It’s about a 15 minute walk to the 39th Street stair climb that goes down in to a pricier neighborhood where most of the houses have views and two car garages. 15 minutes further along, there’s Fauntleroy Park.
The park is shady and quiet and full of moss, ferns, very tall trees that are dropping huge yellow leaves on to the trails. Fauntleroy Creek runs under a series of bridges and boardwalks. It’s risky walking, the wood structures are slick and the trails are muddy.
It seems the recent wind storm took down one big tree, but I don’t know this park so I can’t say that it didn’t go down last season – I do know you have to thread through the downed branches to continue to the East side of the park – I went West instead.
I headed down hoping I might see a Coho salmon, an ambitious early go getter heading upstream to spawn, but instead all I found were three other hikers and a morose couple eating sack lunches. This park is a lovely place for a walk – even though it’s so close to the road and the ferry dock, you don’t hear the noise of the cars on Barton and the terrain goes up and down and across so your walk feels all cross-country.
If you go, do be careful when you’re on the boardwalks and bridges, especially if it’s cold as I imagine it gets quite icy. If we’d gone together, we’d have walked the rest of the way down the hill to that little cafe that has treats and coffee, the name escapes me right now, but it’s a cute place. And cozy.