9 MILES AROUND MAGNOLIA

Weekend planning has become a sport.  Sometimes plans are already set — an island weekend or a portland weekend, or a central event around which activities are organized.  Other times the weekend is a blank slate.

This weekend was a blank slate. Jodi had found an interesting 10 mile hike near Bellingham, but after traveling all week in Tennessee, she was up for something closer to home.

The previous weekend, on the way back up from Portland, we had dinner at Mulleady’s, an Irish Pub in Magnolia with decent food.  That dinner, and Magnolia in general, sparked an idea. Let’s hike around Magnolia.

So on Saturday we parked the car in front of Mulleadies and started our trek.

Magnolia is an interesting part of Seattle.  Neighborhoods range from a rather seedy row of apartments overlooking the BNSF railyard at interlay to manicured estates overlooking puget sound.  In addition there’s the old Fort Lawton, now called ‘Discovery Park’.

Our walk would take us through all of those neighborhoods and through the park as well.

Apparently they like statues in Magnolia.   We saw several.

Who wants a plain lawn in their front yard?

Magnolia Bluff has some wonderful Madrona trees.  Jodi made the comment “These Madrona trees should be in the Madrona neighborhood, not Magnolia”. Little did she know we were actually in what could have been the Madrona neighborhood — except for the fact that in 1897, a government botanist, one Dr. George Davidson, mistook the Madronas for Magnolias and named the bluff for the trees he thought he saw — Magnolia bluff.

While there’s no dispute that the mistake was made, there is some dispute on who, exactly, made it.  Some have blamed Captain George Vancouver, others blame Charles Wilkes — both sailed these waters early on and named (and in Wilkes case renamed) nearly everything in sight.  One enterprising fellow, however closely examined the historical record and it appears that Davidson was the the culprit. So it was a government biologist and we’ve chosen to perpetually accept the error.  Hmmmm.

Our walk took us through Discovery Park, a truly wonderful park that used to be an Army installation - Fort Lawton.

Looking back to Shilshole from Discovery park

Fort Lawton opened in 1900 and was originally designed to defend Seattle and Southern Puget Sound from a naval attack. It became a rather quiet outpost, but revved up for WWII becoming the second largest port for embarkation of troops and material for the Pacific Theater of the war.

The conversion to a park was the work of a variety of people over a long period of time. The story, too long to reiterate, was a complicated one in that various civic groups, the army, and native americans, all had claims and ideas of what to do with the over 500 acre property.  In the end, the winner was more or less the notion of ‘leave it alone and let nature do it’s thing’.

It is a gem of a park and we walked most of the ‘loop trail’ around the park.

The Argosy boat, styled after the mosquito fleet steamers

West Point Lighthouse

Blake Island in the distance

Cold war remnant now tracks flights for the FAA

The only story I have from the Fort Lawton days involved the purchase of the dragon class sailboat we eventually took up to Alaska.  The fellow we bought it from lived in Magnolia and had it by the side of his house, all dismantled, on a boatyard trailer.  The trailer was not street worthy, but if one towed it slow enough, it just might make the journey over to capital hill where we had rented some underground space below a building to restore the boat.

We had our stories all worked up for the inevitable stops we were going to get from the police as we were certain we’d be cited for moving a boat without permits on a wobbly yard trailer, so one Saturday morning in either late 1977 or early 1978 we hooked up the dilapidated trailer to the ’65 Ford Galaxy 500 and began the journey.

By pure luck, it turned out that a major chunk of the US army stationed at Fort Lawton was leaving the base — with all their material.  Trucks, artillery, jeeps, anything and everything on wheels was leaving the base.  Every intersection between the fort and I-5 had uniformed troops stopping traffic and allowing the convoy to go through.  We couldn’t believe our good luck and  fell right in line with the convoy.  We had beards and long hair and got a few odd looks, but we hung in the convey as long as we could then tested the fords V8 as we pulled the 30 foot boat up the incline of Capitol Hill.  No tickets!!

Back to the present time, over a third of century later, here we are walking around Magnolia.

We popped out of the park into the high rent area of Magnolia and walked down Perkins lane.  Back in the early 50’s, apparently my Grandmother wanted to live on Perkins lane, but my Grandfather vetoed the idea as he thought the land was unstable on that part of the bluff. Turns out he was right. In 1996 several homes tumbled down the bluff.

1996 - Perkins Lane from the water

We did see an eagles nest on the lane, which was pretty cool.  It was situated such that the pictures couldn’t really capture anything, but ma or pa eagle was perched near by.

We walked up to Magnolia Boulevard and the views and the houses were very nice.

Finally we walked the final mile back to Mulleady's, finishing what turned out to be a 9 mile jaunt.  Perfect.

Jodi ordered a moscow mule, I started with a Stoups IPA and we began the meal by ordering deviled scotch eggs — a sinful, but wonderful treat!!

A 9 mile walk around Magnolia.  Perfect way to get some exercise and see some very nice views!!