland Park

The "Cloverleaf" restrooms were closed at 9:25 P.M.; the sign saying they were only open dawn to dusk was still up at the men's room but gone at the women's room.  The Curative COVID testing site that had been east of those restrooms, and had had "sanican"s nearby, was no longer there, but the "sanican"s were.  The "Rio" restrooms were closed at 9:31 P.M., and again there was still a sign at the men's but not at the women's.  This struck me as such an odd pattern (usually signs last longer at women's rooms) that this time I took photos, the only ones I took that night at Woodland or Green Lake Parks:

The "50th St" restrooms were open at 9:47 P.M., the "Pink Palace" ones at 10:03, and the "lawn bowling" ones were closed at 10:08 P.M.

I got the distinct impression that far fewer tents were visible in the areas of Woodland Park I visited that night than I'd have expected to see based on prior night visits.  Also, when I went downhill from the "Pink Palace" to Green Lake Park, I noticed no extension cords crossing that road, where there had formerly been three; but there was one I hadn't noticed before, crossing the path from the "Pink Palace" to the "lawn bowling" restrooms.  Someone on the west side of that path (away from the shelters) had used to run a loud generator quite often, but it was silent that night.  Essentially these were the topics that brought me back to Woodland Park ten nights later.

Green Lake Park

The "Shellhouse" restrooms were closed at 10:21 P.M.  The "65th St" ones were open at 10:34.  The Community Center ones were closed at around 10:50, and there was caution tape across the entrance to the stairs to the women's room, but not the men's.  (See what I mean, dear Diary?)  The "wading pool" rooms were open at 11:00, and the "Bathhouse" pair were closed at 11:14.

I bought a newspaper on my way to the next park.  I'd been buying them, mindful of the Seattle Times's role in my becoming housed, but I also wanted to use this one as a prop; I had the fantasy that I'd tell you, dear Diary, about this hike before the next newspaper came out.  Um, sure.  Anyway, here's its front page, so people who read you can identify it in the upcoming photos:

Hey, speaking of which, I got vaccinated today, with the Johnson & Johnson single-shot vaccine.  I can hardly wait.  Within a year I might even be able to forget about masks, and wear glasses in public again.

Carkeek Park

I found the restrooms open at 1:04 A.M.:

I found a dramatic change at one of the "sanican"s, the one at the Environmental Learning Center which had been full of experimental gear and papers.  Observe:

That sign in more detail:

Ooh, I'd forgotten that lock.  Let's see - has the map I'd been checking noticed that lock yet?  No, it has not:

It sees three "restrooms" at Carkeek Park, which means the entire restroom building as one plus two "sanican"s.  But only one of the "sanican"s was available that night, and I bet that's still true.  Since I've been calling the authors of the map liars pretty much every time I write in you, dear Diary, I haven't been e-mailing corrections to them, but I hope they notice this one before the century, or anyway the mayoral term, ends.

View Ridge Playfield

Its restrooms were open at 4:35 A.M.:

So that's every park restroom I believed to be open 24 hours this past winter in North Seattle, except those at Gas Works Park, which had been officially announced so were, I figured, very unlikely to be closed.  Sooner or later, I'll also check on the claim from last year (denied then by Rachel Schulkin of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation) that the restrooms at Bitter Lake Playfield are open 24 hours.  But in the meantime...

Hike 14 - April 4

Woodland Park

My goals for this hike were to observe by day the changes in number of tents, and access to electricity, that I thought I'd seen the night of March 25.  But one of the easiest ways to judge access to electricity is to be around when the sun has recently set, so I went pretty late.  I found the "Pink Palace" restrooms open and the "lawn bowling" restrooms closed at around 7:30 P.M., the "50th St" ones open at 7:45.

There were indeed no electrical cords crossing the road from the tennis courts up to the "Pink Palace" and nearby shelters, as had been there in the past.  One, which I don't think was one of the former three, was present, but not going anywhere:

For something to do while I waited for the sun to set more fully, I wandered around exploring.  This helped me get a clearer picture of the largely unmapped park, but also brought me within view of various "sanican"s, which reminded me of the Curative site.

They'd put up a sign:

Where all the "sanican"s in Woodland Park had been across the path from the testing site, now they were scattered hither and yon, so only one stands behind that sign.  An ADA one had moved to the testing site's new location, near the Citywide Athletics Building and the closed "Rio" restrooms.  This photo is pretty dark, but the testing site is the blue and white box on the left, the ADA "sanican" the green box on the far right:

What looks like another ADA one had moved to the opposite end of the path through the cloverleaf (Leo Lassen) baseball fields, to face the north tennis courts:

When I went back uphill, I found darkness prevalent not only around shelters 1, 2, 3 and 7, whose campers had never had electricity, but also around shelter 4, which had had access to it.  Shelter 6, which I suspect may be the only source, was really the only brightly lit thing around, other than the restrooms; what tents remained near it (they'd be to its right in this photo) were in darkness:

I took that photo at 8:23 P.M.; this visit didn't take all that long.  Soon after, I ran into a Real Change worker calling himself Merlin.  He and a companion with whom I didn't talk much had both spent a lot more years homeless than I had.  He said the park's population hadn't changed, but more campers were hiding.  However, he estimated the population at 50 or 60, and I was pretty sure I'd seen more tents than that in October.  He speculated that maybe the generator I hadn't heard (again) had stopped working.

PubliCola reported today that the sweep of Gilman Playground has been scheduled and that of University Playground has already happened.  Here we see that even the favoured campers at Woodland Park are losing the gifts they'd been receiving.  It's important to remember, while COVID-19 continues to stalk the land, that our city government is already in a post-COVID world, in which it can indulge its love of cruelty to the homeless after too long an abstention, without risking public health by doing so.  Must be nice.  I wonder; if I worked for the city, could I already be forgetting masks and wearing glasses again?

But if the city is really in a post-COVID world, why aren't the community centers, pools, and libraries re-opening?

Maybe the city just considers mistreating the homeless a greater public good than following CDC recommendations or re-opening libraries.  Beats me.  But camping in parks is looking to be a riskier and riskier strategy, and I expect to find even Woodland Park becoming less welcoming - and less populous - as the days go on.

Partly because of my vaccination, I've planned to spend the next couple of days housebound, dear Diary, among other things doing some behind the scenes work on you that having a laptop makes possible.  The Gilman sweep is apparently scheduled for Friday, and I have an errand in Ballard sometime soon, so we'll see.  I also have errands soon that should enable me to see what's happened at University Playground.  But I probably can't stay housed and also be much of a real reporter with my ear to the ground for you, dear Diary; and at some point, my long expectation that I'd be done writing you may well come true.

Hike 3A: Woodland Park

Dear Diary,

Woodland Park is a large park north of Fremont.  My policy in photographing the large parks whose hours fluctuated much of last year (as well as the smaller Gas Works Park) has been to stay strictly functional, on the grounds that they're photographed enough.  So I introduced Woodland Park June 8 in " A Shower at Green Lake" with photos of its restrooms' doors, and then gave it its own pages as part II of "South of North Once More" (October 8; photos of water fountains) and part IV of "Standing Room Only" (November 24; photos of shelters).  It gets its own page this time too, and lots of photos, but half are of restroom doors again.

I refer to quarters of this park, but only cover half of them.  You'll remember, dear Diary, that the western block of the park is dominated by the Woodland Park Zoo, which is kind of complicated to visit these days (oh, dear, I don't think I mentioned to you that already in October it had partly re-opened).  All the restrooms in that block are paywalled inside the zoo, and the HSD map ignores them, so I have, this time, too.  One of these days I'll have to figure out a way to show you that zoo, dear Diary, and its restrooms and water fountains.

In these hikes I visited Woodland Park's other half many times, but mostly at night, trying to figure out its restrooms' hours.  I'll discuss those visits in later pages.  The only times I'm sure I saw Woodland Park by day are January 9, hike 3A, and January 21, hike 10.  All the photos below were taken in about an hour, 10:48 A.M. to 12:06 P.M. on January 9; I remember photographing one shelter one night, but now can't find the photo.

Between e-mailed exchanges with Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, and the map published by the Department of Human Services ("HSD map") that I checked in these hikes, I now know the names the parks department uses for all of Woodland Park's pairs of restrooms, and figure clarity will be aided if I use them.  So here goes.

The first restroom pair is northeast of the big, fancy baseball diamond, but I actually started my trip by going to the southwest of that diamond; I wanted to find a dry place to set my satchels down, so I could put a coat I'd removed into its proper place on top of my cart, and thought one of the dugouts would do fine.  Unfortunately, although I'd rested there in October, they're now locked:

(But then, that doesn't look too dry anyway, does it?)

The damaged water fountains near home plate looked unchanged.

While I was there, a man came up to me and offered me $20.  I told him I was pretty rich just then and he should give it to someone else.  He insisted, saying I could pass it on, and since I was going up the hill to a huge encampment, I agreed.

The first restroom pair is, as I said, not far from there.  The Citywide Athletic Building

has restrooms whose doors open to the outside; the parks department calls these "Rio".  Unfortunately for anyone who works in that building, those restrooms are, unlike last winter, closed:

Bad vandals!

The parks department has compensated by opening the other pair of restrooms in the park's lowest, easternmost, athletics-focused quarter.  This, you'll remember, dear Diary, is in the middle of four smaller baseball diamonds grouped together.  The parks department name is the obvious one:  "Cloverleaf".

The building with the restrooms is also seating behind home plate for field #6, which is obviously its most attractive side:

The restrooms:

Again with the fine print.  That announces a schedule from dawn to dusk, like Jackson Park.

The map also says these restrooms, unlike any others in Woodland Park, have "sanican"s near them.  I vaguely remember these as being pretty near the restrooms, but at the moment there's a Curative COVID-testing site back toward the parking lot, and so they've been moved there.

Ms. Schulkin complained to me that I'd pointed out (in "Hike 1A:  Inconvenients", part II, January 4) a new "sanican" in Northgate Park; that's there to support another Curative site.  Apparently that one, being temporary, isn't appropriate to notice or something.

Well, that's it for the eastern quarter of the park.  The road uphill branches off from West Green Lake Way toward and then past the tennis courts.  Now, the restrooms in the western part of this block were open 24 hours last summer, and the obvious explanation is the encampment up there.  But the official explanation given me by Ms. Schulkin is that with roads closed to shut off parking lots, there's no need to close the restrooms.  Consistent with this, although parking lots elsewhere have re-opened, these ones and their access roads remain blocked, well enough that it was a hassle for me, each time I visited Woodland Park, to get my cart past the barriers.

On the way uphill one passes one of the visible signs of why so many people have moved here.  Well, actually, three of those signs:

Notice how much thicker the one at the bottom of the second photo is.  There's serious electricity being provided to the campers in upper Lower Woodland Park.

In October I'd noticed that nearly all the campers were in the northern part of this quarter of the park, presumably because the electricity was there.  This time I saw more tents in the southern part, although the vast majority are still north; probably not coincidentally, I thought I saw evidence that the electricity had reached the south.  I'd meant to investigate more carefully, but at this time can't.

I think the electricity is routed through shelters with that amenity, though I'd hope by now it's got a sturdier basis.  My October visits were largely about the shelters, and on these trips in January I paid particular attention to three of them, one for each restroom pair.

So let's start at the top of the hill.  The parks department's name for this restroom building is "Pink Palace".  Unfortunately my phone's camera's trouble with reds makes the reason less than obvious in this photo:

The restrooms are open, as expected considering that both the HSD map and last year's parks department list include the Pink Palace.

The shelter near this one that I wanted to investigate is shelter 7, set deepest in the woods that are this block's most photogenic feature, with no amenities.  I'd found it unused in October.  Well, now someone has pitched a tent whose edge is within about a centimeter of the shelter - outside it, mind you, this person isn't trying to hog the shelter, but I suspect trying to start a new neighbourhood.

Not far from the Pink Palace, up so close to the block's corner that it's actually pretty easy to reach from Aurora Ave N, is a restroom building whose parks department name refers to the sport whose greens are right next to it, "lawn bowling".

Neither the HSD map nor last year's list says these restrooms should be open, and Ms. Schulkin told me by e-mail that the park's manager was worried about it, because of the encampment, and had requested a "sanican".  Well, there's no "sanican" there.  Instead...

It dawned on me that those photos maybe didn't make it obvious that these are open, so I also took a close-up of the men's room:

Yes, they're open.  Establishing their hours was the main reason I kept coming back to Woodland Park, specifically, but they're certainly open daytimes.  UNLESS - I don't have confirmation but it seems obvious - unless it gets really cold, in which case these will be as closed as the map says they are.

The shelter near these that I wanted to investigate is shelter 6, which in October had seemed to be one woman's remarkably homelike domain.  This time it was much less homelike, though still enough so to notice, and I didn't hear a woman's voice from it until one of my last visits.  Instead it was a communal kitchen, like shelters 4 and 5, used mostly by men.  I'd half expected something like that.

I could've sworn I photographed it one night, trying to capture its size, the way the walls have been supplemented with tarps and cloth, the electric light shining through those - none of which my previous photo at considerable distance conveyed - but I suspect my phone's camera didn't successfully take the shot; I certainly can't find it now.

Dear Diary, I should probably tell you more about my impressions of gender and homelessness, but this isn't the place.  Let me just say that while the woman I briefly met may feel hard done by, I have no trouble imagining that the change happened without violence, and that of course most of the people camped nearby would be men.

This area is still behind on trash collection, near as I can tell, but the problem hasn't gotten any worse since October, it just hasn't gotten all the way better.

Anyway, we're almost done.  The third pair of restrooms normally meant for picnickers and hikers, now supporting an encampment, is in the block's southwest, which is still higher than the block's eastern half, but not nearly as high as the Pink Palace area.  One of the three shelters here was certainly being hogged in October, with two tents inside it, another I guessed might be shared, and then there's shelter 1.  When I visited it I thought it was in use, but my notes and photographs indicated nothing to justify that.

Well, it's certainly in use now.

The restrooms for these three shelters, and the apparently increasing number of tents nearby, are called for the access "50th St".

These are supposed to be open per the HSD map, and were supposed to be open last year, so it was no great surprise to find this:

These photos were posed.  Park restroom doors are usually propped open in summer, but in winter, lower temperatures and more violent winds discourage that.  So here I propped the doors open with nearby garbage cans long enough to take these pictures.

Woodland Park is the place in North Seattle where the parks department has most gone out of its way for my peers.  I'm going to tell you much more problematic things in the coming days, dear Diary, but we'll have to remember while discussing them that at Woodland Park the department has shown real kindness.

Standing Room Only, Part V: Elsewhere

Dear Diary,

Whew!  Just one more page, and I can go back to telling you about October 11 and 12, and then October 16 and 17.

This page is actually sort of about those dates too, as well as about October 9 and 10.  Because I saw a picnic shelter discussed in this page on each of those pairs of dates:  I slept in Carkeek Park's shelter 2 between the 9th and 10th, and in one of Golden Gardens Park's between the 16th and 17th, and visited Maple Leaf Reservoir Park's rentable shelter both the 11th and 12th.  (It isn't at all a good place to sleep, plus I was harassed both dates.)  It's worth remembering that each of those nights was rainy; I had to plan those hikes around shelters.

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park has two shelters, but unlike Magnuson or Woodland Parks, or to anticipate a bit Golden Gardens or Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks, the two at Carkeek Park have very little in common.

I had rushed to Carkeek Park from way across town at Mineral Springs Park.  Of course I wanted to check on Carkeek's water fountains, and I had to take pictures at the Blue Ridge parks on Carkeek's other side.  But I also expected rain, and wanted a shelter roof over my head very much.  When I saw what I'd be getting, I couldn't believe my luck.

The luck held, too.  Soon after my arrival, a loud crowd of kids - high school or college, I thought - started trickling in.  Apparently they'd planned to have a party in that building, but when they found me there, they gamely went on to shelter 1:

and didn't even reconsider their generosity when a torrential rain hammered their party and got them to flee.

Particularly relevant to this set of pages' focus, shelter 1 shelters no tables at all, shelter 2 (which is indeed the WPA project it looks like) three.  This is, of course, reflected in their daily rates at Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation:  $120 for #1, higher for #2 - but frankly, the latter is a preposterous steal at just $195.  Just compare their rain resistance - shelter 1:

versus shelter 2:

The problem, of course, is location.  Carkeek Park's shelters are on the park's main, upper, level, not on its beach; those at Golden Gardens, and the beach one at Magnuson, Parks are all level with their beaches.  Separately, location is also the problem for homeless habitation.  It's years of hard travel - well, anyway an hour or two, largely on gravel - to the QFC on Holman Road.  You could only live in shelter 2 if you had a partner you could trust to protect your stuff, every time you went for supplies.  At least there's a working water fountain, but for how long?  (Neither shelter's sink was on; I'll spare you the photos I took of them.)  Oh, and, of course, the ultimate 21st century deal-breaker:  no electricity.  So no, I won't be abandoning my doorway for Carkeek Park's palace in the sky.

I suppose what stories I have of Maple Leaf Reservoir, or of Golden Gardens, Parks belong not here but in the stories of the hikes themselves.  (I will end the suspense right now on one count though:  the young woman quoted in part I has not become the partner I'd need to live at Carkeek Park.)

Maple Leaf Reservoir Park

The rentable shelter is on the upper level of this two-tiered park.  It is overwhelmingly made of metal.  Seems to me all the parks in this page are even more unlikely to be in the path of a homeless wanderer seeking a seat than Woodland Park's shelter 7.  But at Maple Leaf, that wanderer would only find metal seats anyhow.  It's $210 per day.

This shelter does have electricity, though.

There's another shelter on the lower level, also all-metal.  It's still too small to rent out; maybe in a decade or so it'll have grown big enough.

Meadowbrook Playfield

I only noticed this shelter out of sentimentality.  When I was testing the nearby water fountain on October 12, I noticed some kids sitting there.  At first I just envied them the shade they had, but then it penetrated my thick skull that they were playing D&D, or something similar, just like my friends and I at their age.  Anyway, they left before I did, so I took a picture of another non-rentable shelter.

With, sigh, metal seats.

Golden Gardens Park

As mentioned above, these shelters are practically on the beach.  So of course they partake of the beach ethos, that rain does not exist, and neither is really designed as shelter at all, so much as shade.  (They're basically identical, including in price, each $120 per day.)

I survived because each does have a table, shoved against its other amenities at the dryest place in the "shelter".  I bumped my cart up against the table and sat myself and my satchels on it too.

Well, as shelters at Magnuson and Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks and Meadowbrook Playfield have shown, not all park picnic shelters are listed in the rental list.  There are also other kinds of shelter with seating in some parks.  In particular, if seeking such, be sure to try the baseball fields' bullpens.  But I trust this is enough to show that the parks can't single-handedly provide the sheltered seating homeless people will want this winter.  I hope this winter won't be standing room only for me, but it will be for too many of us.

Standing Room Only, Part IV: Woodland Park

Dear Diary,

Well, that turned out to be more than a few hours, didn't it?  Sigh.  Anyway.  This page is about the seven rentable picnic shelters of Woodland Park, which are in the western half of the eastern block of that park, the block called by the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation Lower Woodland Park.

These shelters are in woodlands, rolling in the north, flatter in the south, and those hills, plains and valleys were, when I visited in early October, crowded with tents.  You may remember, dear Diary, that in the two pages titled "South of North Once More", a geological age or so ago, I expressed surprise that pretty well all the homeless people I'd seen in Green Lake Park, both tent campers and shocked-looking men I interpreted as newly homeless, in early June, were gone in early October.  What I didn't say then was that the homeless population in Woodland Park, specifically the west and especially the northwest of Lower Woodland, had grown exponentially.  I have good reason to believe that the main attraction is electricity, piped by a vast network of extension cords from the shelters that have it.  Shelter sink water may matter, too, not so much as a bonus, but making up for Woodland Park's desperate shortage of working water fountains.

This changed my approach to photography.  Surely you remember, dear Diary, that I prefer to show you only pictures that include no other people, and also no homeless people's tents.  I couldn't photograph most of these shelters without breaking both of these rules.  What I eventually settled on was that I could break them only from a distance.  You'll see what that means.

I'll cover these shelters from north to south.  I found basically three models for these shelters.  Some appear to be inhabited.  Some appear to be kept clear of residents, instead shared as a sort of kitchen among those living in nearby tents.  And I found one, with neither sink nor electrical outlet, empty.

Shelter 6

This is a very large shelter way up at the park's north end, and the department's price to rent it reflects that, $310 per day.  It's closest to the northernmost restrooms, and the lawn bowling greens those restrooms serve.  My understanding is that those restrooms are seasonal, and may by now have closed; however, the restrooms of the Small Craft Center in Green Lake Park aren't far.  The only working water fountain in the upper, western half of Lower Woodland Park is right outside this shelter's door, but of course I don't know whether it's still running.

It was, on October 7, much the most homelike of the shelters.  It was crowded with furniture and fabric, most of its unwalled sides blocked, but all in a reasonably consistent and uncluttered way.  I was totally unsurprised that the person who greeted me was a woman.  I certainly didn't ask her whether she hogged the shelter's amenities, whatever they were, or supervised their sharing among the nearby residents, but those struck me as the possibilities.

In this photo, the shelter is not the white structure at mid-right, but the brown one, obscured by trees, just above the picture's centre.  (The white structure, roofless, is useless as shelter.)

I observed signs of trash piling up along the way to this shelter, and I was surprised.  This is also the area where I specifically remember seeing messy tents such as I imagine refugees from Licton Springs would have.  They were, in early October, a small minority.

Shelter 5

I'm pretty sure this was, at that time, a shared kitchen; on the evening of October 7 I chatted a bit with people using it until an exceptionally territorial dog came after me, but don't remember getting to any of my questions.  It's the most obvious shelter from the main entrance to the area where shelters 4-7 are, what I've called the "hilltop".  Which means, of course, that the closest restrooms are those I've called by that name, and they're year-round.  (In last year's list of such restrooms, they were called "Pink Palace".)  They were also, like Carkeek Park's restrooms, open 24 hours while the driveway gates were shut.  The department rents this shelter for $160 per day in normal years.

Shelter 4

I didn't find this shelter, or any further south, in the gathering dark October 7, and didn't encounter any residents October 8, also true the rest of the way.  This one appeared to be another shared kitchen.  Again, the closest restrooms are the "Pink Palace" hilltop ones; as for water, we're far enough south now that I'm not sure which of the Small Craft Center, shelter 6, or the cloverleaf baseball fields downhill, would be the best choice.  The rent here is just $135 per day.

This is where I photographed something I'd observed also at shelter 6:  piled up trash.  I had then recently posted lots of photos of trash neglected at Cal Anderson Park.  In the coming days I'd see more examples at Licton Springs Park and at Bitter Lake Playfield, the latter corroborated by a resident.  It's a relief to know that our wise and forethoughtful mayor has asked that the relevant program's budget increase next year.

Shelter 7

This is the empty and amenity-free shelter.  It's the furthest from the road of these four, and has much more seating than shelters 4 or 5; that seems to be a criterion for price, which here is $185 per day.  So in the extremely improbable case that a homeless person looking for a place to sit by day were somewhere near this shelter, it might be a reasonable place to try.  Of course, in the intervening month and a half, it could have passed into some sort of use.

These four shelters are those of northwest Lower Woodland Park, and are easiest reached from West Green Lake Way.  A gravel path connects the area with that where shelters 1-3 are, but the usual entrance for those southwestern shelters is off 50th St onto a loop called Woodland Ave.  Shelters 2 and 3 are on the more obvious branch of that loop, from which I didn't see shelter 1 at all; shelter 1's branch of the loop is east of there.

The parks department rents each of the three out, in normal years, for $135 per day.  All three are nearest the southwestern restrooms, year-round ("50th St" in last year's list) and 24-hour this past summer while the gates were closed.

Shelter 2

My first reaction to this shelter's layout was that it was clearly one person's place, but now I'm not so sure; judge for yourself.

(Note the absence of bed and bedding, in particular; also the desk is too bare to bother setting up unless it were to be shared, maybe.)

Shelter 1

This time I wasn't any more sure then than I am now.

My guess was, shared; but I didn't rule out a single occupant, and am not now sure it wasn't vacant.  This is the most isolated of the southwestern shelters, as 7 is of the northwestern.

Shelter 3

I found this, um, shared, but not the way shelters 4 and 5 are.

In case you can't see the photo clearly, two tents occupy most of the shelter's area.

Which is a selfishly dispiriting end to this tour, isn't it, dear Diary?  I'm sorry.  For what it's worth, near as I can tell, none of the remaining shelters of North Seattle, covered in the next and final page of this set, were inhabited, when I visited, by people either communal-minded or selfish.