Trails Archives | Page 3 of 6 | Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

Designing a bike park for every rider at Strawberry Hill

Designing a bike park for every rider at Strawberry Hill

Matt Blossom grew up on a simpler island, in a simpler time.

It was the 1980s, and on Bainbridge Island the people were fewer, the houses farther apart, the property lines less distinct. Blossom could ride his Yamaha dirt bike from his parents’ house in Eagledale to Walt’s Market in Lynwood Center, or wherever else, and nobody really seemed to mind.

“Bainbridge was a great place to grow up,” says Blossom, a fifth generation islander on both sides. “As a kid you feel isolated, but once you leave and come back, you realize what a special community it is.”

Knowing island back roads and byways as well as anyone and better than most, even Blossom was surprised when, last year, he first set foot on the former Hayashida property northwest of Strawberry Hill Park.

The historic strawberry farm was now a rolling hillside of […]

Designing a bike park for every rider at Strawberry HillDouglas2023-02-17T16:36:10-08:00

Great work for parks & trails in our 2021 Annual Report

Great work for parks & trails in our 2021 Annual Report

It’s all about positive impacts.

Read the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation’s 2021 Annual Report, out now. From KidsUp! Playground to the STO Sakai Connector, Blakely Harbor Park restoration to a $1 million donation to expand Strawberry Hill Park, together we did great things for our parks and trails.

We’re grateful for the swelling ranks of generous donors and volunteers who make all of our accomplishments possible. Thank you!

Great work for parks & trails in our 2021 Annual ReportDouglas2022-08-01T12:24:28-07:00

Summer Trails Crew is in the field

Summer Trails Crew is in the field

Summer Trails Crew is in the field, blazing away on this year’s signature project: a new trail along the island’s farmland district.

The trail will connect Day Road East with Lovgreen Road, skirting the west edge of the public farms’ rolling fields of grapes and berries and everyone’s favorite fall pumpkin patch.

“Dusty work, but satisfying,” said crew member Will Gleason, back for his second year with the program. “It’s a good way to be outside, working on good projects that you can see develop before your eyes. It’s a good way to spend the summer.”

Several years in the planning, the farmland trail’s half-mile route follows unopened rights of way and easements. At its midpoint, it will connect up with wooded trails through the old M&E tree farm property, 13 acres of open space south of the farmland. Another connecting trail runs along the […]

Summer Trails Crew is in the fieldDouglas2022-07-27T11:17:38-07:00

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteers

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteers

Everybody has a favorite park – that one with great features, a special memory attached, or just the one down the street.

For Pete Jones, it’s the park right next door.

A resident of the historic Victorian Lane condominiums – built around 1910, as officers quarters for a then-remote Coast Artillery Corps post at “Bean Point” – Jones has only to step outside, cross a green threshold and lose himself in the 137 acres of Fort Ward Park.

“One of the reasons we moved in was because of the park,” says Jones, who relocated to the island from California’s Carmel Valley three years ago. “I’ve been hiking in this park since day one, almost every single day.”

No surprise that Fort Ward Park is Jones’ “absolute” pick as a founding volunteer with Park Stewards, a new program of the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & […]

Park Stewards program looks for next-level volunteersDouglas2022-06-21T16:05:47-07:00

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail vision

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail vision

Gov. Jay Inslee pedaled the Sound to Olympics Trail on Bainbridge Island, as Leafline Trails Coalition today launched a visionary network with more than 900 miles of trails to safely and efficiently connect communities throughout the central Puget Sound region.

“Nobody’s ever caught frowning on a trail,” Inslee said as he live-streamed his ride up the STO from Winslow Way to High School Road, via a handlebar-mounted camera. “Everybody’s happy, ever notice that? People on trails are always smiling.”

Inslee live-streamed brief comments from the STO trailhead, hailing the regional trails plan as the most exciting mapping project since Peter Puget surveyed Puget Sound in 1792.

There are about 500 miles of trails today in King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, Leafline says, but there has never before been a concerted effort to create a network that crosses jurisdictional boundaries and Puget Sound.

Currently, 56 percent of the more than 900-mile trail network is […]

Leafline Trails Coalition launches 900-mile trail visionDouglas2022-06-01T14:52:35-07:00

We are now the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

We are now the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation

The Bainbridge Island Parks Foundation is now the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails Foundation, accenting its position as a leader in the planning and funding of local public trails.

“Public trails are at the nexus of outdoor recreation, community health, sustainability and climate resilience,” said Mary Meier, Parks & Trails Foundation executive director. “Adding ‘trails’ to our name affirms our commitment to an island where ample trails link neighborhoods, parks, schools, culture and commerce, open and accessible to all.”

The nonprofit Parks & Trails Foundation enjoys a close partnership with the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District, the island’s local public park agency.

Where the Park District owns island parks and runs recreation programs with its taxing authority, the Parks & Trails Foundation raises private donations and grants for projects that would otherwise go unfunded. Gifts to the Parks & Trails […]

We are now the Bainbridge Island Parks & Trails FoundationDouglas2022-05-25T12:05:14-07:00

A ‘trifecta of awesomeness’ on the STO Trail

A ‘trifecta of awesomeness’ on the STO Trail

In the fullness of a 3,700-mile route, a seven-mile ribbon across a little island in Puget Sound may not seem so grand.

Then again, it’s our seven miles. So the fact that Bainbridge Island’s bit of the Sound to Olympics Trail also falls along the path of the Great American Rail-Trail – a contiguous path that will stretch from the other Washington to this one, crossing a dozen states and entirely walkable and bikeable – that’s turning into kind of a big deal.

That’s what Kevin Belanger, project manager for Washington D.C.-based Rails To Trails Conservancy found during an April visit to Bainbridge Island. Belanger came to spend an hour walking the STO’s Winslow segment with local trails fans, and was greeted by City Hall.

“I really […]

A ‘trifecta of awesomeness’ on the STO TrailDouglas2022-09-23T11:08:42-07:00

Finding the way to a new park at Waypoint Woods

Finding the way to a new park at Waypoint Woods

The Winslow ferry zone is the last place you might go looking for it, but Karl Petersen sure finds it in nearby Waypoint Woods: peace and quiet.

Maybe it’s the depth of the shadows, the twisting path that always keeps you a little off kilter, that keep the tiny woods off Olympic Drive a place apart even as the great and busy world thrums past.

“The path is crooked, and you never see very far ahead. Unless the sun is out and bright, which it normally is not, you don’t know which direction you’re going,” said Petersen, a neighbor who’s been tramping Waypoint Woods for a decade and still finds it fresh for discovery. “You keep making turn after turn after turn, and a lot of the turns are pretty dramatic. You never know where you are in that place. I find that enchanting.”

The […]

Finding the way to a new park at Waypoint WoodsDouglas2022-03-11T11:14:23-08:00

SAVE THE DATE: Waypoint Woods Community Conversation, March 6

SAVE THE DATE: Waypoint Woods Community Conversation, March 6

Explore Waypoint Woods and share your ideas for Winslow’s next gateway park, at a Community Conversation and park tour, 2-4 p.m. Sunday, March 6.

The event begins with a presentation of preliminary park designs at the Bainbridge Island Rowing Stan Pocock Legacy Boathouse, 301 Shannon Drive in Waterfront Park. A walking tour of nearby Waypoint Woods follows.

Waypoint Woods is located at the corner of Olympic and Harborview drives, bounded by the Winslow Waterfront Trail and Waypoint plaza near the ferry terminal.

The Parks Foundation is leading a planning process, with Seattle-based AHBL land use and design firm, to improve the 3-acre park for neighborhood and visitor use.

Friends of STO fund supports greenway tree work

Underperforming trees marked for thinning on the STO Winslow Connector.

Tree thinning on the Sound To Olympics Trail heralds a healthier greenway for Winslow’s “linear park.”

Spindly, underperforming and dying trees are being removed along a stretch of the STO’s Winslow Connector, between Winslow Way and the ravine bridge south of Vineyard Lane.

Those remaining trees will enjoy healthier long-term growth, and native shrubs below will thrive better.

“Hotter and drier summers are testing the health of island forests,” says Barb Trafton, Parks Foundation Projects Director. “The thinning of overcrowded stands of trees by removing spindly, shaded ones allows more air and water circulation for the remaining trees, boosting opportunities for biodiversity along the STO greenway.’

The select thinning was approved by the City of Bainbridge Island. The project is funded through the Parks Foundation’s Friends of the STO Trail Fund, which supports greenway stewardship in […]

Friends of STO fund supports greenway tree workDouglas2022-01-21T09:48:00-08:00