Coastal Trail - Elderberry Park — Attraction in Alaska

I've been patronizing this park and the adjacent bike trail for nearly 40 years now.. first playing at the park as a child.

It's great for tourists and locals alike. But do take note.. the city has made the decision to "suggest" that patrons of the park pay for parking via credit card on an app or online at easy park website.

I'm not sure how often the downtown partnership employees frequent the parking area, but there aren't individual parking stall delineations just a general "5994" parking area sign for the whole dozen or so parking areas there, so the parking associate would have to cross reference any "paid parking" online by vehicle.

This never used to be a paid parking area, but I doubt they'd enforce unless the vehicle was there for some time. Especially if you're in your car and only there for 10 to 20 minutes.

I assume it may be to discourage people from parking for free here and walking up to an appointment in the downtown areas?

But on a more positive note, they've recently made upgrades and improvements to the park playgrounds and even on this rainy day, children and families were out playing in the rain on the new equipment.

They even had 2 porta potties to replace the old municipally maintained public restroom building that used to be adjacent to the...

Just a tourist point of view here, but we went here after seeing a YouTube channel recommend it, but when we were here, on a Thursday afternoon in June 2024, the Elderberry Park appeared to have been redone in the Fall of 2023, the sign was still there, there were plenty of people with kids using it and was a nice park for the kids to use, But then we took the walkway thru the tunnel under the railroad to see the mud flats along the shoreline. They do have a trash and homeless problem here, it is not an attractive look. We turned around and went back to the hotel. So, after being to Fairbanks and Anchorage, I realize there is a high cost of living here, but the cities, State and Federal, need to do more to keep these tourists cities cleaned up, at least May thru September. I give them a 3 star, for having updated the children's park, it looks nice and was being properly used the day...

We parked here so we could get to the coastal trail. This is one of the best places to start the coastal trail. You don't want to go all the way down town where it literally ends, there's not parking for your car, plus we found a bit of homeless people at the end. This park was great for parking in your car, getting the bikes out, and starting the coastal trail. Growing up I usually started the coastal trail at Kincaid Park at that huge hill. It's fun, but I've always missed out on the beauty of the downtown side of the trail. This part of the trail is hands down the prettiest and best. I'm mad that all these years I've always gone to Kincaid or started by the airport and headed to Kincaid. The trail between the airport area and elderberry Park was scenic, beautiful, and just some really...