Old Flower Friends, New Flower Friends

 I'll start with the new flower friends. This is the very newest. Sue gave it to me for my birthday! It's an Azalea, variety 'Stewartsonian,' with deep red flowers. I'll take its picture again when more of them open. She said the color I got was pot luck, but I like it.

This isn't actually the flowers. These are mostly grown for their foliage It's one of the Heuchera I bought last year, and it's really happy. The variety is 'Peach Flambe.' I like this a LOT. It will add bright color all season.

This is one of the two Brunnera I bought last year. This one is 'Frostbite.' The other one is either dead or not up yet. There are a lot of things not up yet, so who knows. I'm so happy to see it bloom. I knew the flowers were small; it's more of a foliage plant. The leaves will get very big after the flowers are done, but I love the delicate blue for spring.

Now for the old friends. I show you these most years. However, last year I divided and moved most of these, so I'm happy to report that I now have multiple puddles of all of them.

First is the traditional English Primrose. Three clumps in bloom! It was quite breezy when I took the pictures.

This is the Cowslip Primrose. It seems to be very very happy for me. There are three puddles of this now, also.

And I also split the purple Corydalis, possibly 'Berry Wine' variety. Both clumps of it are blooming.

It's pretty early to be digging around yet- too easy to cut plants that aren't quite emerged. But I need to get my fencing up. The deer love azaleas, so it will have to go in prison, and I now have netting for the front garden and the rock garden. I think I'll need to get those up next week.

I worked on the book today, and spent some time with Cathy. We took a tiny walk. Did about 90 miles of campsites and some editing. Might do more yet tonight.

Total miles hiked in 2024: 210.9 of which 70.6 is North Country Trail.

See A High Probability of Naughtiness

Back to Crystal Valley

 I went back out to Crystal Valley today, but still didn't hike every piece of every loop. I did walk 8.3 miles though.

It's still not really spring in the woods. Found more hilly trails. This is a really good area to get a workout around here. From the parking lot to the high point is about 300 feet difference, but the trails go up and down a lot. I definitely climbed and descended more than 300 feet. My tracker said my net elevation gain was 2.67 feet. Right. All that means is that I went in a loop which is good. Returning to the car is good.

I took several pictures that didn't come out at all. I took a picture of Sweetfern in bloom. Not in focus. It smells even more spicy than the leaves.

There was sun, so I was able to get a nice shadow of some emerging leaves on a rock.

The Shadbush is trying to show off. That's one of the very earliest blooms in the woods.

I was hoping for some wildflowers, but it's a very dry woods, so I didn't have big expectations. All I found was one small clump of common violets at the edge of a clearing.

A tattered Red Admiral butterfly was hanging around while I ate my lunch. I did also see a dragonfly.

It's really interesting that where the trees are getting sunlight they are starting to pop! This was a fencerow on the way home. I love this time of year.

Since I had to repeat some sections of some loops to get to "new" trail, I did stop at the chestnut balls and look around more carefully for the tree. Hmmm. I did not find anything that has the right bark. That said, I think chestnut bark can be rather variable, but I'm still mystified. I found more of the balls uphill in the woods, so I think my idea that they rolled downhill into the trail is true. And I found one ball that was broken open about a quarter mile from the others. I suspect a squirrel.

I've been trying to meet my 100 miles of campsites quota since I got home. I'm about at 40 miles. Will I make it before I give up for the day?

Total miles hiked in 2024: 208.9 of which 70.6 is North Country Trail.

Crystal Valley Ski loops, Oceana County, MI. Various loops, 8.3 miles

See Crystal Valley Outer Loop

Birthday Fun

 My usual birthday treat to myself is a hike. But this year I deferred that to another day. Maybe tomorrow, we'll see. I'm kind of on a roll with the book and want to work while I'm highly motivated.

But I was eating my lunch and someone called and asked me if I wanted to go out. Um... I was full. But there's always room for dessert, right? Especially pie.

Do you know who it was? It was Sue! With a friend of hers, Jan.

They had Jan's car, so I wasn't sure if I'd get to see my little buddies. But they had come too. Sophie and Annabelle are always good for smiles and licks.

And Omer got me some treat foods I'd been wanting. Some chips and pop.

And I've been inhaling broccoli. Just in the mood. Here it is with cottage cheese for breakfast. But last night for dinner I just ate a huge bowl of broccoli with butter. Yummers

Sue brought me another fun item. But I'm not going to share that until I decide where to put it. I thought I knew the answer to that when she gave it to me, but I need to rethink it. Stay tuned.

I did my editing, and then my 100 new miles of campsites, and some more formatting fixes. I may try to get more done this evening so that I'll feel good about going out to play tomorrow.

Oh yeah. What year is it? Most of you know. Finishing trip 76 around the blazing ball of gasses.

See Surprises and Blessings

Big Sable Reference Points

  You know one of my hobbies is to follow local rivers. I've showed you a couple of places on the Big Sable River a lot of times: the Vince Smith Bridge, where the NCT crosses it. Hamlin Dam, where it is dammed to make Hamilin Lake. And the outlet at Ludington State Park.

But I have another reference point from my back road explorations yesterday. This is about 7 straight-line miles downstream from the Vince Smith Bridge. That's probably at least twice that many river miles. This is along Taylor Road. Point #3 on the map.

Here is point #2 on the map. You've seen this in every season because this is where the North Country Trail crosses the river.



And this is the headwaters at point #1 on the map. From here, oddly, the river flows north and goes around a loop before heading south and west.

I left the map large, so you can click it to see things better.

I can see that there are a couple of small bridges between points 2 and 3. Guess I'll need a river exploration day!

I worked really hard today- editing and then on the book. I got some formatting cleaned up and did my 100 miles of campsites.

See At the Vince Smith Bridge See Snow on Big Sable Headwaters

Blaze Day!

 I've explained a lot about the how and why of this before, so I won't cover that again. Here are the tools.

I'll just say that I'm pretty sure the last time this section of trail was blazed was in 2010. That's way too long ago. Not good, but sometimes these things happen. Too few volunteers, whatever... The link at the end is the year that Ellen and I did part of this section. Yes, that's a 14-year-old blaze.

I went out with Dan D. today, and our goal was to touch up a half mile of trail in each direction. That is usually plenty for one day. Dan wanted to try a template he made for spraying the blazes. I have to say that this is not standard, but he wanted to try it.

He was really careful to not let the paint flare out inside the edges of the template. I'll concede that. Here is the sprayed blaze.

I'll stick with using a brush. A lot of the trees we had to use in this section are large red oak. They have deep ridged bark that is really difficult to get nice blazes on, but here is one of my reasonably good successes.

We had help from Riley, the trail-blazing dog. She thought the blue paint was great for accents.

We also did a tiny bit of white blazing on a side trail, but we were getting tired, and the white paint was too thin.

I got to do a little bit of back-roading on the way home. I was just on this road not too long ago, but can't find the date. It's a back way from Freesoil Road that actually has a bridge over the Big Sable River. It's fine as long as the weather has been fairly dry. Yonkers Rd.

My goal after I got home was to get 100 more miles of campsites done, and I did it. Had to really knuckle down!

Total miles hiked in 2024: 200.6 of which 70.6 is North Country Trail.

North Country Trail, Mason Co. Michigan, Tynadall Rd to Koenig Rd. and back. 1 mile

See More Blue Blazes