Tag Archives: puget sound

Sh__ from an Old Notebook: Naketa Beach Walk (Mukilteo, WA)

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In preparation for AAG next week, I’ve been combing through some old notes from old conferences in Evernote (which technically still counts as a notebook), and I found this gem of a note from July, 2013:

6026 88th St SW, Mukilteo, WA 98275
http://goo.gl/maps/VyidT

The train just passed between this area and a row of houses on the beach that had no apparent way to access them. Look up in greater detail on Earth when you can.
See, I was on the Amtrak Cascades line north of Seattle en route to Vancouver, and I did a double-take as the train zipped by this weird outpost of houses lined up on the beach that seemed to be separated from any discernible roadway by the train tracks. I quickly took my coordinates (or something close to them) and pasted them into a note, and I guess “when you can” became “in almost four years.” Either way, I just looked up those coordinates on Google Earth, and I found that little row of houses by the Puget Sound. The addresses are in the 8000 block of something called Naketa Beach Walk.

Go ahead and zoom in. I would imagine that it wouldn’t be called a “Walk” if cars were allowed on it or close to it. But my big question is still how people gain access to those houses; is there a tunnel I’m not finding? The aerial imaging gets somewhat dicey the closer you zoom in and around the site, as the trees are digitally altered above the tracks. Also, the shadows over most of the track don’t help the investigation, either. It appears that the closest place anyone can park a car is on the other side of the tracks there, where Naketa Beach Walk meets Naketa Beach Rd and Naketo Branch.

I just found this video that a Youtube user named Justin Donnelson uploaded of a panorama he shot from the beach by those houses. It doesn’t shed much light on how someone gets to that beach, but my “tunnel” theory hasn’t been proven wrong… yet.

So, have any of you ever been to this town or to this site? I’m genuinely curious. The more I toggle around Mukilteo, WA on that embedded map, the cooler the town looks! Hey, Mukilteo, WA, are you looking to hire a Geographer? …. and don’t take my inability to sort Naketa Beach Walk using remote sensing as any reflection of my qualifications.

Also, for anyone interested in train travel, take a ride on the Cascades line from Portland to Vancouver; it makes all other trains in the US just look silly.