Lake Sacajawea Park Japanese Gardens — Attraction in Longview

The park is huge, like Central Park in New York. It's pleasant to go for a long walk along the massive park. There's plenty of parking alongside the park. There are nice little bridges you can go under or over. Accross the street from the park are houses or churches. The park is 24 hours and allows dogs on leashes, so there's occasional late night dog walkers. There are handy little doggie bag dispensers and signs warning to clean up after your dog.

You can park your car over night for free next to the park. About a half dozen different people who can't afford rent live in their cars around the park. They move to a new spot each day to avoid tickets for parking over 24 hours. I lived in my car over a year around the park and never saw any crime at night besides public urination. There's some bathrooms, but they are sometimes closed and locked with zero explanation or predictable pattern. Homeless people without cars hang out near the PeaceHealth hospital side of the park. Never had one of them beg me for anything or cause real problems, but they leave their random junk everywhere all day while they sit around complaining to each other about everyone and everything being everyone else's fault. "Why is it cloudy during an eclipse? Who's idea was that?" God's idea!! That's who! It's the weather and the solar eclipse you lazy junk hoarding whiners.

Anyway the park is really nice overall. Better than you normally get in most cities. There's a little playground too, but I'm too old to review that. I don't know if gen alpha kids still play on playground equipment or if they're too busy downloading free to play games to play with...

These pictures are of the far West side of the lake close to Ocean Beach HWY. On the outer skirts of the lake is a dirt and light gravel wide walking path that circles the whole lake with multiple bridges along the path to cross over to the other side. People walk, run, jog, walk pets, bicycle, and some even kayak out on the lake. On the far West side of the lake is an island they built a walkable wooden bridge to and created a walk-around Japanese Garden that's only open at certain days and times. Around the center of the lake and on the far East side there are multiple playgrounds for kids and there's a multitude of park benches and picnic tables surrounding the entire lake. There's a ton of squirrels, ducks, and geese around the lake depending on the time of year. Everything 4th of July they have a fireworks show and flea market little fairgrounds festival around the center...

Wanna go for a walk? Feed some ducks? Sit quietly and watch the sunset? Play catch? Lake Sacajawea is a great place for city dwellers that don't have an abundance of free time and really want to go outside and play.

The Japanese gardens are beautiful, I love just roaming around enjoying a little bit of nature and resting my mind.

The entire lake is pretty well maintained. If you walk all the way around it during the day, you're going to find workers at some point, picking up trash, cutting grass, removing fallen tree limbs, etc.

I've lived in Longview for over 10 years now, and still find an excuse to go visit the lake on a regular basis. I've lived in a lot of places close to some pretty nice and much larger lakes, and for being a small, man made lake, it's appeal stacks up with the...