A Walk to the Ludington Lighthouse

Before bell choir practice, I took a fast walk out to the Ludington Lighthouse. I've learned that it's actually only a light, not a lightHOUSE, because there is no keepers house associated with it. But I doubt that even I can manage to remember to be that particular when talking about it.

The pier to get out to it is three-tenths of a mile long, so it's a decent little walk. More so when it's windy as it was this afternoon. Not TOO windy, or you can't go on the pier. The waves crash right over it in a storm. Today, there were only some wet places. This picture is taken right into the sun.

Once you get there, you find yourself right under the base which resembles the prow of a ship. It's designed to help break up waves. The waves break and spray higher than the lighthouse fairly regularly.

Just across the channel is a marker light. That is where Cathy and I walked to in the post linked below. Of course it's about a 10-mile drive to get around to the south pier!

There weren't very many people on the pier today, but neither was it deserted. Unless there is a real storm, there are usually locals who like to walk out there. And most years, there is someone who walks there when they really shouldn't. At the best they get a bad dunking and lesson. At worst, they drown. This is looking back at the Stearns Park Beach. Not covered with sunbathers today! The shoreline continues north toward Big Sable point.

The snow/sand fences are up for the winter. The sand is drifting. Already there are piles of it along the drive through the park. Locals complain about how early the fencing goes up. But the city has to trade off the expense of clearing the drifted sand (which is considerable) with good will. The fencing keeps it from blowing all the way into town.

No writing happened today. I did some work for a client, I did some research. I did a couple of things in the trailer. I'll share those when a small collection of them is complete. Then I went to town and walked and went to bell choir, after which I had a meeting. Busy, busy.

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An Adventure with Cathy

  You know my acetylcholine gets to pumping and making me happy when I have a new adventure! Cathy and I wanted to explore one of the trails that angles off the familiar route we followed last week to the back side of Hamlin Dam. Left at the fork- known. Right at the fork-unknown.

We made ourselves all kinds of promises about not doing anything stupid since it's winter, and we only had about 90 minutes between when she finished work and dark. As it turned out, many people have been hiking that trail since we had snow last Friday, so we were easily able to find where others had walked. These trails are all "unofficial," so there are no markings.

We came to this cut in the hill. You can see trail going fairly straight on the next hill. There were also trails going right and left in the valley. We chose left, going pretty much north. We were nominally attempting to connect to a trail we know goes along the south edge of Hamlin Lake. But, we were willing to go where the adventure took us, up to a cautious limit.

We had agreed on a turn-around time. At exactly that time... we reached Hamlin Lake!

What fun! This is a view I've never seen before. OK, I've been close to here at Inspiration Point, but not EXACTLY here.

The sand dunes across the way look quite alien!

Directly below us, the wind is churning the soft ice into pancake ice, although the "plates" haven't separated yet.

What should we do? Go back the way we came or take the trail that climbed up a ridge heading west? West would take us back to connect with the trail we took last week. I thought we might even have found the extension of the trail that goes past Inspiration Point. The sun was getting lower. We had about 45 minutes of light left. You know I took the "new" route, heading west. It soon turned away from the lake, so we knew it wasn't going to Inspiration Point.

But what scenery! The wooded dunes are high and steep-sided. This is one of the prettiest routes in the whole park! My pictures today don't do it justice. This shot shows one valley, and also that the low light is starting to make the trees glow. We still don't know where this trail is going to dump us, but it has turned south, which is good. As long as we make it back to the road the car is parked on, who cares?

The trail wandered and wandered along the top of a ridge. This big beech tree is growing on the side of the hill, but the hill is so steep it looks like it's practically buried.

We'd been going south for quite a while and still wondering where we'd come out. We had to cross either the usual trail, or the one we'd headed north on. Sure enough. We came to the top of the hill on the north side of the cut in the second picture above. That trail wasn't visible when we were down in the cut.

Just another ten minutes and we were back at the car with exactly enough time to hustle out to "First Curve," a parking area along Lake Michigan, to catch the sunset.

This was SO awesome. And we can explore those other junctions another day. I definitely want to do this route in other seasons. We probably walked between 4 and 4.5 miles. We move right along, the only place we dallied was when we got to the view of Hamlin Lake.

In other news: I wrote a chapter this morning and did a few odds and ends.

Ludington State Park, Mason County, MI. Piney Ridge Road to Hamlin Lake and back, about 4.5 miles

See One Day, Two Hikes

Other Goodies on the Hike

 
Yesterday's hike also included some other interesting features.

One of the neatest things is that a large interpretive panel has been added to that section by the Forest Service. It seems that the ancient shore of a pre-Great Lakes lake used to be almost that far inland (about 20 miles). It's pretty difficult to take a picture that really shows the landform, but this was the best I could do.

The hill slopes off gently to the west. I took this picture looking east and you can almost see that there is a much steeper drop at the eastern edge of the hill.



Here's how that works. This is a portion of the interpretive panel. The wind moved the dunes eastward and then the sand dropped off the leading edge. They are now covered with forest vegetation. But beneath a very thin layer of soil, there is pure beach sand.



That sandy soil makes several kinds of blueberries really happy. The early ones are gone. Those were probably Vaccinium pennsylvanicum; the plants are under a foot tall. But the slightly taller ones that grow all in the same places were fruiting. Some people call these huckleberries, but an awful lot of blue-fruited things get called huckleberries. At any rate, I think these are Vaccinium vacillans (now V. pallidum). Whatever you want to call them, they taste good!



Here's a plant I usually show you when it has little red berries instead of little white flowers. These are wintergreen flowers.



What was red this week is the red russula mushrooms. Russula emetica, which is a descriptive name. Don't eat these unless you are a snail or a slug! But they sure are pretty hiding under the wintergreen leaves.



I also liked this fungus. Probably just an artist's conch. I didn't want to disturb things to turn it over. I think the bands on the edge are classy.



In other news: I didn't manage to do much today, sadly. I did write a chapter in DMS Mistletoe, so the day was not a complete waste. And I watched the original Pink Panther (1964) so you don't have to. Although I remembered it as being very funny, it's really slow by today's standards.

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The Beach Scene

 
After our return to winter, by afternoon today the weather was trying to seem like March. At least the sun was shining. After work and the tax appointment I went to the beach and took some pictures. It was five weeks ago I brought you the wintry shots in the link below. At least it was warmer than that day!

It wasn't a day of high waves, but I loved the colors



The beach grass is doing well in this spot. It often gets trampled near popular beaches



I can't decide if this is a hairy elbow or a vase.



Patterns in the sand are always intriguing.



This larger driftwood log is de-laminating in interesting ways



With daylight savings time I was way too early for sunset, but the low sun on the water made it look completely different. Water is like snowflakes... no two moments are alike



Doing a little formatting work, but going to bed early. I woke up at 4 am and couldn't get back to sleep.

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