Parks in our Neighborhood

We have been spending some time visiting nearby parks. Our house is kind of centrally located among several great parks (within 2 miles of our house is a beach, a forest, and a lake, among other parks). Seattle really has spectacular parks. From playgrounds to forests to beaches, all of them are clean, organized, well kept, and generally impressive.

Here are some of the neat ones we have visited. I suggest following some of the links below, to see fantastic panoramic and aerial views on the respective Wikipedia pages.

Gasworks Park is an old industrial facility that the city absorbed, revamped, and opened to the public in 1975. It is an interesting and fun place to visit with a great view of the city. 

Carkeek Park is 216 acre forest with a small century-old orchard, trails for walking biking and hiking, and a beach at the end. This park is quite close and a good place to take the dog for a walk.

Greenlake is a 260 acre freshwater lake and park where you can do all kinds of activities including swimming and various boating, kayaking, canoeing etc. We haven’t done any of that yet.

Golden Gardens is beach-front park on the Puget Sound with trails and a wetland area. The beach has volleyball courts, fire pits, etc. From the beach, looking out across the water, there are views of the Olympic Mountains. It is quite a strange thing to be on a beach and have towering mountains in the distance instead of the endless void of the ocean. But it is fairly awesome.

Kerry Park is not close to our house, but it is the quintessential view of Seattle. From this tiny park on a hill in the Queen Anne District, you can see just about everything: the best view of downtown Seattle with Mt. Rainier in the background (on a good day), the shipyards, Elliott Bay, the West Seattle peninsula, and Bainbridge Island.