Seahurst Park

My bicycling white whale this summer has been Ed Munro Seahurst Park in Burien, a suburb, I guess, of Seattle, about 10 miles or so from downtown, past White Center where we sometimes go on .83 rides to visit a pretty good taco truck and where we used to have our south end “clubhouse” or sorts, the now-defunct Pacific Rim brewpub which, I hear, has now re-opened under some other name, or maybe the same one, I dunno.

Anyway, it’s not like the park is miles and miles away in some vast, uncharted area of the state; it’s just that, seeing in on maps and looking at the website for it, and being familiar with the ride partway there, I’ve wanted to check it out, at least since June.

But the opportunity never presented itself over the summer, or I never availed myself of it, until yesterday, with but thirty-six or so hours left until I begin teaching again, on the first real wet and miserable day of fall, I finally made the ride over there, and I’m glad I did.

There’s a great downhill into Seahurst, as is typically the case with such local parks that sit on the Puget Sound and you get a great view of the water once you’re there. A big shelter with a barbecue grill sits at the north end of the place and I imagined the sorts of fire-stoked stupidity that could go on there were the bike gang to disobey the 7:30 park closing time and show up there some night in the dead of winter.

What I liked best, though, was the route back up from the water, which wound through the woods on a hard-packed gravel service road. It was a climb to be sure, but with ample switchbacks and no traffic whatsoever, it was far better than retracing the route I came in on whose downhill enjoyment was tempered by the thought of slogging back up.