Sights around Lake Washington

It promised to be a beautiful day, so we decided to take a look at Lake Washington, just east of Seattle. This elongate water body was carved by glaciers between 19 and 16 thousand years ago. It was part of Puget Sound until about 5700 years ago, when river sediment isolated it from the sea, allowing it to become fresh water. The original outlet at the southern end wasn’t good enough for early American settlers, so they got approval from Congress to construct a canal with locks to connect Lake Washington to Puget Sound, a drop of 20 feet in elevation. As fans of technological progress, we wanted to see this for ourselves.

The Army Corps of Engineers began construction of a set of locks in 1911, under the supervision of Hiram M. Chittenden. As the sign proclaims, his name remains associated with them; however, they are more commonly known as the Ballard Locks after the city where they were built. The site includes a number of stone-faced buildings and has since come to include a botanical garden.

There are two locks, one for larger, commercial vessels (on the other side of the control building) and a smaller lock. The larger one has two sets of gates to accommodate barges.

Several private boats used the lock while we were there. It takes maybe 15 minutes for the water level to equilibrate whether going upstream or downstream (towards Puget Sound).

The spillway was partially open and the turbulent flow created a very dangerous scene. I wouldn’t want to fall into that water.

Salmon have historically swam into Lake Washington to spawn through the small river (Black River) that drained it before the ship canal was constructed. That outlet is apparently filled with sediment now and the area completely covered with development, including Boeing Aircraft’s main plant, where the Museum of Flight is located. The lock design includes a series of pools called a fish ladder that allows the salmon to get to their spawning areas. I guess they figured out the new route. There’s a viewing room to the right where the fish can be seen making their way up the ladder, but there were no fish on this day; and I forgot to take a picture.

The roof of the fish ladder observation room is decorated with this unlabeled artwork.

Just a short drive from Ballard Locks is Washington Park, which includes an arboretum and Japanese Garden. We took a long walk around the park but didn’t make it to the Garden, which has its own parking area.

The walking paths go out to an island, where State Route 520 crosses Lake Washington, partly using a unique floating bridge construction. Traffic was pretty loud out there. I wouldn’t enjoy having lunch on one of the picnic tables.

These are typical plantings along the paths in the arboretum. I don’t know anything about plants, so I asked CoPilot (giving it the location): the low, flowering shrub is probably Pieris japonica (aka Lily of the Valley shrub); and the tree may be Stewartia.

There were numerous masses of flowering shrubs like this, which is probably a dwarf Rhododendron (according to CoPilot). There were a lot of plants within a group, which didn’t look anything like each other; however, the signs explained that the arboretum had large collections of Rhododendrons and Magnolias, for example.

It was a beautiful spring day, and Lake Washington was the perfect place to spend it. I won’t post a photo of the excellent, home-made hamburger and cold beer I enjoyed at Skillet and Vine after a tiring morning of basking in a warm sun.