Happy Birthday, Dear Diary! Seattle Parks Lied Again!

Dear Diary,

I'm sorry for neglecting you for so long, and especially given that I left you on a cliffhanger, not knowing whether I'd become homeless over a month ago or had gotten a job at long last.

Well, it was the latter.  I've spent years of my life preparing people's taxes, and got a job by being willing to keep a tax office open the entirety of its open hours.  Which left me only one day off per week.

So I spent those days off hiking, but didn't even get around to uploading the photos to Google Drive timely, much less telling you, Dear Diary, about the hikes, with all the maps and other paraphernalia we've gotten used to.

Now that tax season is over, mirabile dictu, I still have a job, but with considerably fewer hours.  And I wanted to congratulate you on your third birthday, Dear Diary, with a preview of those hikes' results.

I'd told you before about the announcement by Christina Hirsch in November 2022 of which park restrooms would be open this winter.  It's her second such announcement, the first having appeared in 2019.  The 2019 list turned out to be a much better guide to which park restrooms in North Seattle were open during the winter of 2020-2021 than the map the city was then promoting as answering that question.  But by now, things have changed.  The 2022 list omits a few restrooms the 2019 list included:  Ballard Commons (which was fenced closed until March 12 of this year); Cal Anderson Park (sort of:  it's listed this time as having had "portables", but the 2019 list had no such note); Discovery Park's beach restrooms; Green Lake Park's Bathhouse restrooms (which I nevertheless found open).

And it adds a ton of others, eighteen, near as I can count.  Only four of these are in North Seattle, and in my own November 2022 discussion I expressed surprise about three of these.  I didn't find any of the four actually open.

On Sunday, February 19th, at 3:08 P.M., Little Brook Park's restroom (yes, only one) was closed with a seasonal closure sign posted:

At 4:17 P.M. that day, I found University Playground's restrooms not only closed, but welded closed:

On Sunday, February 26th at 6:33 P.M., I found Salmon Bay Park's restrooms closed.  I didn't think they looked like they'd been used recently, but the thing is, park restroom hours are 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. most times of the year, and I was trying, in these hikes, to be extremely fair to Seattle's Department of Parks and Recreation, by limiting my hikes to 8 A.M. to 6 P.M.  So I went back to Salmon Bay Park on Sunday, March 12th at 5:47 P.M.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, March 5th, I'd reached Sandel Playground at 6:06 P.M., technically outside my limits, but I mean, really.  Of the many lies I caught the parks department in during the winter of 2020-2021, the only one that took Ms. Hirsch's colleague Rachel Schulkin by surprise was that Sandel Playground's restrooms were closed.  They hadn't been in the 2019 list, but in 2020-2021 they were supposed to have been open, and weren't.  The same happened in 2022-2023:

I wasn't able to get back to Sandel Playground before 6 P.M. until Wednesday, March 22nd, and having already found Greenwood Park's restroom, a twin to Little Brook Park's, open that day, was unsurprised to find Sandel Playground's restrooms open too.

Basically, I think none of the four additions in North Seattle was real, and three were outright lies.  The question I had, though, was whether that was Ms. Hirsch's little joke on you, dear Diary, and me, or whether the parks department was really inflating its winter restroom numbers city-wide.  I thought if those four were the only additions, that would be a give-away, but actually there were fourteen other additions, none of which I got a chance to visit.  Dear Diary, you've been visited a lot ever since I signed up at an active job-hunting site, but I'm not sure how many of those visits have been by actual human beings.  But if anyone who reads this can comment on whether restrooms were open this past winter in the following parks, I'd be very grateful:

1. Alki Beach - Was listed only once in 2019, but with three locations in 2022.  So two of 63rd, 57th and Bath House should've been open besides the one that was open then.
2. Alki Beach - The other new one.
3. Beer Sheva Park.
4. Dr. Blanche Lavizzo Park.
5. Hiawatha.
6. Magnolia Community Center.  The 2019 list included only Community Centers which had restrooms with doors that open to the outside, which are more obviously park restrooms than other Community Center restrooms.  I don't know that all the Community Centers in the 2022 list have such outside-opening restrooms, though.
7. Montlake Community Center.
8. Mount Baker Park.
9. Pratt Park.  This park's restrooms were definitely under construction when I first visited the place in winter 2021-2022.  It's at least plausible that the old ones didn't have heat while the new ones do.  (It's thoroughly implausible that Cal Anderson Park's restrooms went from having heat to not having it.)
   
10. Queen Anne Bowl.
11. Riverview Playfield.
12. Seward Park Picnic Shelters.
13. South Park Community Center.
14. Volunteer Park Bandstand.

Anyway, parks in North Seattle whose restrooms' openness I didn't check in winter 2022-2023:  I didn't visit Meadowbrook Playfield or Laurelhurst Community Center at all; I didn't visit Ross Park, Maple Leaf Reservoir Park (which Hirsch's lists call Maple Leaf Playground), Dahl Playfield, Licton Springs Park, Greenwood Park, or Sandel Playground, within the hours I'd limited myself to, before the spring openings.  Of these, Laurelhurst, Maple Leaf, Dahl and Sandel were supposed to be open, and I'm guessing the first three of those actually were open, though Maple Leaf is often closed on Sundays both in winter and at other times of year.  Ross, Meadowbrook, Licton Springs and Greenwood weren't supposed to be open, and of those, only Meadowbrook could reasonably have been opened.  (Licton Springs's restrooms, of course, have been torn down.)

I also in November called attention to Matthews Beach, which is consistently supposed to have open restrooms in winter, but I never found them so in 2020-2021.  I did find them open this time.  They're two single-stall all-gender rooms, one of which had been boarded over in 2020-2021; both were open on February 19th.

This time I only paid attention to water fountains conveniently near restrooms, but also to the street fountains.  I found four park water fountains running.  Three were attached to heated buildings - one of the golf buildings at Jackson Park, the cloverleaf restrooms of Woodland Park and the beach restrooms of Magnuson Park.  The fourth is free-standing, and I'm frankly amazed it was still running on February 19th, at Magnuson Park's central restrooms.  I don't remember what I found re street fountains - I think, one running, one not, but no idea which.

All for now, and pedants would say I've missed your birthday anyhow, but here's to a good year ahead for you, dear Diary!

A Hike in Maple Leaf

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.

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.

The Water Fountains of Ballard, mid-October 2020

Dear Diary,

As mentioned in some earlier pages, and in a bit more detail in "Two Last Strays" yesterday, on October 16 I returned to Ballard.  My first trip to the parks of Ballard, in June, was reported in the pages "History and Parks, part I" and "part II" on June 25, pages that to this day hardly anyone has read, apparently inferring from the title that each page ends with a test.  Actually those pages are about the strong impression some of Ballard's parks gave me, that they were about history, indeed that Ballard is obsessed with certain parts of its history.  In part II I got to parks that at least concerned other parts of Ballard history.

This page also deals with the water fountains of areas sometimes seen as parts of Ballard, but which I think of as north of it, to wit the water fountains first mentioned in "A Lazy Day on Loyal Heights" June 28, and "What Can a Hill Do with a Crown?", July 1.

It was on this June trip that I finally allowed myself to take landscape and other such photos, so I took relatively few this time.  Therefore this page also has room to report on water fountains in Golden Gardens Park and on the Burke-Gilman Trail, which I first told you about, dear Diary, in "The Ballard Seacoast:  Parks Not Parks', part I" and "part II", June 30 and July 1, even though I didn't reach these until October 17 this time.

Enough introduction; let's get started.

In Gas Works Park the water fountain still wasn't running, as I already reported October 8 in "South of North Once More, Part I".

Ross Park

On June 22, as reported in "History and Parks" I, I found the restroom open and the water fountain not running.  On October 16, this was flipped.  As at Bitter Lake Playfield ("Top of the City, part III" November 12 and "Hygiene Is a Luxury I Can't Afford" November 18), the restroom was locked but the water fountain (free-standing, near the restrooms) was ON.

I was particularly annoyed by this situation because I'd wanted to take a picture of a mosaic between the restrooms.  I did anyway.

So you can see why I was annoyed.

I asked Rachel Schulkin, communications manager for the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, about the locking, and she said the unlocker goofed.  Well, he must have, but we'll get to that.

Ross Park's restrooms are not year-round, so I won't be able to take that picture until next spring.

Sunset Place

This is a small park on one slope of a hill, where I managed to miss a water fountain on my first visit, so had to go back for it.  The advantage of nobody having read "History and Parks" I right away is that any future hypothetical readers will get the revised version.

The drama continued this time.  As I prepared to climb up to the bottom of the park, I had to adjust my mask.  Now, I told you, dear Diary, about my masks from Target that did such a good job of covering my eyes, in "Six Parks in Search of Another" November 30.  As I said there, on the long hike October 8 to 14, I wore a different sort of mask.  But for this shorter hike I reverted to a Target one; those were, after all, the majority of my masks.  

Well, two blocks from the top of Sunset Place, I stopped to adjust that mask, when at last it achieved the goal it and its five siblings had sought since June:  by snapping away from my hand, it managed to flip my glasses off my ears and nose, I didn't manage to catch them, and, well, I haven't been able to wear my glasses much since.

So now I have fifteen masks.  Six from Target, waiting in my storage until I figure out what to do with them, and nine from Naturepedic.  All of those are gifts.  I tried to buy a pack, but they only ship Fed Ex, which my address can't accept.  So I called them, and they decided the best solution was to send me a free pack.  Anyway, those have never fought my glasses as assiduously as the Target ones did, but I'm still not planning to get new glasses until mask time is over, at least if it does end.

ANYWAY.  At Sunset Place, the water fountain was ON, as it had been in June.  I decided it was time, at a park so obviously created for its view, to photograph that view:

Gilman Playfield

The official names of the parks named for Ross and Gilman, per the parks department website, are both "Playground".  My theory is that they aren't allowed to outshine Ballard Playground.  In my opinion Ross is obviously a Park, Gilman a Playfield, and I'll go by that until and unless someone gives me a good reason not to.

Anyway, as I reported euphorically in "History and Parks" I, Gilman's free-standing water fountain near its restrooms was ON.  It still was in October.  On the other hand, those restrooms were open in June, but not in October.  I asked Rachel Schulkin about this too, but she never got back to me.

Now, the obvious assumption is that the same unlocker screwed up twice, but it isn't that simple.  You see, in June I observed a bunch of homeless people's tents at Gilman Playfield.  I considered their occupants well-behaved.  Those tents were gone this time.  Some trash, however, remained:

So, dear Diary, doesn't this remind you of Licton Springs Park?  ("Bad Apples in the Bonny Green Wood", October 29.)  A park whose campers were induced to leave by the locking of the restrooms?  Except that those campers were abominable neighbours, while, from my admittedly brief observation, it looked like Gilman's were good neighbours.  It sends a very bad message to us unsheltered homeless if our behaviour has no effect on the treatment we get.

So I hope it was just an unlocker's screwup, but I don't know whether we'll ever know.  Of course, those doors would be locked now anyway, since Gilman Playfield's restrooms are not year-round.

Ballard Commons

Of course people were still camped here.  I still couldn't find the restrooms, the only ones in Ballard proper listed on the 2019 list of year-round restrooms.  Rachel Schulkin finally ended my suspense; it turns out the parks department sees fit to claim the "Portland Loo" as a restroom.

Triple free-standing water fountain ON both in June and in October.

As a precaution, I went to the Ballard branch library to use its restroom before proceeding, but I needn't have.

Ballard Playground and Community Center

The single-user restrooms at the Community Center both have dryers, and that afternoon both still had toilet cleaner in their bowls.  The only explanation I can think of for why these restrooms, built into a heated building, are not open year-round is that neighbours are afraid we homeless will use them, when the other park restrooms are closed.  Well, October 16 was a kind of experiment in that regard, and on its showing such fears would be overblown.  Dear Diary, if anyone in Ballard reads this page, I hope they'll be kind enough to check whether those restrooms are really locked, and report back in a comment.

The free-standing water fountain nearby but technically in the Playground had not been running in June, but was ON in October.

Webster Park

Free-standing water fountain mid-park:  TRICKLE, as in June.

Salmon Bay Park

The restrooms were open.  The men's room has a dryer but no stall door.  These are not year-round restrooms.

Attached water fountain, men's side:  ON (it had been off in June).

Loyal Heights Community Center and Playfield

The restrooms were open.  Weirdly, these have stall doors but no dryer.  They're also the first year-round restrooms mentioned in this page, unless there really is a mistake about the Ballard Community Center ones.  The attached water fountain, off in June, was ON in October.

Free-standing water fountain in the Playfield's southwest, near the baseball diamond:  ON (previously off)

Free-standing water fountain upstairs:  ON BUT VISIBLY DAMAGED (previously off)

Baker Park on Crown Hill

The parks department website offers a set of symbols under the heading 'Amenities' on most parks' individual pages.  A symbol I've interpreted as meaning "water fountain" has indeed pointed to a water fountain very reliably - this is how, for example, I found out about the one at Sunset Place.

But that symbol is on the page for this park to this day, and I still couldn't find the water fountain.  Nobody I asked at the park knew anything about one, but they all said they hadn't been visiting it long.  The page talks about an expansion opened in 2020; maybe a water fountain was removed due to that, or as at View Ridge Playfield for fear of COVID-19.  Or maybe the page is wrong, or I've misunderstood the symbol.  I asked Rachel Schulkin, but she never got back to me.

Crown Hill Park

Free-standing double water fountain ON, both bowls' flow low but probably useable

You'll remember, dear Diary, that one of the first parks I visited at the beginning of my October hikes showed the official re-opening of the playgrounds.  But the one adjoining this park, not parks department property, was still locked in the evening of October 16.

Soundview Playfield

The restrooms were closed, but it was 7:20 P.M. and I didn't expect any different.

Free-standing water fountain near the water play area:  OFF, as in June

Water play areas didn't open this year.  It seems likely that this water fountain is on the same pipe as the water play area, and there may not be separate shutoffs.  Rachel Schulkin has told me that all the working water fountains were turned on this year, but I'd find it quite plausible if this one were an exception.

Golden Gardens Park

That night, rain was expected, and so tempting though the benches at Soundview were, I knew I had to reach a shelter.  You already know, dear Diary, from "Standing Room Only" V, that the shelters at this park are very, well, un-sheltering, but I didn't know that as I careened fearfully down Golden Gardens Drive, where no sign survived of its time as a "Stay Healthy" street.  It was full dark, so I didn't turn aside to look for water fountains near the upper restrooms, which I hadn't found in June.

There was a ton of traffic at the bottom.  Most seemed to be for the 24-hour Eddie Vine Boat Ramp, but there were more than a handful in the park as I clambered along looking for the shelters.

Rain had already begun too, occasioning the remarks I used as an epigraph for "Standing Room Only" I from a loud young woman in a party of young people who eventually coalesced at the south end of the beach around a fire.  As I understand it, the city plans to evict all the homeless from Cal Anderson Park because, among other things, of two illegal fires.  Will the city eject half the young people from Golden Gardens because of one?

Anyway, I spent a miserable night in that shelter, and in the morning apparently I was careless.  I had reported, in "The Ballard Seacoast" II, a water fountain near the restrooms and another at the south end of the beach, both off.  This time I only noted

Double free-standing water fountain near the restrooms:  ON, both bowls a bit low flow

The restrooms were opened between 7:49 and 8:30 A.M.

The Burke-Gilman Trail

In my October hikes, I walked all but about two miles of the trail, but largely without my glasses.  I think it's unlikely, but not quite impossible, that there's another water fountain on the trail besides the one on 30th Ave NE and this one at 37th Ave NW.

Well, that's a sad photo, but "NW" actually did considerably better, this year, water fountain-wise, than "N".

Tomorrow, starting the street ends.  None have restrooms or water fountains, and none of those we can visit have lockable doors, so the photos, much more numerous, may also be more interesting.  Good night, dear Diary.