Sterling Marsh Shenanigans

This morning, I went out to Sterling Marsh on the North Country Trail. The marsh is up to some serious trickery! There is no water in it at all. That mud strip you can see is usually open water, and often, the water comes to the edge of the snow in this picture! Not that I get there EVERY fall, but I think I've only seen it dry one other time.

They have had a little more snow than at my house, covering the boardwalks. The oak leaves made a lovely mosaic.

Was I there just to take a hike? No. The NCTA is capitalizing on my recent hike of the whole trail to hopefully boost year-end giving. So I was there with Paul Kogelschatz, the Fund Raising Coordinator, to shoot some video.

They have also asked me to do a Zoom meeting on Nov 28, Giving Tuesday. Stay tuned for how to get in on that chat time if you are interested.

The rest of the shenanigans were provided by a flock of turkeys who couldn't decide whether to cross the road.

Actually, they had decided to cross the road, but couldn't decide which side they wanted to be on. Result- the were crossing and re-crossing the road both when I went to Sterling Marsh, and when I came home. But no turkeys were harmed in the snapping of these pictures.

I took myself out to lunch at the Cardinal Restaurant in Custer. It looks like that's a business that might survive at that location. I'm glad. The tiny towns need all the help they can get. The next one east, Walhalla, has a huge new building. I'm not sure what that is going to be, but it has tall garage doors, so perhaps some kind of service place. It will join the Post Office, a Dollar General, a bar, and a shed sales place as the town's businesses. OK, I guess there's a plumber there too.

I edited in the afternoon.

North Country Trail, Jenks Rd to Sterling Marsh and back, 3 miles

See Living the Dream

Sterling Marsh North

  Cathy and I managed to get a little hike in before the sky opened and poured water on everything. We hiked just north of where Loren and I went on Thursday. It had also rained before we got there, and the colors are always lovely and vibrant when things are wet.

We hiked past the northern portion of Sterling Marsh. This section is also covered with water lilies.

But the most interesting thing is this beaver lodge. I don't remember a lodge being here before. I wonder if this means we are going to start having problems with trail flooding. I guess we'll have to wait and see how the beaver think things should be altered. With that clear strip of open water, it sure looks like an active lodge.

The Bee Balm, AKA Wild Bergamot, Monarda fistulosa was in bloom. I thought I was going to get a picture with a little butterfly on the blossom, but it flew away.

I did get a nice picture of a male Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly. The females have black bodies instead of the bright metallic blue-green of the males. We also saw a beautiful black and green dragonfly, but no picture of that. Sorry.

Like so many of my recent hikes, this was double duty for some trail work. We added a few stickers, and put this strip on the post at the 76th St junction with the spur to the trailhead so you can clearly tell where to go when you approach it from the south.

We were safely on the way home before the rain hit. The humidity was 72%, so the shorter hike was just fine. I was soaked through with sweat even though we didn't get rained on.

In other news: After I got home I did some more volunteer stuff and then buckled down to finish Chapter 47 of Dead Mule Swamp Singer.

My NCT miles for 2021 is at 355, Cathy is at 52.5 for Hike 100.

North Country Trail, Lake County, MI. 76th St to Jenks TH and back. 3 miles total

See Sterling Marsh Again

Sterling Marsh Again

  Today, Loren and I hiked through Sterling Marsh on the NCT. The water is quite low, but it's always a beautiful walk.

Way out in the open water there is a covering of water lilies. The vertical stripes are mostly hard-stem bulrush.

Here is one of the boardwalk sections. We didn't meet a single other person out there today. It was just us and the mosquitoes!

A lot of the sedges are in fruit right now. This is one of my favorites, because it's so showy, Carex intumescens.

And this was a new one to me. Pretty sure it's Carex flava, sometimes called hedgehog grass.

If you want a showy fungus, how about Stacked Hydnum?

And if you prefer something delicate, here is Unicorn Pinkgill.

We hiked about six miles. North Country Trail Miles for 2021 is at 352.

In other news: I am quite a bit poorer, but I have brand new, shiny, very good tires on my car. I went to the store and also did some more cleaning. I'd try to be a little more poetic or literary or something, but I'm tired.

North Country Trail, Lake County, MI. Jenks Road TH to 96th St and back. 6 miles total

See Trail Work- Easy Edition

Trail Work- Easy Edition

  Marie and I got ourselves out on time to do some trail work that I had volunteered to do.

Since Vermont has been officially added to the North Country Trail, all the stickers on carsonite posts at road crossings and junctions have to be changed to the 8-state strip.

So we drove to a lot of road crossings and replaced the stickers. Marie doesn't live anywhere near the trail, so although she has done some volunteer things for the trail, this was her first time to actually work ON the trail.

There are some posts that have to be hiked to, so we also took a walk through Sterling Marsh. Also, I wanted her to see the boardwalks.

The open water of the Marsh was lovely- it's one of the really neat spots on the trail. Usually lots of birds, and in spring, frogs. However, the high temp of the day was 37 degrees! All the frogs were hunkered down in the mud. No singing! This might be the cold day of Marie's visit. Supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow. She didn't really bring winter clothes.

And the hepatica was not willing to open its flowers, but I finally did see some this year that was technically in bloom.

We also nailed up some connector trail symbols on a couple of road walks, and dug out two posts that needed to be removed. Total miles we walked was about 5.

North Country Trail miles for 2021 is at 208.

North Country Trail, Lake County, Michigan, Jenks Rd. Trailhead south through Sterling Marsh and back, and a few other short pieces to reach posts

In other news: That's about it- we had to find some of the items that were other pieces of the puzzle to have all the things with us that we needed.

See Ludington State Park with Cathy and Marie

Living the Dream

 
I know I'm supposed to be telling you about the Philadelphia Flower Show, but today was just so perfect I can't keep from sharing it. The day played out just in the way I envision many, many days of my future. I spent the morning writing. I'm part way through chapter 4 of The Lonely Donkey.

After lunch, I went out for a hike. I went to the North Country Trail, the section by Sterling Marsh, and hiked 6 miles.



With some ice still on the water, it was very pretty. Who can resist sunny skies and brisk air?



I met one other couple. I think that's a safe amount of social distancing. I actually knew them, so we chatted a while.



This is the time of year when you can really see how important all those boardwalks we built are. This section of trail was horrible to hike in spring before we did this.



There were some long, long ice crystals trying to form. But they had all melted by the time I went back past this point.



And I saw these interesting beetle bark galleries. I don't know what kind... no particular pattern, and I forgot to pay attention to what kind of tree it was, which would have helped with the ID.



I also stopped at a couple of places to do checks for my Get Off the Couch web site. Now I'm working on doing those updates.

Hike 100 Challenge for 2020 is at 32 miles.

A perfect day in just the right format!

North Country Trail, Lake County, MI, Jenks Road Trailhead to 96th St and back, 6 miles

	See Sterling Marsh Jan 2019
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Last Training Hike and Gumby Progress

 
Cathy and I took the last of my training hikes today. Focus was miles rather than weight. We went to the North Country Trail and did 8.2 miles. Including two breaks, we were out for 2 hours and 29 minutes. So that was a pretty good pace.

We went through the Sterling Marsh section from 76th St to 96th St and back. Plenty of mosquitoes today! They kept us moving.



We saw a tree covered with Chicken Mushroom,




I was hoping to get the Gumby II jacket done today, but it goes slowly because it's a fairly complicated design and I have to figure out the order of each step and exactly how to do it. But I wouldn't want you to think I wasn't actually making this!

This is an odd looking piece! It's half the hood with one of the front zipper panels.



It assembled nicely.


Here are the sleeves and body except for the front pocket panel.



Next up, I have to attach the hood to the body. The seam is continuous and taped. (For an inexpensive rain suit Gumby sure was made well.) I was just trying to figure out which surfaces go together first and how the bias tape is incorporated into that when Cathy came for our walk.

I should finish this tonight, but it's not going to happen. I'll just have to move into high gear tomorrow.

In other news: I got the kitchen mess pretty well cleaned up! Hike 100 is at 77 miles

North Country Trail, 8.2 miles, Lake County 76th St to 96th and back

	See Half of Gumby Turns Blue
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Boardwalk Repairs

 
You know we've recently had some bad storms that left a mess along the North Country Trail. This week's chapter work outing was already scheduled for the Sterling Marsh Boardwalk to deal with some frost heave and minor repairs.

However, two sections of the boardwalk took direct hits from falling trees. Here's one of them after the tree was cut off.



We had a huge group of people turn out to work, close to twenty. This was good because there was a lot to do.

After clearing the first broken section some of the guys made a pile driver with a log and board to smack the heaved sections back down. (They also used car jacks to lift some sections that had sunk.) So the boardwalk is close to level again.



Meanwhile, another guy and I went on ahead to start taking apart the broken place pictured above. Other people were unloading and cutting lumber, carrying it and tools to whoever needed it, etc.

Around noon we broke for lunch, and to have the annual chapter meeting. We have done this in the woods before- most notably one under a tarp in the pouring rain- and incidentally while working on first building this same section The Wettest Meeting But today's weather was great.

One of our members, Steve Webster, finally received the national award he was given this spring. It's the "Sweep" award, given to someone who likes to work behind the scenes but is always out there working for the trail.



After the meeting, we headed back out to continue working. As bad as that broken section looked, here we are already putting decking boards back in place.



And around 3 pm. we picked up the tools and headed back to the cars. This picture is that same section above that was completely broken up.


Sue and Sophie (with Sophie's sister Anabelle) were there. I hadn't seen Sophie in a long time. This little dog really likes me (and I her)! She kept wanting me to pick her up and hold her all day long. Well, I don't mind that.



In the roadway that got us back near where we were doing work were bear tracks, but we were making so much noise I'm sure no bear was anywhere nearby.



Great day, amazing accomplishment to get all those repairs done in one work day.

Because of all the walking back and forth, I'm counting 2 more miles toward Hike 100. Total 69 miles.

I didn't do a blog post yesterday. For some reason, after I got home from working at Shagway (extra hours, but it's not like that is difficult), I was so tired I went to bed with a book and it wasn't long before I couldn't even hold the book up. Went to sleep and slept through till 7 am!

One more week till I leave on my hike. Time to get seriously busy!

	See Boardwalk Celebration
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