walk about
Scott Bahlmann
Dear M,
One of the big reasons for moving to Seattle is the walkability. My husband and I both walk to work, for me it’s a 20 minute jaunt and quite nice as a decompression time, appreciating the new blooms and interesting things along the way. And husband regularly jogs 20 minutes to the gym and back. Outside of these routines we’ve had a few outings that have taken walkability to the extreme!
The first such outing was to go to the cinema. We don’t have a movie theatre in Fremont, but there are three in different nearby neighborhoods, each about a 40 min walk for us. When we went the first time, it was sort of a test to see how manageable the walk downtown is, and it worked out fine for us! There have been quite a few walking outing since.
From Phinney Ave, which runs right by our apartment, we can see across the canal a green bridge tucked in the hillside of Queen Anne. Since first discovering it we’ve wanted to actually encounter it. It made sense to walk across the Aurora bridge, which would make it more of an adventure and seemed to be on the same level as the mysterious green bridge. The smaller Fremont bridge we’d already traversed a few times. Having walked to the university shopping village the day before we were to head out, I passed under the bridge and realized we’d have to head quite a bit north to be able to access it by foot, so I plotted a path on google before we ventured forth, getting the streets near the on/off ramp that we’d want to walk to. Then, with an empty Saturday before us we set out!
After about an hour, we reached the onramp for the bridge, only to discover that there was no pedestrian path across! Which was also when we realized that I had taken us to the wrong bridge all together, the I-5. The crossing that we wanted was only about 10 minutes from our apartment. So we headed back, and found the proper bridge which we could indeed walk across.
We were a bit worn out at this point, but with the promise of lunch at a cafe just across the way we decided to press on. The unobtrusive green bridge was just a small distance from where we came off Arora, and in a really lovely forested area. It was worth even the extra four miles that I took us out of the way.
The week after we walked downtown again for a musical which turned out to not be worth the walk. It was bundled with an harbor cruise though, so not a completely failed trip and we made up for it by walking even further! Rather than coming back along the same route we went out of our way to cross the ballard bridge and came back through that neighborhood. This seven mile journey completed our bridge triage, we’ve crossed them all on foot! ...well, not the I-5, but we did attempt that even. -.o
-S