A Broadview Summer, Read Off the Tide Chart Instead of the Calendar
July 16, 2026
July 16, 2026
Most Broadview summers get planned around sunset. The better ones get planned around the tide. If you already live here, the interesting move this July and August is not choosing between an evening at Carkeek and an evening on Greenwood Avenue. It is stitching them together in a single loop that most of your neighbors treat as two separate outings.
That loop exists because of a small, easy-to-miss trailhead behind a grocery store.
Carkeek has two front doors. The one people photograph is the main entrance road that drops down into the ravine and delivers you to the parking lot near the meadow and the pedestrian rail bridge. The one people forget is the Eddie McAbee entrance, tucked behind the QFC on Holman Road off NW 100th Place at 6th Avenue NW. The McAbee parking lot and trailhead are behind a QFC grocery store on Holman Road, off of NW 100th Place at 6th Avenue N.
From that trailhead, it's a ½ mile walk down the Piper's Creek trail to Piper's Orchard, and another mile or so gets you to the beach. What that means practically: you can leave a car on the Greenwood side of the neighborhood, walk the ravine, and finish dinner at a restaurant you passed on the way in. The McAbee entrance is the reason Broadview's park life and its Greenwood Avenue life are not, in fact, two things.
The pedestrian railroad overpass is the most-loved piece of infrastructure in Broadview, and it gets used badly. Most visitors cross it at whatever hour they arrive. Residents who have lived here a few summers know the bridge earns its keep at low tide, when Carkeek Park's beach is one of the premium tide pool beaches in Seattle and at a low tide an additional 20 acres is exposed, allowing visitors to explore the intertidal habitat of Puget Sound.
A rough field guide for planning around it:
| Window | What you can actually do |
|---|---|
| Minus tide, mid-afternoon | Full tide pool exposure, room to walk the exposed flats, best light for kids and cameras |
| Rising tide, early evening | Bridge-and-beach visit, salt air, then head uphill before dinner |
| High tide, sunset | Skip the beach loop and take the forest trails instead |
The park's six-mile trail system leads hikers to legendary Olympic mountain and Puget Sound viewpoints, along creeks, the beach, playground, Salmon Imprint Pond, Demonstration Gardens, Pipers Orchard, and remnants of original fir, hemlock, and cedar forests, so a "wrong" tide is not a wasted trip. It is a different trip.
Piper's Orchard gets its press in October, when the apples are on the trees and the festival tents go up. That is the wrong month to see it for the first time. In July and August, the orchard is quiet, the paths are dry, and you can actually read the layout of the trees.
The history is worth carrying with you as you walk it. The orchard was established in the late 19th century by A. W. Piper, a local confectioner and member of the Seattle City Council, following the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. After the fire destroyed his bakery, A.W. moved with his wife Minna and his extended family to cabins abandoned by loggers on this site. The Pipers planted this orchard along with extensive vegetable and flower gardens. The heirs of A.W. sold the land to the Carkeek family, who donated it to the city in 1927.
Then the trees vanished into the underbrush for half a century. On a run through Carkeek Park in 1981, Daphne Lewis noticed an apple tree in the underbrush. After investigating the area, Lewis, a landscape architect, discovered a number of trees belonging to the historic Piper Orchard. She went on to work with volunteers, including descendants of the original Piper family to reconstruct the old orchard, uncovering more than 30 surviving fruit varieties on the 1.5 cleared acres.
What is standing there in August is, in effect, a living catalog of what people in this region were eating in 1900: Wealthy, King, Gravenstein, Dutch Mignone, Red Astrachan, Rhode Island Greening, Bietigheimer, and Esopus Spitzenburg. If you have kids who ask what an apple tree looks like before the apples show up, this is your answer.
Broadview's business district on Greenwood Avenue is small on purpose. The Broadview neighborhood north of Ballard is named for the views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains that homes in the area enjoy along the western slopes and edges of the community. Broadview, like many areas north of Seattle was heavily forested land that was developed and grew exponentially as rail lines and transportation were added in the early 1900's. Broadview has a small business district along Greenwood Avenue but it does offer a surprising mix of shops and restaurants.
Three specific stops are worth building an evening around this summer.
The newest arrival on the corridor. Broadview Veterinary & Urgent Care opened in May of 2026 to provide quality medical care to Seattle's Pets. We offer routine health appointments, walk-in urgent care visits, and Internal Medicine appointments. The clinic is at 12250 Greenwood Ave N Ste A, and the practical value for the neighborhood is having a walk-in option inside Broadview instead of a drive to Ballard or Northgate. Worth knowing before you need it.
The Tap House at 217 N 125th St is the closest thing Broadview has to a summer patio culture, and it runs a rotating truck schedule that has recently included Wiseguys Italian Street Food, Mr. Gyros Food Truck, Impeckable Chicken, MOMO Express, and Plaza Garcia Express. Hours are wide, with the taproom open daily, 3:00 PM to 10:00 PM Monday through Thursday, 12:00 PM to 11:00 PM Friday and Saturday, and 12:00 PM to 9:00 PM Sunday. Show up hungry, check which truck is parked, plan accordingly.
The neighborhood's sit-down default at 10555 Greenwood Ave North. Locals head to Bick's for an eclectic, frequently changing menu that puts modern twists on old favorites, from spring rolls to garden salads and a selection of meat and seafood entrees, and its Broadview location helps keep the restaurant affordable. A useful room when you have out-of-town family in for the weekend and you want something that isn't a drive to Ballard.
Pick a Saturday when the low tide falls between 4 and 7 PM. Then:
The loop takes about three hours end to end and covers roughly four miles on foot, which is enough to feel earned and short enough to do on a weeknight. Try it once and the neighborhood reorganizes around it.
The June and October bookends. If you missed the trail race in June, mark October. If you saw the tide pools in July, come back for the apples.
The Carkeek Warmer 2026 is on June 23, a Northwest Trail Runs event that starts and finishes in the lower meadow next to Piper's Creek and covers a mix of forest and ridge trail. Even if you are not running, the meadow gets a small festival feel that evening.
The bigger date is fall: the Piper's Orchard Festival of Fruit runs Saturday, October 4, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., free, at Piper's Orchard in Carkeek Park. Cider pressing, apple identification, pie contest at Tillie's Cafe. It is the one day a year the orchard runs at full volume.
If you have kids in the six-to-twelve range, the summer version of the park is Carkeek Park's EarthKeepers Day Camp for children ages 6 to 12 held in July and August, where on any given day a camp participant may explore the tide pools, hike the many trails, play in a field, learn about nature or create art. Camp Fire also runs a North Seattle Day Camp session at Carkeek this year, with a 30-minute earlier start time and new aftercare for pick-up times.
The reason to know Broadview at its summer best is not the summer. It is the eleven months on either side of it, when the same loop still works, just slower and quieter. Neighborhoods reward the residents who use them fully. Broadview rewards the ones who treat Carkeek and Greenwood as one system, not two.
When you are ready to talk about the house that sits inside that system, Brooke Davis knows this stretch of North Seattle well. Let's Connect.
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