He not busy being born is busy dying - Bob Dylan

After a busy, non-stop weekend I had the opportunity to slow down and relax a bit on Sunday when Marianna and I met up for a little photo outing around the Port of Seattle’s Harbor Island. Marianna had a time constraint so I picked out three public viewpoints owned by the Port of Seattle and we agreed to meet up at Alki.

We started off at Jack Block Park in West Seattle. I visited there recently but Marianna hadn’t been and it’s a really nice little park, with views of Seattle and the port. It’s also home to plenty of wildlife, with frequent sightings of seals. Indeed, we spent time watching a baby seal as it frolicked around Elliott Bay. Jack Block is the easiest to find and nicest of the Port of Seattle parks I’ve visited so far, I’d recommend it as a good spot for photography.

Next, we planned to visit a public viewpoint at Terminal 18 on Harbor Island itself. Unfortunately I missed the turn off and we wound up on East Marginal Way. This still worked out as the last place we planned to visit was Jack Perry Memorial Park which is just off East Marginal Way just north of Terminal 30. This park is a tiny little spot surrounded by fences. The views in just about any direction are obstructed. It does have access to a tiny slice of shoreline not much longer than a car. The views might be more interesting if a ship is in port on this side of Harbor Island, but apart from that there is little to recommend this spot for photographers.

Heading back towards Alki, we were determined to find the turn off for the Terminal 18 viewpoint. We managed to make our way onto SW Klickitat Avenue which the park was supposed to be off of, but no sign of the park on the first pass. We went quite a distance before turning around. Heading back south on Klickitat, we spotted the park entrance sign off on the right, but it was down a one way road going the wrong way! We circled around for another try, having to go north on Klickitat a ways because the road here is divided by a large overpass and Klickitat splits with the north and south lanes on opposite sides of the overpass. Very strange configuration! We still didn’t see a way to get to the park without going the wrong way on that one way road so we headed off north looking for a way onto that side road. We finally found it by sheer luck. In the future, I’d probably just dash the wrong way up that road, it’s just a half a block or so and traffic was non-existent on a Sunday.

Having finally found the park, I have to say it was a beautiful surprise. The landscaping was very pretty and there were several large colorful picnic shelters. The park is right on the ship canal so you had views of the port and boat traffic going back and forth. Just outside the park are railroad tracks and across the street a short distance a freight yard and cranes for loading containerized cargo. Plenty of sights to interest a photographer! I’ll be visiting again. From here we headed back to Marianna’s car with a brief stop at the Hamilton Park Viewpoint just to take in the skyline before calling it a day. All in all, a pleasant outing!

As always, more photos from this trip on Flickr!