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.

Escaping Green Lake Park, part I

Dear Diary,

Do you ever talk with that other page?  As I just told it, I'm now, in a sense, among the sheltered homeless.  I'm writing this not from the usual bench, but from a too-warm bed.  All the photos in this page, I was able to take today, without worrying about my cart.

That said, the story I have to tell still irks me.  And it actually isn't about homelessness anyway, this page.  It's about pedestrians with wheels.

From hike 3C, i.e. the parks of Greenwood, all of which the map depicted at the time as having open restrooms, none of which actually had them, I went north to hike 3D, which I'll tell you about later, dear Diary.  But it involved yet another restroom mapped but not open, and I was starting to need to do Number Two.  There were two "sanican"s at that park, but the ADA one was being camped in, and the regular one was out of toilet paper.

So I trudged back south, along Fremont Ave N, which was then, and according to Google Maps still is, a "Stay Healthy" street much of the way.  Eventually I noticed a man, probably somewhat older than me, walking to one side, and asked him if the block really had a sidewalk.  He said yes, and made way for me and my cart.  He also decided the reason I hadn't noticed the sidewalk was the darkness (he had no way of knowing I normally wear glasses), so he gave me his flashlight!  It converts to a lantern.

I never actually got around to figuring out how to attach it to my cart - basically, I prefer having some night vision over increasing my visibility - but used it for a very different purpose within 24 hours.  It's much brighter than the flashlight I already had.

Anyway, I got back to Green Lake Park, used one of its restrooms, and settled down on a bench to get some rest, because I meant to get up around 2 A.M. to start trying to figure out which restrooms in Green Lake and Woodland Parks were open 24 hours.

Instead I woke well past 4 A.M..  I still think my data on Green Lake, between 5 and 6 A.M., are probably good, but it was after 7 before I finished Woodland, and I can't be sure the last pair of restrooms hadn't just been opened.

Regardless, I had no work left in those parks for the time being.  Now, I wanted to get to Golden Gardens Park that day, and so (yes, I know this doesn't make sense) I was determined to exit at Aurora Ave N and N 65th St.  So I walked up West Green Lake Drive N, which is closed to traffic much of the way to Aurora.

Eventually I became aware that I was on Aurora, and although it was Sunday morning and traffic was light, this did not appear the healthiest place to be.  Again I noticed a sidewalk, of sorts.  The cart did not at all like crossing the verge to the gravel path, and a rivet burst.

Then I actually saw the path.

That line in the foreground is one tree root, and the hill in the middle is another, much bigger.  Here's a closer view of the puddle beyond, which was rather larger the morning of January 10:

So obviously light traffic on Aurora was much to be preferred over wrestling the damaged cart past obstacles like these, and back over the verge we went, me and that cart, which burst another rivet on the way.

One might ask, is there a sidewalk on the other side of Aurora, justifying Green Lake Park in offering only a parody of one on this side?  Unfortunately Aurora is divided there, and of course there are no sidewalks along the dividers:

So of course in the end I finally crossed Aurora at N 68th St, which I could've reached via a short paved trip up from the loop trail.  But the cart was unhappy with me, and soon began to show it.  I'd had trouble with one of those rivets before, and figured I knew what I was in for.  But actually, it turns out that without either of them, essentially nothing holds the back side of the cart in place.  And I was headed uphill, crossing Phinney Ridge.

So after I'd put everything back into the cart, jury-rigged into a temporary fix, I went on to hike 4B, about which I'll tell you shortly, dear Diary.  But first I should explain that a few days later, I did find out how pedestrians on Aurora are supposed to avoid those tree roots.  It's an insanely complicated route involving bits and pieces of at least four streets, and an underpass.  It is signalled entirely by subtle cues that only a profoundly defensive pedestrian will recognise.  Here's some of the abundant signage where I should have turned off West Green Lake to join that route; sorry for the bad photos:

Now, you see, dear Diary, the wheelchair symbol in the middle photo, but it is not attached to a sign reading "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here".  The only cue telling a dementedly defensive pedestrian that the proper direction here is down N 63rd St is that there are sidewalks on both sides of that street, as shown in the bottom photo.

I'm not sure, dear Diary, whether the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation or the Seattle Department of Transportation is responsible for this mess, but I can hardly wait for the ADA suit about it, in which I'd love to testify.  (My damage amounted to $70, the cart's price, and I'm not disabled; suing myself would be pointless.)  I don't know what drives Parks's love for gravel paths, but I don't think that love is so out of place anywhere in North Seattle as along Green Lake Park's border on Aurora Ave N.

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.