2020-05-18 47 -122

Location

In Discovery park, possibly on the roof of building in the treatment facility.

Participants

Thomcat

Plans

Lunchtime visit, shortly after noon

Expedition

My original thought was to drive in, but the park was closed to vehicular traffic. Plan B was to drive around the side and park as close as possible, then walk.

Plan B turned out to be a good way to go; lovely vistas I would have missed had I driven through (isn't that always the way?). Interestingly, some of my photos didn't get uploaded, though I didn't get an app error. I had LTE and no signal problems, so hmmm...

One of the photos that did was for the Fort Lawton radar station. There were several at one point, and the google aerial shows the empty pads - but I didn't walk up the hill this time. Maybe a future geohash or retrohash?

The trail (and road) both lead down off of what is known as Magnolia Bluff. The trail has stairs in the steep parts, the road - well, cars and bikes have gears. Lovely vistas, as I mentioned, and very few people out. I brought my mask, in case I needed to converse with any. The trail led up to a meadow near the point, and I found what the unusual feature was - a concrete wall.

The building *seems* to tuck under the wall at this point, but at my closest approach, the geohashpoint was still more than 20 meters away. No attaching the phone to a selfie stick to get success. The wall had considerable vegetation and didn't look friendly to a climbing attempt - plus it probably dropped off to the roof below on the other side. The roof of a government facility. Probably defended with guards, or lasers, or worse.

So, No Public Access achieved, I walked around to the other side to see if I could get a picture of the building. I did not walk down and around, but I did see security guards, so that was probably a no. Having now used more than an hour of my lunch hour, I decided it was time to return (uphill) to the car and then to work. Along the way, I passed a nice overview photo which shows the wall and the building under. This flickr photo set also shows it, and lends me to think that maybe I could have gone on the roof, had I more time and chatted with those friendly folks. Alas...

I've been in the northern half of the park a few times, but will have to revisit the southern half on a nicer day for a longer stay.