Please inform any reader of this part who really loves A.B. Ernst Park, and who is reading before sunset on April 2nd, that they should stop reading right now and go make some last memories in the park they love. Because on April 3rd, trees are going to start being taken out.
So at this point, your readers, dear Diary, are either people who don't love that park, or are reading after sunset, right?
This reminds me that I don't know, and haven't known for a long time, who reads you, dear Diary. Strictly speaking, I don't even know that anyone reads you; for all I know, the numbers I see are all artificial intelligences being trained. But even if that's not so, I mustn't assume any baseline level of familiarity with the work I've done with your excellent help.
So. Dear Diary, you are a blog about public amenities, and especially about public restrooms whose doors open to the outside, and public water fountains that are outside. Most of these things are in parks, and because variety is the spice of life, sometimes, as now, I just do some park appreciation without talking about plumbing at all. The area we've focused on is the northern part, a sort of peninsula, of the City of Seattle, in a northern border state of the United States.
At one of the peninsula's southern tips, towards the middle east-west, is a neighbourhood called Fremont that likes to call itself the centre of the universe. Parts of Fremont and its more staid eastern neighbour Wallingford are pretty hilly, and possibly as a result, three of their parks have as their raisons d'etre that they allow people to traverse those hills.
The Wallingford Steps are the flashy sibling, made of concrete but with spectacular artistic adornment, plus, yes, some plants. They're the most successful as stairs, too, linking N 34th St with N Northlake Way, and, across that perilous street, with Gas Works Park and the Burke-Gilman Trail.
Troll's Knoll Park is the plain, friendly sibling; challenged to praise it, Seattle Parks calls it "sustainable". It connects N 36th St with N 38th St adjacent to Aurora Ave N. Just east of its bottom is the Fremont Troll; at its top is the Troll's Knoll P-Patch.
But A. B. Ernst Park almost ignores its stairs, which unimpressively go from N 35th St to the next alley south. Instead it focuses on being a quite beautiful park, one worth spending time in.
But tomorrow, motivated mainly by access and activation, Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation will start changing A. B. Ernst Park. I would be pretty shocked if the result of the changes isn't loved, by some, within a year or three - Seattle Parks generally knows what it's doing. But that doesn't mean I can't celebrate the old version.
I learnt on my second recent visit that what I see as this park's signature element is not what everyone sees. I went across the street and discovered that what drivers see is mostly a couple of giant street trees. But if, like me, you walk west from the Fremont branch library (soon to close itself for construction), there's no doubt at all that A. B. Ernst Park is mainly about these spectacular pillar-like trees.
These are arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis). Another species that's prominent in the park is bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). And how, you may ask, dear Diary, do I know these things, having never displayed any botanical knowledge before? Alas, this is how:
There are many signs like that attached to specific trees; there are also quite a few on the ground. Other trees bear different symbols:
Well, as I mentioned not too long ago, dear Diary, I'm having technical difficulties. Let me describe the planned work, and then close with two more photos.
Most people, I think, understand this park as a winding path with a weird structure in the middle, sort of a crude theatre. The occasion for the work is that Parks acquired a bit of land east of the park. So they're moving the path eastward, and widening it, because even though the park's current page says it "provides wheelchair access", paths can never be too wide when considering Access.
And then they're giving the space thus created at the west end of the park to Activation. A picnic table will be where the park entrance now is, and south of the table will be an "embankment slide" with "hillside loops". That area will rejoin the main path at the head of the stairs.
If I'm reading the plans right, it's a goal to keep the theatre-like area, and the artwork that surrounds it (Water Mover by Jenny Heishman) more or less intact. But they're planning to remove half of the arborvitae, so I expect it to be a long time before the park feels right to me.
Well, dear Diary, writing this part in you on my phone has been horribly time-consuming, so I'm going to have to find a better way soon. Until then, happy days and nights. The first photo below shows arborvitae, theatre and Water Mover, while the second shows the stairs at the bottom of the park.
It's been a long time, hasn't it? Some things have changed in Blogspot, and I'm not sure how I'll deal with those going forward, but anyway, that's why the photo in this page is so huge.
I went on a long hike today, and my path took me through Peace Park. It seemed weirdly deserted and non-descript, just a rather dry lawn with some unobtrusive interruptions. For what seemed like minutes I couldn't find the park sign, and wondered if it had been taken down. Not so, but the only thing it brags about is the sculpture "Sadako and the Thousand Cranes", and that sculpture is still achingly absent.
But people remember it:
I'm sure I haven't read everything that's been said about the violent theft of that sculpture, but in what I have read, I've seen nothing about any possibility of replacing it. Seems to me that the alternative is to tar ourselves with the guilt of the thief, to say we aren't good enough for a statue like that any more. Anyway, I think this possibility of a new sculpture should at least be raised, and, if possible, handed for a decision to the people who left all those flowers, or people who remember how to make origami cranes, or like that.
Good night, dear Diary. I'm still not sure when we'll meet again.
Next in seniority to streetcar coverage of some of the route 20, in 1908, is bus coverage of most of the route 73, by 1965, among the areas losing bus stops. (Blanchard's Street Railway Era in Seattle, page 114, says streetcar service along 15th Ave NE reached NE 80th St sometime between 1912 and 1925, but the route 73 currently has no bus stops that far south on 15th.) Also, I want to talk a little more about the Northwest Puppet Center. So let's start, shall we?
[Updated on September 23 with corrected competing bus route number and a note on dubious stops.]
All of the route 73 stops being closed are either on 15th Ave NE, or are shared with the route 322, and are covered under that route instead. So no need for street headings this time.
I followed this route Saturday evening, and then went back today because I'd found that I'd made two mistakes - missing one stop, and mis-identifying another stop on Open Street Map. So I had to go back over half the distance.
Again, links in the lists below go to my Google Drive, to photos of each stop.
Stop #39190, just north of NE Northgate Way. Not far south of this, on the same side of the street, is the mural of the cat that I showed you, dear Diary, in part I of this page.
Stop #39120, just north of NE 90th Street. This is the closest northbound stop to the NW Puppet Center, which is two blocks north and across the street.
Stop #39100, north of NE 85th Street, a block from Maple Leaf Reservoir Park, and across the street from Waldo Woods.
I was going to say that none of these have any amenities except pavement, but then noticed that my photo of stop #39100 appears to show the top of a trash can attached to the pole:
So I dunno.
Southbound, seven much more interesting stops:
Stop #38950, north of NE 115th Street. Has all the amenities.
Stop #38970, just south of NE Northgate Way. Has a shelter with art and a bench. The art may or may not be the best art on these shelters, but anyway this photo is the best one I took of these shelters.
Stop #38990, south of NE 104th Street. Has a shelter and a trash can.
Stop #39010, just south of NE 98th Street. Has a shelter with art and a bench:
Stop #39030, just south of NE 94th Street. Has all the amenities. This is the nearest stop in this direction to the Puppet Center, which is a block to the south.
Stop #39050, south of NE 89th Street. Has a shelter.
Stop #39070, south of NE 82nd Street. Has a shelter with a bench and a trash can. Maple Leaf Reservoir Park is a block west, although the route 67 stop at NE 85th Street is closer to the park.
I noticed today that some shelters I saw as not having art actually have it facing the street, away from the sidewalk. The way I see it, that location makes the art available to drivers (including bus drivers) and passengers (including bus passengers), but not with any safety to pedestrians (including people waiting for the bus). So I'm not sure it's a real amenity of a bus stop in the sense I'm using that word.
Anyway, Northwest Puppet Center! I'd already looked up its bare-bones Web page, and noticed that that page describes as current an exhibit that, the same page says, closed in May. So I got curious: was it out of operation? And today I went up the steps to the entrance. Where I was gobsmacked to find, of all things, a small playground.
Now, Maple Leaf Hill is seriously under-parked, and certainly under-playgrounded in particular, but I didn't see any kids there. Anyway, I looked at the door, where a sign announces a new exhibit in October:
So this left me curious. Is this a private house that's also a museum? Or is it really a public place where, for example, parents could bring small children to the playground? A significant element is the "Carter Family Puppet Theater"; do the Carter family live there?
Not according to the King County Assessor. But there's also an e-mail address on the bare-bones Web page, so careful parents can check for themselves.
The page's only other link is to the "World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts". Sadly, this site doesn't return the favour:
You'll have noticed, dear Diary, that I've changed all the parts' titles. Not until I was reasonably sure I had a complete list could I really count the stops closing, but I think the number now used is the final number. The count of 77 excludes stop #17170 on the route 20, which [has been] acquired by the route 62, and stop #28680 on the route 28, which is already in use by the route D. [In both cases I've now caught the relevant bus at the relevant stop.] That count includes stop #23594 on the route 322, whose rider alert sign claims future service by the route 79, and stop #17570 on the route 20, whose rider alert sign claims future service by the route 45; neither of those buses currently serve or even pass those stops, and their promised schedules show no route changes enabling them to start doing so.
The stops will no longer be served by
any buses as of September 14, which is this Saturday. I have no idea
how many people Metro devotes to stop demolition, so I can't begin to
guess how long it'll take them to remove the physical stop elements. However, most rider alert signs whose bottoms I photographed bear a note saying "Remove 10/1/24". This implies that at least the poles the signs are mostly attached to will stay around that long, and perhaps other physical elements as well.
One of my purposes in writing this page was to notify people of these stop closures in time that anyone who might have an emotional attachment of some kind to a particular stop - most obviously, who might have experienced a proposal there - could have a chance to visit it again. Obviously the closer we get to September 14, let alone if I fail to get those parts written until later than that, the less likely that is. But then, I'm not seeing much reason to think they could find out about the closures from you anyway, dear Diary, so few people seem to be reading this page. Ah well.
Before I remembered the removal date, I still hoped to get part VII, about the route 28, written in you
tonight, dear Diary, and part VIII, about the route 322, is relatively
short, so maybe that too. But there are other things I spend my time on, so now that I have remembered it, I'll do those things instead. A good night, dear Diary; we'll probably meet again tomorrow.
I normally introduce you as being about "public amenities". Although my main focus is running water for homeless people, and parks and libraries both supply running water to homeless people, I've written in you about parks that don't supply running water - in fact, am documenting my current water fountain hikes with pages titled after such parks. Well, buses don't supply running water either, and although a bus helped enormously when I desperately needed running water Saturday morning, that would've been a much trickier negotiation indeed if I'd been pushing a cart, as I did in my last years of homelessness to date. But buses are public amenities. And considering that two of your first pages, currently enjoying a surprising surge in popularity, are subtitled "Things We've Lost", I don't think talking about things we're about to lose, specifically a whole lot of bus stops, is all that out of place here.
Another thing to consider: dear Diary, you probably aren't familiar with much of the terminology this series will draw on. Please do what I assume you've already done with other terminology I've written in you, and look it up in English Wikipedia and other such sites that I assume you're on good terms with. I don't think any humans who might read your pages will find any unfamiliar words; I'm sorry, though, to have to assign you what amounts to homework so you can understand what you're telling those people.
Yet another thing to consider: I've been working on this series for weeks, and one of the first things I learned is that the upcoming cuts to bus service in North Seattle are the biggest since bus service here began. It's not a trivial story, and I've been surprised that nobody else is talking about it, content to settle for the razzle-dazzle of new light rail stops instead. But today I decided to do some comparisons, and found that West Seattle, of all places (it's nowhere near present light rail), has seen similar cuts in the past decade. (Key route numbers: 35, 37.) It looks like North Seattle is simply late to the bus-stop demolition party, and maybe that's why nobody thinks it's worth talking about.
Let's start with that: routes and bus stops.
Bus routes and bus stops
Perhaps the first time I noticed Erica C. Barnett, now of PubliCola, as a writer, was a story she wrote for The Stranger in 2009, complaining that King County Metro, which runs the local buses around here, was privileging emotional appeals over data, more or less. I think my life story is actually an excellent illustration of problems with technocracy, but I'm still enough a man of my generation to find great emotional appeal in ideas like "data-driven". So one thing in particular stuck with me about that story, her hostility to "squeaky wheel"s. So I don't want to be one here.
The thing is, though, that I'd already internalised, from living where I now do, a core difference between bus routes and bus stops. Let's say that a travel route in general is defined by where it stops, in what order. Buses' routes are relatively inflexible as travel routes go - certainly less flexible than my hikes, for example. But actually, this can vary. King County Metro currently operates two services, Dial-A-Ride Transit (DART), and an app-based taxi service (Flex), both of which offer more flexibility than Metro's standard buses. Still, the buses of concern to me in my daily life are pretty inflexible.
So it's possible for me to turn that definition around: Bus routes are defined by which bus stops they visit, in which order. Bus stops are the points of departure and of arrival, the starts and destinations, and routes are simply ways to connect them. Bus stops don't have their own romance, but Bus Stop is a romance, albeit one now troubling, while Busman's Honeymoon is a murder mystery. Railfans are right about this much: there's no such thing as a busfan. But bus stops, as gates of entry to transit systems whose limits are only hazily known to most of their users, have a minimal degree of mystery that partly makes up for their prosaic components and even more prosaic usual uses.
Concretely, I started this, more or less, with history, because I've already lived here long enough to know some of that history. And it turns out that routes are much more flexible than bus stops, as one might expect, since the physicality of bus stops is much more, um, concrete, than that of bus routes. The route currently numbered 5, the Greenwood bus, has borne that number since the early 1940s, but the route itself is decades older, built for streetcars in 1906 to 1909. On the other hand, the route I live near has only had its number for three years, a shorter time than I've lived near it, but there have been stops near where I now live for at least ninety years. This kind of thing isn't at all atypical.
Anyway, I've spent the last few days mostly photographing bus stops that will soon vanish. They deserve that much.
However, the next part is about the routes being deleted or cut, because they're how I found out where to look for those bus stops. Happy minutes, I hope, until I can write that part in you, dear Diary.
My next hike included three Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation parks, and three other sites which I hope you'll find interesting. This hike was on various parts of Maple Leaf Hill, the biggest and tallest straightforward hill in North Seattle. A map:
As you can see, dear Diary, Open Street Map shows plenty of woods in this area too that I wanted to explore that day, but I was running out of time, and it'll have to wait.
Sacajawea Playground
This is the only "Playground" in North Seattle that lacks actual playground equipment, which is at the school next door. It's basically a lawn with one big tree in the low middle, with woods on the uplands to east and west. I've shown you pictures before, dear Diary, and there were other people there, so I settled for a couple of transverse landscapes to demonstrate that no water fountain has arrived here:
Alley at 9012 12th Ave NE
This is an 896 square foot property that I couldn't quite identify, because there are two candidates. See, there actually is an alley on the block in question, a neat and tidy place that I'm not good enough at estimating distances to assess against the stated size. A photo:
However, there's also a weird little messy space between the hedges of two houses along 90th, and that space is more consistent with the address given, for whatever that's worth. Just as I think the real alley might be too big, I think this space might be too small, but it also might not be. A picture:
Anyway, at least one of these is city property, perhaps both.
Waldo Woods
I introduced this newer park to you relatively late, dear Diary, in "The Kingdom of the Winds" last November. It's a conservation easement, in other words, a deal with a private land-owner to protect a large stand of Douglas firs. The owner, Aegis Living, built a fence, but made a bay in it which allows public access to both one double-trunk fir (now busily spreading saplings) and an Aegis Living sign:
Maple Leaf Reservoir Park
This is the major park of Maple Leaf Hill, and so it has restrooms and a water fountain. I had by that point needed restrooms, though only for Number One, for several hours, so it was deeply disappointing to arrive only to find this:
However, a woman approached me after I'd taken two shots of each door - the first without the newspaper - and mentioned that a parks employee had just locked them. She and I talked for some time about you, dear Diary, about her complaints to the city that the restrooms closed too early, about the restrooms' history with fire, about my observations of this park's defenses against the homeless, and so forth. After all that I really didn't have time to wander around the park, so I confined my attention to the water fountain, a double one that hasn't run since I first visited the park:
And then wandered around the park anyway, because it turned out my last two sites were in it:
Maple Leaf Reservoir
The park is the biggest of three parks in north Seattle built on reservoir land, the other two being Bitter Lake Reservoir Open Space, and Froula Playground, neither of which have plumbing of their own, so I haven't visited them as often. But I knew from previous visits to Maple Leaf that most of the Seattle Public Utilities buildings that remain are dreary-looking and closed to the public:
However, this time I was specifically looking for the reservoir, and found this, which is actually in the background of a picture I've shown you before, dear Diary:
Northeast Radio Towers
I actually left the park looking for this, but it turned out to be adjacent to the water tower. Duh.
Maple Leaf Reservoir Park Again
I went back yesterday, Saturday, morning, assuming I'd find the restrooms open and be able to ignore the photos from Wednesday of them shut.
It didn't quite work out that way.
A photo of the front page:
The restrooms:
These photos were taken at 10:16 A.M., and the park was crowded.
I'm used to the idea that during this epidemic, homeless people should just fast all Sunday because the already unreliable park restrooms become deeply unreliable, but now Saturdays too? I'd visited three publicly managed and six privately managed park restrooms in this region. The private ones, all at Jackson Park, had all been open; the public ones, at Little Brook and Maple Leaf Reservoir Parks, had all been closed, on two occasions each. Is our city government really this incompetent after all?
That said, I didn't make any decisions on the spot, and one of my errands in this park was to photograph some of its neat stuff. A garden there is named after a child who died, and he seems to have been a butterfly fan, so there are butterflies all around the playground. Some examples:
I particularly like the use of butterflies to lighten up one of those dour SPU buildings:
Well, dear Diary, I may have time for one more page of park appreciation tonight, but although I have now made some decisions, I probably don't have time to tell you about the change of direction after that.
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.
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.
