Story and photos by Jason Grotelueschen
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

Clear skies and an impressive Friday night sunset treated visitors at West Seattle’s Solstice Park for a summer solstice watch hosted by local volunteer and NASA Solar System Ambassador Alice Enevoldsen (pictured above at center-left, holding her trusty globe-on-a-stick and explaining with youth volunteers how the Sun and Earth are positioned at various times of the year).

Enevoldsen, who said she has been organizing these quarterly change-of-seasons gatherings for “10 years — plus one sunset!” talked with attendees about the solstice.

The unique park, uphill from the tennis courts by north Lincoln Park, has paths and markers that were built to align precisely with the sunsets on solstice/equinox days. Prior to sunset just after 9 pm, Enevoldsen showed visitors where to stand to best experience the event.

Several younger attendees were equally happy to run around the markers and burn off some welcome-to-summer energy.

In Seattle, the exact moment of the summer solstice occurred at 8:54 a.m. on Friday, and during the day the sun’s position in the sky was at its highest point of the year (66 degrees).