Myrtle Edwards

I had a short break between meetings and since I was passing through downtown I decided to spend lunch checking out low tide at the Olympic Sculpture Park. The 20' orange construction cones were interesting, but mainly I wanted to see the pocket beach with the water pulled back. It turns out there is a rock sill - which sort of connects up with the "habitat" bench farther south in front of the seawall. I guess the sill is intended to keep the gravel from escaping out to sea - not that there was much evidence of it wanting to do that.

I also wanted to check out the little "pocket" in front of the CSO facility a couple of hundred yards farther north in Myrtle Edwards Park. It had always struck me as a good place to create a nice pocket beach - but someone beat me to it. There's a big plug of fresh gravel -- nicely sorted fresh gravel - on the lower beach. But it stops half way up. It looks like someone started to build a beach from the bottom up and then ran out of money. Or maybe they're planning on coming back later? Meanwhile, next winter's storms may tend to push the berm farther onshore.

Wouldn't it be neat if they brought in mixed sand and gravel and completed the profile up into the pocket, burying all the crud that is currently exposed. It would make a bigger and more interesting pocket beach than the sculpture park, but without all the groins and sills. It reminds me suspiciously of those gravel berms I recently noted down at Jack Block Park (the old PSR site) at southwest harbor.