Weather Information Sources in North Seattle

Dear Diary,

Because my financial situation is becoming exigent, I don't know how long it'll take me to finish the time-consuming work on part VI of "Public Library Hours, Autumn 2023", or that on part II of "Institutional Libraries Long Closed to the Public".  And I don't know when I can get back to hiking, either.

Also, it looks like hiking may still be necessary.  As I told you eight days ago, dear Diary, I found two water fountains not running when I recently re-visited the parks with which we started:  the one in "lower" Ravenna Park, and the one near the tennis courts in Laurelhurst Playfield.  I reported the Ravenna one using the method preferred by the Public Restroom/Drinking Fountain Dashboard, Seattle's "Find It Fix It" mobile phone application, and told only you, dear Diary, about the Laurelhurst one.  Today both are shown as running:

Now, it may be that they really are running, that the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation's people were already aware of them at the time and fixed them the next day.  But the only way to verify that they're running now is, of course, to hike.  There will, however, be no newspaper in tomorrow's photos.

That said, what prompted me to start writing in you this morning, dear Diary, is something else entirely.  For nearly two months now, one of the three weather records sites I visit daily has been out of commission.  Now, by "weather records" I mean not all-time records, but rather records of routine events, specifically daily low temperatures.  As I think I've already told you, dear Diary, I check three of them most days:

• The theoretically every minute record maintained by the University of Washington Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
• The usually every five minutes record maintained by the US Federal Aviation Administration from Boeing Field.
• And the formerly every hour record maintained by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration a few blocks from Atmospheric Sciences, on the shore of Portage Bay.

Well, without a third, I lack any way of settling arguments.  For the past couple of weeks, Boeing Field has been reporting much lower low temperatures than UW.  Not that they necessarily have to report the same low, but they haven't done that once since October 3.  Is this a geographical difference, or is it a problem with either thermometer, or what?

Contents of this page:

• The problem
• Weather stations in North Seattle
• So who's right?
• Weather forecasts offered by NOAA

The problem

I should mention two idiosyncracies I have, compared to normal weather reports.  First, I call the low the lowest reading between highs, regardless of what time it is.  This presents problems when the temperature rises or falls steadily for more than 24 hours, which sometimes does happen, so most weather reporters instead state the low for a definite period such as "last night".  Second, I only need one reading at some temperature to call that the low temperature; UW, at least, seems to need more than one, while the Weather Service page for Boeing Field for a long time ignored its five-minute readings completely, counting only its hourly readings at XX:53.  With that said, let's get started:

Date	UW	Boeing	Difference
10/3/2023	54	54	0
10/4/2023	56	53	3
10/5/2023	56	55	1
10/6/2023	53	52	1
10/7/2023	55	48	7
10/8/2023	57	54	3
10/9/2023	59	55	4
10/10/2023	54	50	4
10/11/2023	52	48	4
10/12/2023	51	50	1
10/13/2023	53	48	5
10/14/2023	57	54	3
10/15/2023	58	54	4
10/16/2023	56	50	6
10/17/2023	53	48	5
10/18/2023	55	48	7
10/19/2023	57	50	7
10/20/2023	57	55	2
10/21/2023	54	53	1
10/22/2023	53	52	1
10/23/2023	51	45	6
10/24/2023	47	45	2
10/25/2023	44	42	2
10/26/2023	42	36	6
10/27/2023	38	30	8
10/28/2023	36	28	8
10/29/2023	37	27	10
10/30/2023	41	32	9
10/31/2023	40	30	10
11/1/2023	45	37	8

So has Boeing Field really been eight or more degrees colder than UW almost every night for the past week, or hasn't it?  If it has, will this ever end?  And if it hasn't, which one is wrong?

Well, dear Diary, less than a year ago, I announced a new project:  "Counties of Western Washington", and you haven't heard much about it since.  I haven't abandoned it, but haven't worked on it much recently.  However, in the course of researching the first county to be covered, I learned a lot, and one thing I learned was how to find weather stations, at least those known to NOAA.

In the county I was researching, at that time, several stations showed a pattern I'd already seen in NOAA's UW site's temperature records:  abrupt 8°  to 11°  changes of temperature, first downward, then upward, in its hourly record.  I call these "swoops".

The fundamental tool is a map.  Zoom in on it and, one by one as the zoom factor increases, additional stations are revealed.  Click on the stations and a box pops up showing current information and linking to 3 or 7 days' worth of records.  I'm tolerably sure there are at least fourteen stations in North Seattle, not counting either one at UW.  Shall we meet them, dear Diary?  My concerns are location, what each site records, and whether I see swoops in the past week's information.

I also got curious about ownership, but near as I can tell, I'm not going to learn much.  That's because most of these stations belong to something called the Citizen Weather Observer Program, or CWOP.  This is a public-private partnership, that is, private individuals (or perhaps organisations such as businesses, schools, or non-profits) provide information, and a public agency, the Weather Service, publishes it.  Since I have no idea how much longer I'll have to do without the NOAA station at UW, I have an interest in not upsetting the privacy of the citizens who provide that information.

So what I provide below is location in terms of the nearest intersection of collector or larger streets.  Also what each site records, but the default is temperature, humidity and wind at quarter-hour intervals, with no swoops.  One site doesn't do wind; many report more often than quarter hours; none have swoops.

Weather stations in North Seattle

N130th Seattle

This station is owned by the Washington Department of Transportation and is near the intersection of 5th Ave NE and Roosevelt Way NE, actually near or on I-5.  It records the default plus road temperature.

K7SSW Seattle

A CWOP station well west of Greenwood Ave N and N 125th St.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation.

DW8513 Seattle

A CWOP station near 15th Ave NW and NW 100th St.  It records the default plus pressure and precipitation.

EW6795 Seattle

A CWOP station near Sand Point Way NE and NE 95th St.  It records the default plus pressure and precipitation every five minutes.

CW3683 Seattle

A CWOP station north of Roosevelt Way NE and NE 92nd St.  It records the default plus pressure and precipitation every ten minutes.

FW0821 Seattle

A CWOP station north of Aurora Ave N and N 95th St.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation every ten minutes.

FW8372 Seattle

A CWOP station near 15th Ave NW and Holman Road NW.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation every five minutes.

CW6259 Seattle

A CWOP station south of Roosevelt Way NE and NE 92nd St.  It records the default plus pressure and precipitation every five minutes.

CW1943 Seattle

A CWOP station near 35th Ave NE and NE 65th St.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation.

EW9877 Seattle

A CWOP station near Sand Point Way NE and NE 65th St.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation every ten minutes.

KG7QQL Seattle

A CWOP station near 32nd Ave NW and NW 65th St.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation every five minutes.

FW6603 Seattle

A CWOP station north of Meridian Ave N and N 50th St.  It records the default, minus wind, but plus pressure and precipitation, every five minutes.

N7TUG-8 Seattle

A CWOP station near NW Market St and NW 54th St.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation, at irregular intervals; my impression is that they vary between two and fifteen minutes.

GW1230 Seattle

A CWOP station near Aurora Ave N and N 40th St.  It records the default plus pressure, solar radiation and precipitation, every five minutes.

So who's right?

Let's look at two tables, dear Diary.  The first shows UW's lows and those of the nearest stations to the northeast (CW1943 Seattle), northwest (FW6603 Seattle), west (GW1230 Seattle) and south (GW1416 Seattle, near 24th Ave E and Boyer Ave E).  Anyway, let's look:

Date	UW	Northeast	Northwest	West	South	Boeing
10/26/2023	42	36	37	34	38	36
10/27/2023	38	33	33	36	36	30
10/28/2023	36	30	33	32	33	28
10/29/2023	37	32	34	35	34	27
10/30/2023	41	37	34	39	38	32
10/31/2023	40	35	35	37	38	30
11/01/2023	45	41	40	43	43	37

So will you look at that, dear Diary?  UW had the highest low for each day of that week among these sites, and Boeing Field had the lowest for six days out of seven.  Could they both be wrong?  Let's look at the other table before deciding. This one features stations  north (Seattle-Beacon Hill, AirNow), northwest (Seattle-Duwamish, AirNow, swooped today), west (FW7103 Seattle, CWOP) and southwest (FW7437 Seattle, CWOP) of the station I've been following for years.  So they cover less of the circle around Boeing Field; they're also considerably farther from the station at Boeing Field than the ones in the previous table are from UW's Atmospheric Sciences building.  But let's see what they say.

Date	Boeing	North	Northwest	West	Southwest	UW
10/26/2023	36	40	42	40	35	42
10/27/2023	30	37	38	36	33	38
10/28/2023	28	34	35	34	28	36
10/29/2023	27	35	35	34	31	37
10/30/2023	32	38	38	37	34	41
10/31/2023	30	39	39	39	33	40
11/01/2023	37	43	44	43	38	45

Well, hully gee!  Similar pattern!

What we know, dear Diary, is that while the federal sites have both long gotten colder readings than UW, this pattern of extreme differences between the UW, traditionally highest of the three I've long followed, and Boeing Field, traditionally in the middle, is relatively new.

And you know what, dear Diary?  I'm really tired today of fighting Blogspot every time I put a table in here.  So I've just uploaded the current state of my spreadsheet into Google Drive (134 KB .ods file).  The same dates as the past week last year were messed up by the complicated series of omissions I told you about when I told you, dear Diary, about the three sites I normally follow.  But the spreadsheet includes those dates for 2021, 2020 and 2019 as well, and while differences between UW and Boeing consistently rise during this season, in the past those rises were from 0 to 2 degrees to 3 or 4 degrees.  Not to 8 to 10 degrees.

So maybe there is a newly arising weather-related reason why Boeing Field should be so much colder at night than the UW.  But that hypothesis doesn't account for the fact that the area around Boeing Field, and that around the UW, seem to be much more similar in nightly lows than Boeing Field and the UW themselves.  So here are some other potential reasons:

• Could it be because of the quality control procedures the CWOP home page boasts about?  No, because two stations in the second table aren't CWOP stations.
• OK, so could it be because everyone except the UW and the FAA use the same brand of weather equipment?  Possible, but doesn't explain why this difference only appeared over the past month or two.  (Also, the FAA station at SeaTac Airport is between Boeing Field and UW too. [1])
• Could the UW and FAA have made an agreement that every user of either site should consult both and split the difference?  Maybe, but I'm a leftist, and we don't approve of conspiracy theories this decade.
• Could both the UW's and the FAA's thermometers have gone out of whack recently?  That's my notion.  But real meteorologists have programs that can agglomerate all the observations, not just those nearest the two subject sites, and then run real statistical analyses of those observations.  So my goal is just to point out that the difference exists, and let them work out what it is.

That accomplished, this page's title promised "weather information", not just "weather records".  Most people care more about the forecast than about the past; in fact, I started tracking low temperatures mainly as a tool to evaluate forecasts.  So what about those?

[1] Stupid me, I started this page thinking I track a NOAA site at SeaTac.  So the first version of the second table in this section was centred on SeaTac and included the actual FAA station there as one neighbouring my imagined NOAA station there.

Weather forecasts offered by NOAA

The Weather Service likes to present its forecasts as carefully numerically modulated, a smooth mathematical surface, so to speak; if I go to the Seattle office's page and hit "Forecasts", then "Local Area", what I get is a page that invites longitude and latitude numbers with many digits.  But I doubt very much that it has either the manpower or the computer power to present so very many reliable forecasts that take full account of topography, for example separate forecasts for the top and the bottom of Golden Gardens Park.  So my preference is to find forecasts that claim to be for a specific place rather than for some offset from a specific place, and do my own modulating.  However, the Weather Service is enough invested in its claim to have superpowers that it doesn't offer a list or map of the places it writes real forecasts for.  So the question is how to find them.

The most precise tool the Weather Service offers for finding its forecasts varies depending on the situation.  Specifically, then, Seattle is big enough to resemble a rural area with regard to precision, so the ZIP code is the best choice.   This map says we have nine ZIP codes in North Seattle.  The layout:

Northwest	North	Northeast
98177	98133	98125
98117	98103	98115
98107	98103 again	98105 and 98195

The east-west dividing lines appear to be around 100th St and mostly around 65th St (except where I live); the north-south ones appear to me to be by address, the way I used to divide up the parks, NW, N or NE.  Note, dear Diary, that 98133 continues north well into Shoreline, and 98177 continues north even beyond Shoreline.

Here, in numerical order, are the forecasts I get when I put the ZIP code into the search box at weather.gov:

• 98103 leads to "2 Miles W Seattle-University WA".
• 98105, 98115 and 98195 all lead to "Seattle-University WA".
• 98107 and 98117 both lead to "Seattle-Ballard WA".
• 98125 leads to "2 Miles ENE North Seattle WA".
• 98133 leads to "Shoreline WA".
• 98177 leads to "2 Miles WNW Shoreline WA".

For all these ZIP codes, the observation station, whose current readings are cited and to whose recent readings there's a link, is one in Lake Forest Park that doesn't do anything for about an hour each morning.  It's a CWOP station, so why don't they link instead to one of the better CWOP stations within North Seattle, at least for the southern North Seattle ZIP codes?

Anyway, I tried typing in those names, but didn't get good results.  So basically, dear Diary, the most reliable search term with which to get to a forecast for the U-District is 98105; for Ballard, 98107; for "North Seattle", turns out, Northacres Park.  (Or Green Lake.)  These three may be all the locations in North Seattle that get real forecasts, or there may be more; I don't know; but ZIP code searches and similar strategies are how I try to identify such locations in general.

All for tonight, dear Diary.  Now I'm going to go see if I can get myself to work any more today on Cowlitz County's population, and bid you happy nights and days until we meet again.

 

Hikes 0 to 7: All Night Long

Dear Diary,

This page's title isn't entirely true.  I didn't reach View Ridge Playfield on hike 1, although I'd tried.  I made no attempt to visit any park I suspected of having 24-hour restrooms on hike 6.  But all the rest, yes.  To a first approximation, my life in mid-January revolved around learning the hours of the restrooms in Green Lake and Woodland Parks, in particular.

Hike 0, January 1

View Ridge Playfield's restrooms were open around midnight.  Photos in "Hike 2A" January 8.

Hike 2, January 6

I visited View Ridge Playfield by day.  Lots of photos in the page already mentioned.

Hike 3, January 9

I spent much of the day in Woodland and Green Lake Parks, as detailed January 24 in "Hike 3A" and January 25 in "3B" respectively.  Then I visited the Greenwood parks (Hike 3C, January 25) before going up to Bitter Lake Playfield (whose restrooms were reputedly 24 hours last summer; hike 3D, March 14).  Then headed back to Green Lake Park, in a hurry to find an open restroom.  I meant to visit all that park's and Woodland Park's restrooms that night but got too sleepy.

It may be helpful in reading this page to refer to these maps.  Green Lake Park:

"Shellhouse" is the Small Craft Center.  "65th St" is near that bend in the shore most of the way from the Small Craft Center to the Community Center.  "Wading pool" is at the north end; "Community Center" and "Bathhouse" are as mapped.

For Woodland Park, I can't find maps showing the lower, eastern, restrooms, which are "Rio" in the Citywide Athletics building near N 52nd St, and "Cloverleaf" north of there in the middle of the four Leo Lassen Fields, the cloverleaf, near N Clogston Way.  For the western part of Lower Woodland Park, see this PDF map for "50th St".  For "Pink Palace" see this other PDF map; that map unaccountably omits the "lawn bowling" restrooms, but they're where all the other lawn bowling stuff is.

Hike 4, January 10

I woke up around 4:30 A.M. and toured the restrooms between 5 and 7 A.M.  The earlier results, for Green Lake Park, probably represent actual night status, but the Woodland Park results got closer and closer to regular opening times.  Anyway, the "wading pool" and "Bathhouse" restrooms in Green Lake Park were closed, as were the "lawn bowling" ones in Woodland Park.  The "Shellhouse" and "65th St" restrooms in Green Lake Park, and "Pink Palace" and "50th St" (last check, practically at 7 A.M.) in Woodland Park, were open.  The doors of the Green Lake Community Center's restrooms were flung open too.  I didn't check "Rio" or "Cloverleaf".

My paper notes on this and the next are retrospective because it was raining.  After that, they're contemporary, from my phone.

I'd told Rachel Schulkin of the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation that I'd be there around then, and the theatrically open doors at the Community Center gave me the suspicion, probably made more plausible by my lack of sleep, that all the open doors I'd seen were a show for my benefit.  This is one reason I visited those two parks repeatedly.

Another is that I didn't believe the schedules offered by the map I was checking.  One pair of restrooms in Green Lake Park was supposed to be 24 hours; three were supposed to close at 7 P.M.; and one, the "wading pool" ones, was supposed to close at 8:30 P.M.  At Woodland Park, "Rio" and "lawn bowling" were supposed to be closed, "Pink Palace" and "50th St" to close at 7 P.M., and "Cloverleaf" to close at dusk.  So whoever closed each park would have to visit twice.  This made no sense to me.

But it was morning, too late to work on these things for hours to come, so I set off on the hikes recounted in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part I, February 7, "Hike 4B" February 8, and "Escaping Carkeek Park" and "Hike 5A" February 13.  Note that the night I spent in Carkeek Park January 10-11, between hikes 4 and 5, gave me the idea that Carkeek Park's restrooms were 24 hours.

Hike 5, January 11

I already told you the story of this night, dear Diary, February 16 in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part II.  Remember that the Community Center's restrooms, with those invitingly wide-open doors, turned out not to have running water that night.

Elsewhere, between roughly 10 P.M. and midnight, "65th St", "lawn bowling", and "50th St" were open, "Cloverleaf", "Bathhouse" and "Shellhouse" were closed, and "Pink Palace" had one restroom each open and closed.  I didn't find the "wading pool" restrooms and didn't try to visit "Rio".

After this came the motel stay ("Fear of Rain" February 17 and "How to Lie to the Homeless", part I, February 18) and hike 6 ("Hikes 3C and 6A", January 25, and "Hikes 3D and 6B" and "Hike 6C", both March 14).

Hike 7, January 17

I arrived in Woodland Park around 5 P.M. and stayed over six hours.

"Rio", which had been posted as closed due to vandalism, was indeed closed at 5:05 P.M.  "Cloverleaf" restrooms were closed at 5:10.  Remember that those were (still are) presented as open dawn to dusk; sunset that day was at 4:48 P.M.  In Green Lake Park, "Shellhouse" restrooms were open at 5:22, "65th St" at 5:38, Community Center, with cold water running, at 5:49, "wading pool" at 6:03.  I didn't note my arrival at the "Bathhouse" restrooms, but meant to stay until they were closed, because they were the only ones in that park I was confident would be closed.

This turned into a three hour wait.  Finally at 9 P.M. drove up, not a parks department staffer, but a man from the private security firm Phoenix Patrol.  I'd only encountered this company in one place before, also a park; each of the few times I slept at Laurelhurst Playfield, a Phoenix Patrol staffer had driven up in the wee hours, unlocked both the single-user stalls, verified they were unoccupied, sometimes used one, locked them again, and drove off.  This exercise in security theatre hadn't much impressed me, but at Green Lake apparently they'd graduated from checking on the maintenance workers to replacing them.

I waited over half an hour more to give the guy time to finish, then went back through Green Lake Park, and on to upper Lower Woodland Park.  The "wading pool" restrooms were open at 10:00 P.M., "Community Center" closed at 10:18, "65th St" open at 10:31.  Then I got worried about having my phone visible.  The "Shellhouse" rooms were closed, sometime before 10:56.  "Pink Palace" was open close to 11 P.M., "lawn bowling" closed at 11:06, and "50th St" open at around 11:15.

From there I went "home" at least as far as the UW campus, maybe even to my formerly usual Laurelhurst doorway.  I think this page has already gotten long enough, dear Diary, and I'll have to tell you the rest of the story in later pages.  Good night!

Fear of Rain

Dear Diary,

The last page left the story thus:  I had arrived at the Travelodge on Aurora in a terrible physical and mental state, with the phone on which I'm writing now so messed up that I was afraid even to shut it down, with much of what I was carrying, and pushing in my cart, soaked.

As I said in that page, I checked out of that motel two days - about 57 hours - later.

I did basically three things during that time.  I continued to live - to go get food, to drink water, etc.  I dried things out.  And I did what I could, obviously much more once this phone dried out, to work on you, dear Diary.

In you, I've written of fear of rain before.  I just re-read every page in you from November 1 on, and I referred to it November 18 in "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford", then discussed it at some length the next day in the introduction to "Standing Room Only".

More recently, though, on January 3 in "Hike 1A:  Inconvenients" part I, I treated it as a psychological problem, rather than a condition of my homelessness.

Psychological problems, however, normally create other kinds of problems.  Let me consider what kinds of problems were created by my decision on January 11 not to be afraid of the rain.

With my phone out of commission, I bought two newspapers.  Cost, $4.

With big shivers, I had to buy a hot meal.  Cost, $16.

Of the books I was carrying, eight were water damaged.  The worst affected, the one at the bottom of the satchel I carried as a substitute backpack, I'd already read; I was only carrying it to remind me to read the sequels.  Oops.  I've since finished another, one of two in the upper part of the cart that got wet, and read the other in full.  Two more were in the bottom part of the cart, to stiffen bedding satchels; I've started one of those, and one of the three others from the backpack satchel.  I probably had Waterway, my source for "Water and Water", with me that night, but it wasn't damaged.

I was, thankfully, charged only for two nights, so the motel cost was well under $200.  Heck, so was the total cost, not counting the books.  I also bought socks while at the motel, but that wasn't a directly rain-related expense.

It's difficult to sort things out here.  I had the money to do this because of the COVID stimulus payments, and the generosity of strangers - and my own miserliness; but I was hiking in the rain, working on you, dear Diary, because of the COVID lockdowns, ultimately.

But of one thing I'm sure.  I am alive tonight because a woman who works at that Travelodge allowed a smelly homeless man to check in.  If there'd been no vacancy, or she'd decided not to let me have it, I might easily have died.

A friend of mine was sleeping in his car when someone threw a Molotov cocktail into it.  We heard of slashed tents at Cal Anderson Park.  My problem was self-inflicted, but those people were handed problems by others.  Part of what I'm trying to get across is that such actions can have terrible consequences.

But another part is that for homeless people, not fearing rain is the pathology.  I'm lucky to have survived it.  So I will stay in the motel tomorrow, and give way to my perhaps not currently warranted, but fundamentally healthy, fear of rain.

Good night, dear Diary.  Tomorrow I'll explain what I did for you those two days.

Escaping Green Lake Park, part II

Dear Diary,

I've put off writing this page and the next one as long as I can, because they tell a story that was no fun to live through, and is no fun to remember.  I have no photos to illustrate either page, for reasons that will become obvious.

I should clarify, though.  The first "Escaping Green Lake Park" page has the immediate political purpose of shaming the parks department into providing a real sidewalk on part of Aurora Ave N for which it's responsible.  The page "Escaping Carkeek Park" has the long-range political purpose of getting consideration for pedestrians built into the next plan for repairing NW Carkeek Park Drive.  But this page doesn't have any such purpose; I don't actually want to live in a world that would prevent stories like this one from happening.  I just also don't want to live through that story again.

The last page about my January hikes ended with me pushing my new cart through the rain to Webster Park.  Webster Park is near NW 65th St, but I knew from quite recent experience that I didn't want to approach Green Lake, or Woodland, Parks from that direction.  So I trudged back to NW 85th St and walked to Green Lake Park from there.

I entered via Winona Ave N and Stone Ave N, and on arriving at the Bath House restrooms found them locked.  I'm not really sure what time it was, but it was certainly late enough that they well should have been locked.  From there I started around the loop path clockwise, against the current rule, but I certainly didn't want to deal with the long distance counter-clockwise to the Shellhouse restrooms.

You must imagine, dear Diary, every few feet a giant pool, as I went along the trail.  The wading pool restrooms, I missed entirely in the dark and the rain.  Now, you understand, I hadn't actually entered a restroom since mid-day, and it was pretty late.  So I was relieved to find the Community Center restrooms still open.  The toilets were both disgusting for some reason, so I settled for a urinal, which didn't flush properly, and then soaped my hands ...

Only to find that the water was shut off.  Hence the problems with toilets and urinal.  The open doors were a macabre joke on anyone fool enough to be outside in the weather.

It turns out that even fairly intense rain isn't good at rinsing even fairly lame soap from one's hands.  I finally had to rub my hands across a bunch of bushes' leaves to remove the soap.

Wow, did I want to escape.  Well, there's quite a path right next to the Community Center, so I started up it, only to find myself wading.  This didn't make any sense to me - I was going uphill, after all - so I ignored it until it was far too late to turn back.  At its deepest, the water reached my knees, which was also quite deep enough to soak all my bedding.

That's why this page has no photos.  I still can't make sense of the lake I found there.  Nor is it any more plausible as a river:  there was a lot of rain in Seattle that night, but I don't think there was enough near there to maintain a flow that deep for any length of time.  Since I don't understand the phenomenon, I can't see under what circumstances it might recur, so I could photograph it.

Anyway, eventually I escaped the Green Lake Basketball Court Lake and reached, well, wet ground, anyway.  Now, dear Diary, although your presently most popular page talks about shivering, it doesn't go into my classification of shivers, which is necessary here.

Shivers are primarily involuntary, but can sometimes be partly controlled, or even voluntarily so.  When I can control my shivers, I usually focus them in my hands, and either wave them back and forth in an arm imitation of walking, or rub them between my knees if I'm sitting down.  Early in my homelessness - say, 2013 - I was doing the latter, covered by a blanket, on a since-removed bench in front of the Capitol Hill branch library, when a rather younger, but still professional, man walked by, and jeered at me for masturbating, despite my denial.  He walked on, as pleased at having scored off a stranger as a teenager, and I didn't realise until recently, thinking about this page, that by suggesting I could do that with my hands at my knees he was actually complimenting me.

Well, that may be a bad joke, but it's all the comic relief this page offers, because as I walked away from Green Lake Park, I wasn't doing (this is the classification) "little", controllable, shivers like that, but "big", uncontrollable, shivers.  Very big, rather like convulsions.

I needed food, and although I had some, I needed to get it without opening my cart's coverings.  The first restaurant I passed that was open is called O'Ginger's, and is apparently some sort of Chinese fusion place.  I remembered liking Thai cashew chicken, so ordered their version of that.  It turned out to be an enormous dish, which I ate in a sheltered alcove in the same building, just out of sight of the restaurant.  I also tried to write an e-mail, but water had gotten into the phone, and I had to stop.

After the hot meal, the shivers subsided somewhat.  I actually managed to reach several more restroom pairs that night, and then set about finding shelter for the night.  This is when I was deranged enough to figure out the route that allows pedestrians to walk Aurora, but when I finally returned to Aurora, didn't recognise it, and had to walk Linden Ave N for several blocks before I'd believe that the next street was Aurora.

Shivers were starting to come back by the time I passed the fenced-off Everspring Inn.  Fortunately, soon after I saw a name I recognised.  Nobody had ever told me there was a nationally franchised business among the universally reviled Aurora Ave motels, but there it was, a Travelodge.  What's more, it had a vacancy, and allowed me to check in.

I stayed there the rest of that night (it was 2 A.M. by that time) and two more.  You already know, dear Diary, that on January 13 I returned to Golden Gardens Park and Sandel Playground.  But what else I did there is for the next two pages.

SeaTac's Angle Lake Park in Snow

Dear Diary,

Yes, I know, you're my Seattle parks diary, so what's this interloper doing here?  Well, I could argue that comparing Seattle parks to parks elsewhere is a legitimate activity, but actually, some of the photos I lost when my previous phone was stolen were of the UW campus in snow, I couldn't realistically get there today, but I currently live close enough to Angle Lake Park, so...

Actually I first went there Thursday, on my way back to the motel from the grocery store.  (Here, the closest supermarket is over a mile away.)  It was snowing at the time, but none was sticking.  My visit today was somewhat different.

I don't know to what extent the rules have changed for SeaTac's homeless (who are not few) during the epidemic, but at this park, where rules are posted in many places, there's no hint of such relaxations as in Seattle.

There are many shelters there, in a variety of styles, but none have any walls, and neither Thursday nor today did I find any camped in.

On Thursday I found the restrooms open - stated opening time, 8 A.M. - but due to close at dusk, which wasn't all that far off at that time.  Now, dear Diary, if you examine the first photo above closely, you'll notice that the signs promise a gate opening by 8 A.M., but there's a visible bar.  Indeed, today when I went (around 11 A.M.) the gate was still locked, and so were the restrooms:

I'm not going to travel today, so I won't find out what happened in Seattle.  I'd like to believe the parks workers there thought ahead, and left more doors unlocked than usual, but can't know.  At least Seattle has some 24-hour restrooms, somewhere between four and seven pairs in North Seattle.  SeaTac's Department of Parks and Recreation has, it says, four parks with restrooms; one has hours even shorter than Angle Lake Park's, the other two are open 8 A.M. to 11 P.M., which is really good.  Except, probably, when it snows.

Angle Lake Park has an obvious attraction and a less obvious one.  It appears, from my new map of south King County, to be the only park on the lakefront.  All its paths are paved, which predisposed me to like it; but weirdly, its waterfront is too.  There's sand, all right, a coarse black and white kind like that found at the NW 57th St Street End and at Carkeek Park in Seattle, but shoreward of the sand are steps, pavement, down to the water.

Two more lake views:

The un-obvious attraction Angle Lake Park offers is that most of its trees are evergreen.  The only group of deciduous trees I found is the poplars in the foreground of this shot:

Other deciduous trees are scattered here and there, so there must be a smidgen of fall colour, but there certainly is plenty of winter green, and I'll end this excursion off-topic with more of it.  Back to North Seattle parks tomorrow, dear Diary.

Hike 5A: Far and Mid-Northwest

Dear Diary,

On January 11, as I thought I'd managed to tell you last night but apparently not, I woke in Carkeek Park's shelter 2.  I've already described much of how I spent that day, but I did also get to three parks with sanitary facilities, before heading to Green Lake and Woodland Parks in another attempt to figure out what hours their restrooms really kept.

Carkeek Park

Carkeek Park has only one pair of restrooms with doors facing outside.  Its maps clarify:  under normal circumstances, there are restrooms in the Environmental Learning Center at the other end of the park.  Compared to other large parks - even Magnuson, let alone Green Lake or Woodland - this seems few.  But at least the restrooms open in this plague year are enormous.

The open doors:

The map provided by the City of Seattle's Department of Human Services, Homeless Strategy and Investment Division, also says there are two regular "sanican"s in the park, and there are, but not next to the restrooms as is usual in the parks of North Seattle; instead they're placed in separate locations where they can be useful, one at the far end of the greenswards from the restrooms, the other in the Environmental Learning Center.  See if you can guess which is which, dear Diary:

Well, I didn't say how they were being useful!  Yes, the second photo is the one at the ELC, which may be closed but is obviously still supporting some sort of environmental learning.

After the insane journey described in the previous page, I went to one of the parks I'd given up on visiting the previous day.

Soundview Playfield

I introduced this park to you, dear Diary, July 1 in "What Can a Hill Do with a Crown?"  I've mentioned it since in "The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020", December 16.

These hikes were meant to check the map already linked to; I'm also comparing the results to the list of park restrooms that were advertised as staying open last winter, 2019-2020.  Neither map nor list mentions the restrooms at Soundview, and as usual in such cases, they're closed.

The building:

The closed doors:

The rain was still coming down, and I sheltered awhile under the eaves of the adjacent Whitman Middle School.  But a lot of staffers were there that day, so I couldn't really unmask and eat, which eventually dislodged me.

I was at 15th Ave NW and NW 85th St, heading back to Green Lake Park but knowing I was too early, when I remembered one more park north of NW 65th St.

Webster Park

This small park first appeared in you, dear Diary, June 28 in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights", and then in "Water Fountains" like Soundview Playfield.

It has a "sanican" well hidden in the southwestern corner of the paved basketball court, all of which is south of the more obviously parklike parts of the park.

And that was it for January 11.  I did get to Green Lake and Woodland Parks that evening, but their hours have nothing to do with Northwest Seattle, so for now, we're done, dear Diary.

Except that I'm about to drag you off-topic again.

Escaping Carkeek Park

Dear Diary,

As I told you in the last page, I was pushing a brand-new cart to Carkeek Park in the late afternoon of January 10, hoping to wait out several days of forecast rain at that park's shelter 2.

There are several ways to approach Carkeek Park.  For example, the trail I mentioned, in "The Ballard Seacoast", part II, July 1, from which I'd hoped to see where the beach ends, well, that trail itself ends in what seems to be someone's back yard.  But there are three more reasonable ways to get there, which can be summarised as NW 117th St, NW 110th St, and the Eddie McAbee Entrance, which starts from NW 100th Place.  That day, I took 110th.  Now, I should explain that 110th St, which turns into Carkeek Park Drive along the way, has a shoulder on its sometimes southern side.  This shoulder normally is separated from the street by a bump, and is normally enough inches wide that a small person like me could walk safely on it if a) it weren't sloped and covered in wet leaves, and b) that small person weren't pushing a wheeled cart.  So I walked in the street.

117th St, by the way, as I found Wednesday (February 10) when I went to take this page's photos, offers much wider shoulders, usually over a foot wide, which however are usually grassy, making them nearly as useless for anyone with a baby carriage, wheelchair or cart.  Walkers without wheels should certainly prefer it.

(There are buses that go to "Carkeek Park".  This turns out to mean that the 28 goes to the Eddie McAbee Entrance, more or less, while the 5 goes to Greenwood Ave N at N 110th or 117th Streets.  No buses actually reach the park's main entrance, let alone enter.)

They say the position of women in early Islam was much, much better than in Arab societies prior to Muhammad.  Similarly, the position of pedestrians in Carkeek Park is much better than our position in the surrounding neighbourhood, and similarly, that's damning with faint praise.

I've referred to Carkeek Park, besides "The Ballard Seacoast", November 2 in "Blue Ridge, Land of Mystery", and November 24 in "Standing Room Only", part V, which in particular introduced shelter 2.  But I don't think I've explained about its roads before.  Carkeek Park Drive continues into the park a ways, and then splits.  The westbound northern lane goes up a hill and down again to reach the part of the park with the restrooms, shelters, water fountain, playground, and stairway to the beach.  Then there's a turnaround, and it loops back, passing north of the vast greenswards I've mentioned and finally turning into the eastbound southern lane.

Anyway, up to the split, Carkeek Park cares enough about pedestrians to offer a real sidewalk:

Even after the split, there's a gravel path, south of the westbound lane just as the sidewalk is south of the combined road:

This gravel path ends within sight of shelter 2, crossing north of the westbound lane and acquiring pavement in the process.  Now, you understand, dear Diary, that on the evening of January 10 I didn't actually push my cart along the gravel path, but in the road.  I don't remember whether I took the direct, paved, route or stuck to the road until things were clearer.

Anyway, I spent the night there in shelter 2, safe from the rain, using the lantern I'd recently been given (as mentioned two pages ago in "Escaping Green Lake Park", part I) to read until bedtime.  Comfortingly, the restrooms were open all night, just as they had been in October when I'd last visited.  

You may remember, dear Diary, that the official explanation for such unannounced 24-hour restrooms is that when a road is closed, it's both difficult and unnecessary to lock and unlock the restrooms it leads to.  I think Carkeek Park Drive was still closed January 10, but it definitely wasn't on Wednesday, so maybe those restrooms are no longer 24 hours.

Well, in the morning I ran low on food and water.  Conveniently, a break came in the rain; inconveniently, that brought company.  A couple, rather older than me, came in and sat at another of the shelter's picnic tables.  The man used this rest to unmask and smoke, except that he spent most of the time coughing rather than smoking.  This made staying even less appetizing, so after they left, I packed up and did the same.

The paved path past the shelter runs past shelter 1, part of the playground, and the restrooms, and becomes a sidewalk.  It's paved right up to the path to the beach stairs, on the other side of which it turns into gravel again:

So there's a paved sidewalk south of the combined road, a gravel path south of the westbound lane, a paved sidewalk west of the turnaround, and now a gravel path south of the eastbound lane.  Makes perfect sense, right?  For some reason, though, I actually decided to take that gravel path instead of sticking to the street as I normally would.

Then I reached the first greensward:

Yes, that's right, the path separates from the street.  That enables a long series of small parking lots to be strung along between the eastbound lane and the greenswards.  Necessarily, then, given the blockish way this park is designed, the path has to go all the way south of the greenswards, on the opposite side from the parking lots and the road:

Somewhere along here, the rain resumed.  And that's when I made the critical decision, the decision that shaped the next few days of my life but also that showed me thinking like a housed, rather than a homeless, person:  I kept going.  I needed water (that I could've gotten from the restroom sink) and food (was I really that low?).

This was a cruel thing to do to brand-new cart wheels, although I should clarify that the path I was on was really more a dirt path stiffened by fine gravel than the kind of thing one thinks of as a gravel path:

Those wheels would get revenge soon enough.

My decision became firmer when I looked up and to the right at a spectacularly bad time:

I'd had no idea I'd been so deep in a valley, and resolved not to return to it.

At the time I was in no position to appreciate the excellent views of Piper's Creek on offer:

Toward the end of the trip, I saw something astonishing, that my month-later photo probably hasn't well captured, an illustration of why I wrote of Blue Ridge that it's "not actually vertical":

And you've probably now figured it out, dear Diary, as had I.  Yes, I'd taken the Eddie McAbee Exit.

Once I realised that this story was worth telling, I also concluded that this whole mess is designed to get pedestrians to leave via 100th, regardless of our wishes in the matter.  This is not quite fair.  Once one is on the pseudo-sidewalk / Eddie McAbee whatever, one gets at least three opportunities to return to Carkeek Park Drive.  One just has to know the park well enough to recognise them.  (And, yes, get over the foolish tendency to trust sidewalks.)

There's one real consolation:  Sooner than later, there'll be a do-over.  Much of Carkeek Park Drive, within the park, is in terrible shape:

If people who think parks should not require visitors to arrive in cars are awake when Carkeek Park Drive needs resurfacing, perhaps something will improve.

Good night, dear Diary.

Hike 4B: Mid-Northwest

Dear Diary,

Pushing my damaged cart, I proceeded on my hike.  I finally confirmed through Google Maps that I'd screwed up, misremembering NW 65th St rather than NW 85th St as the address of Golden Gardens Park.  This, of course, meant that the damage to the cart described in the previous page need never have happened.  The mistake, however, did enable me to cut a big chunk out of the Ballard hike.  So off I went.

Salmon Bay Park

This is a smallish, pleasant park, nowhere near Salmon Bay, which I first told you, dear Diary, about June 28 in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights", and have only discussed since then on December 16 in "The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020".

This park's restrooms were not on last year's list of restrooms to keep open, and also weren't and still aren't on this year's map of open restrooms, the map I was hiking around North Seattle to check.  So in other words, the expected outcome was that these restrooms would be closed, and in contrast to all the surprises I'd found in and north of Woodland Park, that's exactly what I found.

The restroom building:

The closed doors:

I parked the cart by a bench to take those photos, and then ate breakfast there.  This gave me time to think.  I'd consciously skipped Ballard Pool, but if I really went on without it, I'd have to go much further north on the Ballard hike.  And Salmon Bay Park seemed pretty quiet and safe.  So I left my cart there and hurried back southeast.

Ballard Pool

This, being a building whose restrooms all open to the inside, wasn't on last year's list, and since it's a building that has yet to re-open, it isn't on this year's map either.  Well, it wasn't open, but there was something weird about that...

I'd introduced this to you, dear Diary, in "A Lazy Day", as the one pool which, when all the pools got renovated in winter 2019-2020, got delayed.  I found it in June still surrounded by construction fences.  So the visit last month was my first chance to look at its doors.

The postcard shot:

The closed door:

At Ballard Pool, in other words, COVID-19 hasn't happened yet.  It's stuck in a time warp.  Or more prosaically, nobody's thought to go update the signage.

Anyway, its doors were locked.

So I went back to Salmon Bay Park, retrieved my cart, and proceeded to 

Loyal Heights Community Center

This community center is in a playfield of the same name, and has restrooms whose doors open to the outdoors.  I told you about these places in the same pages, dear Diary, as Salmon Bay Park.  Now, Loyal Heights Community Center's restrooms were on last year's list, and at the time I visited were also on this year's map.  Yes, I know, dear Diary, if you look at the map today, it isn't there.  But it was.

So I was extremely surprised by what I found.

The postcard shot:

The closed doors:

The running water fountain:

I was in Topsy-Turvy Land.  I believe, however, that the water fountain has been shut off.  Now, this is an attached fountain, and on November 12 in "To a Land of Water and Honey" I suggested leaving it on, in the expectation that the building it's attached to would remain heated.  This is actually still the case, here, even though the restrooms are closed.  But notwithstanding the boasts of a Jackson Park employee in the page in question, one of the secrets to keeping outdoor water fountains running in winter is to know when to fold them, and although I was pleased to find that fountain running January 10, it has no business being on in the weather now expected for the next week.

As for the restrooms.  Only two restroom pairs in North Seattle are closed this winter that were on last year's list.  The Woodland Park pair called Rio has signs indicating vandalism as the reason, and a substitute nearby, the Cloverleaf rooms.  But the Loyal Heights signs just say "Seasonal Closure" as if this happened every year, and the obvious nearby substitute, Salmon Bay, is closed.

My best guess is that Topsy-Turvy Land was created for the benefit of people working on the playfield.  There's a major operation going on to replace artificial turf at a bunch of fields, mostly in North Seattle; we saw part of it at Magnuson Park, dear Diary, more is at Woodland Park, and one piece is at Loyal Heights.  Anyway, if the workers had keys to the restrooms, it would all make sense.  With the rooms locked, they'd get fewer annoying intruders; with the water fountain on, they'd get convenience.  This is, however, only my guess.

At any rate, these were the only park restrooms on the Northwest street grid open last winter, and this year they're closed.  Whatever the reason, it should be a good one.

Golden Gardens Park

Dear Diary, I've had four carts in the past three years, and they've all been gifts from the same person, who'd been keeping late hours in early January.  When this person had bought the damaged cart (#3), it turned out that two carts were almost the same price as one.  So there was a method to my madness, traipsing about northwest Seattle instead of hieing to my storage to lighten my load.  I was waiting until it was late enough to call and ask for cart #4.

While I waited for it, of course I took the photos of Golden Gardens Park.  Here there was another surprise.  Both pairs of restrooms in that park were on last year's list, and both were then on this year's map.  But the upper pair, the one near the off-leash area for dogs, was locked:

There was no sign, as there had been at Salmon Bay Park and Loyal Heights Community Center, and it dawned on me that it was a Sunday.  So on January 13 I went back, and found them open.

Now, dear Diary, I notify people who work on the map of what I find, by e-mail, before telling you about it.  This is so I can tell you as much as I want, but provide them the same information in a less wordy form.  I think those e-mails are why Sandel Playground and Loyal Heights Community Center have been removed from the map.  I greatly fear, however, that by telling the above story in an e-mail, I may have greatly inconvenienced a lot of dogs' people, because for some reason the upper restrooms at Golden Gardens Park have also been removed from the map.

Anyway, here's the restroom building:

I'm relieved to report that there were no surprises at the lower, beach, restrooms there.  The building (I had to back up almost to the water to get it all in):

The open doors:

The "sanican"s, just as indicated on the map:

Now, dear Diary, you may remember that January 10 was the day an atmospheric river began drenching us.  My plan was to wait it out in Carkeek Park's palatial shelter 2.  It took a while for my friend to bring cart #4, and then of course it had to be assembled, and, well, the days were a good deal shorter a month ago than they are now.  So I dropped one park after another from my itinerary, discarded cart #3 (a move I would later regret), and headed for shelter.

I need to take some more photos to write the next page, dear Diary, and also need to do things about my shelter today, so it'll probably be a few days before you hear from me again.  May they be happy ones.

Mysteries

Dear Diary,

I've been hiding out from the rain, making a daily trip for food, water, and, well, Number Two.  Today, nearing the end of that trip, I arrived at Ravenna Park's lower restrooms at 5:32 P.M.  Only to find them locked.

So.  Place, day, and time:  it's like a game of Clue.  If I'd arrived at 4 P.M. would I have found them open?  Or on another day?  (Well, actually I did find them open yesterday around noon.)  Or would I have had to go to another place?  That bundle of questions is the first mystery.

The second is whether I'll die of constipation before learning the answer to the first.

I'll let you know, dear Diary.

Hike 2B: Magnuson Park, main page

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry to have to inflict this complexity on you.  Magnuson Park has so many "sanican"s in so many places that I ended up taking nearly forty photos there.  I have no interest in trying to convince Blogspot to let me put that many photos in a single page, nor in asking anyone to read the result.

So this page narrates my visit as a whole, but tries not to talk about "sanican"s too much, and includes no photos of, or primarily about, them.  I'll then ask you, dear Diary, to tolerate two more pages primarily about "sanican"s, with photos of nothing but.  I devoutly hope many more people read this page than those two.

OK, all that said.  I really wanted to limit the amount of gravel I took my cart across, especially since, with my glasses broken, I wouldn't be much of a searcher anyway.  So I consulted my previous chronicle in your pages of my futile search for a hand-washing station and 

What's that?  Oh, yes, you're quite right, dear Diary.  Magnuson Park, the largest park in North Seattle and the nearest large park to where I live, has concerned several pages in you before this one.  You started there, April 22, with "Magnuson Park Has a Warm Water Sink!".  Then in "Magnuson Park:  Things We've Lost, Part I" on April 24 I went looking for the seven restroom pairs shown on an old map, concluding that three old restroom buildings were entirely lost.  On April 29 the "Two Magnuson Park Questions Tentatively Answered" were 'No, there aren't more than four water fountains' and 'No, there aren't any hand-washing stations'.  That page used a more recent map as a guide to the park's many "sanican"s.  Since I had neither time nor eyesight to explore anew, the locations reported in that page are the ones I revisited two days ago.

May 6 in "Go North, Aging Man!", Magnuson Park got most of the photos.  More came in "Home Dry Home" June 4 and in part II of "Water Fountains - An Interim Report" October 3.  Finally on November 23 "Standing Room Only", part III.

That doesn't mean I'm ever prepared for this park, in particular for the long distances its size entails.  The most preparation I did this time was, for puposes of gravel avoidance, to break my itinerary into a 74th St side, to be visited via the park's impressive front door, and a 65th St side, to be visited via that street and the lake shore drive to which it leads.

74th St Side

Dear Diary, it'd been a few days since I checked, but anyway today the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation is no longer offering an outdated map of park restrooms on its front page.  So it's time I stopped using that as a punching bag.  My purpose henceforth on these hikes is to check the map now offered by the homelessness division of Seattle's Department of Human Services, especially as compared with last year's list of park restrooms expected to stay open.

Magnuson Park has four buildings still in place with doors that open to the outside and lead to restrooms.  One is easiest reached from the 74th St entrance, two from the lake shore drive, and one is in between, but less confusing to find from the lake side.  The four water fountains are each near a restroom building.  So this side's itinerary included one restroom and one water fountain, neither of which is on last year's list nor this year's HSD map.

What is on the HSD map for this part of the park is three "sanican" markers.  One says, near as I can figure out the format, that there should be three regular "sanican"s and one ADA one at the playground.  I found the ADA one and four regular ones.

The marker for the dogs' off-leash area says there should be one ADA "sanican", one regular one, and one hand-washing station there.  I didn't want to believe it when I found only the ADA one, so I spent an hour walking the perimeter.  There's a regular "sanican" outside the perimeter, at an entrance to the off-leash beach, but I found no hand-washing station.

The third marker shown near this entrance says there are two ADA and six regular "sanican"s at "various" locations around the park.  I found three ADA and seven regular ones I'd consider thus.

OK, let's backtrack.  I walked into Magnuson Park via 74th; what's the first thing I did?  Look for "sanican"s?  Of course not!  The first thing I did was look for the Community Center.

See, I found the newer map, the one I'd used as a guide in the page I intended to piggy-back from, and found a very unwelcome surprise there:

In "Home Dry Home", I blithely asserted that the Magnuson Community Center was the Brig.  I've thought for months now that I got that from the centre's web page, but no; even today that page says nothing about it.  (And the Internet Archive has copies from last June, similarly mum.)  I think I must have placed way too much faith in last year's equivalent to this:

Assuming there was an equivalent last June.  At any rate, on Wednesday at the real Community Center's front door - postcard shot:

Open door shot, I kid you not:

I was informed by a woman who came to the door while I was reading the signs that the centre was just about done moving to the Brig for a temporary home during construction, and she was sure someone there could answer all my questions.

Was I in a time warp last June?

Well, I didn't act on her advice immediately.  I did then go "sanican" hunting, including the playground and the fruitless hike around the dog off-leash area.  There I discovered two shelters.  One I hadn't the patience to photograph, it was so thronged, but it's essentially a fancy bus shelter, so probably not the greatest protection from rain.  That's in the special area for shy dogs.  The other, though, is perhaps the most substantial shelter in the park:

However, as I worked my way counter-clockwise through the 74th St stops, the Brig was next.  One thing I never remember is that it isn't actually possible to circle the Brig on pavement.  But its front door is on the west:

while not only the restroom doors, which can't be opened from the outside:

but also the only door I found open, are on the east side.  Beyond that door was a children's program being run by a young man from the YMCA who knew nothing about the Community Center moving there.

If anyone finds the Magnuson Community Center, please let me know.

Meanwhile I headed northwest for more "sanican" hunting.  The only place listed in May where I found no "sanican" in January was up there, at the area for launching boats by hand.  However, I remember that being tricky to find, and don't remember the trick, so I'm not at all sure it's really gone.  While I was there, I anyway took a view north across Lake Washington:

65th St Side

On this side the HSD map has four markers, at two restroom sites and two former restroom sites.  Confusingly, one of the former restroom sites is the only one in North Seattle where the map emphasises a closed restroom building.  A comparison between the map's handling of University Playground and its treatment of the "Tower" site at Magnuson Park shows the oddness.

Anyway, I think this is the so-called tower's best side, but also shows the decidedly closed door:

The water I found running last April is running again, which gives me hope that it's just rain drainage, and not the ghostly work of fire-destroyed plumbing inside.  The HSD marker says there are three regular "sanican"s there; I found two, one each ADA and regular.

Continuing north I reached the Cross Park Trail, and turned to find the central restrooms, which the map calls "Sport".  I've repeatedly complained about the gravel surrounding these.  I'm now pretty convinced that the entire trail is actually paved, but someone just thought it would be more artistic or something to lay down a hundred yards or so of gravel on top of the pavement.  They should please, pretty please, remove that.  Thank you.

The best side of the central restroom building:

Yes, it's built into the hill.

HSD represented, shortly before I started writing this page, these restrooms as open, the first restrooms closed last year that I should have found open this year.  The closed doors:

Yes, they were both locked, at 4:30 P.M.

HSD also said there should be two regular "sanican"s here.  I can't prove a negative, but I didn't see them:

The beach restrooms are a happier story.  The building's best side:

The open doors:

The showers and water fountain were turned off, as expected, even though they're all attached to a building that's not only heated, but equipped with a hot water heater.  The men's room dryer is still, or maybe again, not working.  I saw no ducks.

The HSD map says there should be one each ADA and regular "sanican"s here, and that's exactly what I found.

The old map is still attached to this building.  Here's my warrant for the idea that the assisted boat launch area used to have a real restroom:

The HSD map now says it has one ADA and three regular "sanican"s; I found one and two.

Here's an unpleasant but explanatory surprise:

Notice the wide gap between the Brig and the restroom symbol.  We have another missing building, if this map is to be believed.  But it helps explain why the water fountain and restrooms in this area are so far apart, if there used to be restrooms much closer to the fountain.

Or maybe we still have only three missing buildings.  Somewhere in the depths of Promontory Point is a building that, on the "Tentatively Answered" hike, I really tried to convince myself was a repurposed restroom building.  I must have failed to do so, since I neither photographed it nor mentioned it in the page.  Still, maybe...

Anyway, I parked my cart in the shelter of the building's middle and headed north to photograph the "sanican" at the entrance to the dogs' off-leash beach.  Along the way was a stretch of maybe a hundred yards of a worse pavement than gravel, but it did produce gorgeous reflections of the sunset.  Unfortunately my phone's camera thinks there can never be too little red, but here anyway is an echo of it:

Since the ground east of the drive had been rather squishy on the way north, I was relieved to take the higher ground to the west to get around the washed out area on my way south.  It isn't actually higher ground, though; it's taller grasses over a swamp.  Rather later, and with my shoes and trousers rather the worse for wear, I clambered back to my stuff.  

I should, I suppose, clarify that this is not a complaint, a demand that anyone do anything.  One has to expect water sometimes if one walks between a swamp and a lake.  But on the way south, I noticed another view, decidedly less bucolic, and yearned for its bright lights:

I still had one more "sanican" to track down, but then joyfully shook the dust of Magnuson Park from off my feet.  The mud stains on my trouser legs, however, remain.

Dear Diary, the rain seems to have paused, so I'm going to go to Ravenna Park.  When I return, two boring pages of "sanican"s, then my visit yesterday to Cal Anderson Park.