I have a few previews currently in progress, and a small list of a few more places to get started on, and then I will be done with what I intend to cover in north Seattle. Which is the area of the city easiest for me to do.

Previewing takes more effort than it probably appears from just reading my posts. I usually visit a park a minimum of three times before finalizing my preview. For some parks it’s quite a bit more than that. (For small viewpoints that aren’t close to me I sometimes cheat with just one visit.)

Sometimes that’s because there’s a lot of ground to cover in larger parks and I don’t feel like doing it all in one visit. A lot of times I look at my photos and realize I left something out. Some of the need for multiple visits is to make sure I have a good feel for a park, especially in terms of typical usage and parking conditions.

When going over my To Do list a couple days ago I realized it will eventually be a glaring lack that this blog has no Greenlake preview amongst all my north end coverage.

Pretty much everyone in Seattle and the suburbs has at least heard of Greenlake. When I was in high school in Edmonds we used to come down to rollerskate around the lake. And when I was in my early twenties, living on Capitol Hill, I used to swim at Greenlake as part of my training for a one mile open water swim event.

So it seems only natural that I would do a nice big write-up about the park. But nope. That’s not gonna happen.

The reason is: Greenlake is a park for the robust.

Continue reading →