Friday Roundtable: Everett 4th Festival
On the Fourth of July, Everett has a downtown parade, a festival at a waterfront park, fireworks in the evening - and two bus shuttles running every 5 minutes. I used it as an excuse to check out American Legion Memorial Park and the arboretum there in the afternoon.
Everett's geography has some parallels with West Seattle. It forms a penninsula pointing north like Alki. Marine View Drive runs along the shore in a U shape. The Everett Marina and the naval station are on the west side like Fauntleroy. At the northern tip, Alverson Blvd runs south to American Legion Memorial Park and further to the northwest Everett residential area. From there, Colby Avenue goes south through the residential area to downtown Everett. The park is at the latitude of 1st Street, although there is no 1st Street. At 10th Street is the Everett Marina, the northern part of the residential area, and Everett Community College with a Washington State University Branch. Between 28th and 33rd Streets is downtown Everett. Everett Station is at the southeast corner of this.
This means the park and the marina are three miles away from Everett Station in different directions. The college is two miles from the station.
My roommate and I went to Westlake station at 12:30pm and took the 1 Line to Lynnwood. We transferred to ST Express 512. My friend in north Lynnwood got on the bus at Ash Way P&R. When we got to Everett Station, a multimodal transit hub, the three of us spent a few minutes in the art deco building with real bathrooms. We took ET 7 (Everett Transit route 7) north to Everett College (College Station"). It runs half-hourly Sundays/holidays. All of our transfers this trip were lucky: we never waited more than ten minutes each.
At the College Station transit center, the festival shuttle was a couple blocks away, with a loud sign saying FREE SHUTTLE" and a booth. The shuttle was an Everett Transit bus running every 5 minutes from 2:30pm to 9:30pm, and after the fireworks. We arrived ten minutes before it started, and there was a line that filled the bus. There was no parking at the festival, so everybody had to come by shuttle. The shuttle made a one-way loop, going north on Broadway and west on Marine View Drive past the park to a turnaround, then backtracking to the park stop.
The northern part of Alverson Blvd was closed, and the festival booths were on the street. On the west side of the street a linear strip of grass overlooked the shore, looking down from a bluff like at Discovery Park. The music stage was there, and the offshore fireworks in the evening. On the east side of the street was Legion Park. One of the booths was Visit Everett, the city's tourist board. I was impressed a city so small has such a well organized outreach. My friend in north Lynnwood goes to the Everett library, and says Everett is cooler during summer heat waves. She'll be able to ask Visit Everett questions when she has them.
The highlight for me was the Evergreen Arboretum inside Legion Park. It's a 3 1/2 acre arboretum with white gravel paths going through a variety of trees and flowers. We spent an hour walking through it.
Afterward we took the shuttle back to Everett College. There I discovered that at least three ET routes go from the college to Everett Station: 4 (Walnut Street), 7 (Broadway), 19 (Colby Ave). The 7 is half hourly Sundays; the 4 and 19 have irregular frequencies varying between 20-60 minutes.
I chose the 19 on Colby Ave through the northwest residential area, to retrace my North Everett walk in 2015.
If you want to visit the arboretum or Legion Park on a regular day, you can take a bus to Everett College and walk a mile north on Wetmore Ave and Alverson Blvd to it.
This is an open thread.