NCT/White Pine Trail, Rockford

If you walk trail east from Rockford, you get a stretch of sidewalk and then road. Not that I hate these, but if you walk trail west, in about 3 blocks you are on the White Pine Trail. The NCT is concurrent with it for about 7 miles, and as it comes into Rockford, it's beside the Rogue River. This is on the bed of the former Grand Rapids and Indiana RR. Which direction do you think I chose? (rail bed, by the river, in the shade, more natural)

One of the best reasons to do section hikes rather than a thru hike is that you can choose to hike in more attractive seasons. Here's a piece of this trail in December 2021.



The Rogue River is a nice companion.

Again...winter has a different kind of beauty, but I liked the view yesterday.

I saw no one on this section in December 2021. Yesterday it was very busy with walkers, runners, cyclists, skateboarders, people in wheelchairs, strollers, etc.

This attractive constructed waterfall is located just as you head north on the trail from town.

You know part of what makes me happy in warmer seasons is the chance to observe plants. The wild grapes were in blooming profusion. Have you ever taken time to smell them? They smell luscious!

This is Golden Alexander, Zizia aurea, a nice wetland plant. There was lots of it along the river edges.

It makes me smile every time I find this small tree. It's American Prickly-Ash, Xanthoxylum americanum. It is a host plant for the larvae of Giant and Tiger Swallowtail butterflies, so I always like to think that seeing them suggests the butterfly population may be healthy. It's not an ash, but the compound leaves look like an ash. You can see how it gets the moniker "prickly."

Very cool find of the day- a spiny softshell turtle laying eggs. I swear these are dinosaurs.

So, what did I do? I hiked out for three miles and turned around. My knees later noticed that I'd pounded out six miles on pavement, but it wasn't too bad.

Miles hiked in 2025: 196.8. Hike 100 Challenge: 83 miles.

White Pine Trail/NCT, Rockford, MI, north 3 miles and back

See White Pine Trail in Winter

Heritage Nature Trail - Cadillac

 After the vendor event today, I took a short hike on the Heritage Nature Trail at Mitchell State Park in Cadillac. I had been there once before in 2015 (link below).

This is a large man-made wetland area between Lakes Mitchell and Cadillac. Black Creek, seen here, used to be used to float logs between the two lakes, but it was too shallow, and a canal was eventually dug. This changed the hydrology of the area enough that this became about 70 acres of wetland.

Since it's now preserved as a nature study area, that is a good thing. Most of the trail is in the form of a raised berm that goes in a rectangle around the area. At least it's dirt. But despite being close to two busy highways, it's known for great wildlife viewing. There is a spur into the middle of the marsh with an observation platform. I went out there, but it's pretty early to see much. There were a couple of slow peepers.

I really liked this collection of hummocks along the diverted section of Black Creek that surrounds the wetland.

Saw my first turtles of the year! Just painted turtles, but that's OK. I like to play the game of "which will be first?" Some years it's been a Blandings.

I wanted to take the outer loop, and I did. But the cut-across loop was so attractive, I had to walk it too (both directions, eh?). It goes over what they call "hemlock island." Since nobody was keeping any kind of records when this land was all changed, they don't really know why it's higher, or why (uncharacteristically) hemlocks are growing that near a wetland. But it was a beautiful section of trail. Two humps with hemlocks, and one lower section with a boardwalk through the marsh.

On the walk back, I cut over to Lake Cadillac.

The willow trees are getting all sexy. This is goat willow, Salix caprea, alien. But the male catkins sure are fancy.

With the extra bits of trail I did and the out and back pieces, I managed to turn it into a four mile walk. There is lots of interpretation, and would be a nice walk with kids. Probably you'd see a lot of wildlife activity on a summer evening.

The vendor event went OK. They didn't manage to pull in a very good crowd. I sold a few books and talked with a lot of people. But a few of my friends came. Sorry, no picture of Miki, but I finally got a pretty good one of Eamon!

Total miles hiked in 2024: 193.6 of which 69.6 is North Country Trail.

Mitchell State Park, Cadillac, MI, Heritage Nature Study Trail. with spurs. 4.0 miles

See Sunday Hikes

Paint, Pete, Plants, and Turtles

Today, I met with a volunteer from the Spirit of the Woods Chapter of the NCTA named Pete. We headed to part of the section I just hiked on Monday to do some refreshing and improving of blazing in that section. I've blogged before about how to paint blazes correctly.

Pete and I have similar notions about how well this job should be done, so it was a joy to work with him. The condition of the blazes in this particular section has been bugging me for a while, and it turned out he felt the same way. So we fixed it. This is a turn blaze, indicating a right hand turn. In this particular location, there was a right turn blaze, but it was positioned so you could also see it while hiking from the other direction, which was confusing. Arrows had been added, which were unnecessary, and there was no turn blaze at all from the other direction. We fixed all that, and improved the spacing on other blazes which had not taken sight lines into account.

It was pretty easy to change all these because the only trees available to blaze are red pines. That bark flakes pretty quickly, and particularly if it hasn't been scraped adequately, which these had not. So we didn't have to struggle much to remove the old, poor blazes.

Pete is also our chapter Vice President, but he especially likes going out to do trail work. He's done a tremendous amount of it in the past several years!

Since this included the area of the wildflowers, I'm including some updates on those. Here are the actual flowers of the common toothwort, instead of the spring beauty blossoms pretending to belong to this plant. As you can see, they do have only four petals.

I also hunted around and found some fertile fronds of the meadow horsetail. It's that skinny pale stalk in front of the fern leaf.

The violets were just starting on Monday. Today they were open and cheerful. These are common blue violet, Viola sororia. They're everywhere, but I still like them. This one is keeping company with a wild strawberry flower. You can see both leaves- the violet's are pointed and slightly rolled. The strawberry is rounded and toothed in threes (another "leaves of three" that is NOT poison ivy).

Again, this is not unusual, but it's always fun to find a violet that isn't the common blue one. These are downy yellow violet, Viola pubescens.

And, I could have gotten the alliteration complete if I'd gone with Painted turtes, which these are. It was a beautiful morning, and the turtles agreed, spending a relaxing morning in the sunshine.

It always amazes me how much time it takes to do even a small amount of blazing correctly. But it was fun to do trail work with someone. And I like to think we've made an improvement to this section.

We also bumped into Ramona, and I learned that the reason the trail re-route I talked about on Monday did not follow a way that I thought would have been good was because there is a piece of private land, and the owner would not allow passage. So, at least I got an answer to that question which had been bugging me.

I am very happy that I feel good enough (not so sore and stiff) that I can do some trail work like this without a lot of pain. I am hopeful that I haven't aged myself too rapidly by doing this big hike, and how I feel after today is encouraging.

See Flowers from Yesterday

Bristol Hills Branch - East Hill

  Today, we went over East Hill, not surprisingly east of Canandaigua Lake (at the south end). Right out of the box we climbed 1100 feet. However, the trail is well-designed and built, so that except for a few places we were able to keep walking along and did not have to struggle and rest and feel like dying. Well-designed trails are also easier to maintain. Big kudos to the Finger Lakes Trail work crews. Near the top we stopped for a break at this small wildlife pond. The entire area is in the High-Tor Wildlife Management Area. The bench on the far side (where we rested) is in memory of Howard Beye. He was a volunteer for many, many years. He did so much work in so many different categories that it literally took five people to replace him. Across the pond three painted turtles seemed to be having an intense conversation. After that we mostly went downhill for the rest of the day, dropping 500 feet, except for a short gentle climb along a deep gorge. Pictures didn't really show what it was like. This beautiful garter snake was totally unconcerned. I had flipped a stick out of the trail in his direction, and he didn't even move. The final two miles were on roads. Things twist around so much it's hard to be absolutely certain, but I think this hill is the south end of East Hill, the one we had just passed over. The sheep were curious as we passed. And this might be Wood Hill, tomorrow's challenge. We had hoped to do 10 miles, but the road where we wanted to put the car is no longer open to vehicles. That will make a nice walk, but it forced us to shorten the hike to 7.6 miles. No problem! We drove around and got some views of beautiful Canangaigua Lake, which is not really visible from the trail. The hill across the water is called Bare Hill. Got back "home" in time to fix spaghetti for supper and then watch the 2020 North Country Trail Association award ceremony via Zoom, since the conference had to be cancelled. Great day! Perfect weather again.

See Bristol Hills Branch- East Hill

Softshell Turtle

 
I stopped on the way north today and did some more checking of the North Country Trail between Albion and Battle Creek. This includes some nice riverwalk sections in Albion and Marshall. The river is the Kalamazoo River.



Some of it was a really nice raised boardwalk.



But the really best part was this sight. Can you tell what it is? Two logs with turtles on them. For right now, just look at the big ones.



I think this is the biggest softshell turtle I've ever seen. It's about 16-18 inches long.



For perspective look at the closer log. There are two painted turtles on the front of it- about 6 inches long. Then there are two softshells in the middle that are maybe a foot long. Then one of the monsters on the far end.



This is the closest look I've ever gotten at these guys! What do you think it's thinking?



I'm back at Chuck & Sylvia's tonight. Probably home tomorrow.

Total NCT miles for 2020- 205

See True Blue Gumby II

3 Mile Loop Challenge

 
I set myself a challenge today to try to find something a little different to picture on my same-old three mile roadwalk. I took some nice pictures of ordinary wild flowers. Maybe you'll see some of them another day. But you've seen them all before, other years.

But today's fun surprise is the dried leaves clinging to the stems of the Cut-leaf Teasel, Dipsacus laciniatus.

I'm sure not going to try to find something for Halloween every day this month, but they are sort of eerie-creepy-fantasy Halloween worthy.

This one is my favorite.

And, the camera wouldn't focus on them, but there were a couple of big turtles out in the little pond.



I was pretty much a slug this morning, so while I was walking I bawled myself out and decided I could make myself do 10 mini projects before bed. I've done 8 so far. Hopefully, I'll do two more.

1. Clean up the recycling bottles and cans
2. Cut the autumn olive by the kitchen door
3. Cut the grapevine by the window
4. Deal with the compost
5. Get gas in the car and the can
6. Bring in a big load of stuff from the trailer
7. Bring in a big load of stuff from the trailer
8. Take care of all the clean laundry

I did do two more:
9. Put away one tub full of odd stuff from the trailer
10. Put away the books we took with us on the trip

	See Cut Leaf Teasel
if you like this blog, click

Spring at Shagway

 
Today was another work day at Shagway Arts Barn. The barn is not going to have a regular arts store this season. Too much work, not enough volunteers, basically. But there will be live music, vendor events, and it's always available to rent. There are short, dog-friendly trails that can be walked any time.

We are cleaning, getting rid of a lot of display rack type "furniture," etc. I went out to work on the trails. Am going to make a little map for people to use.

The entrance was cheery with Glory of the Snow (Chinodoxa) blooming among the rocks.



How about a closer look? They are one of my favorites, with such a clear blue.



This pond is just down the road. Mr. & Mrs. Mallard seemed to be looking for a nest site.



And this is the first turtle of the year, and the first turtle rescue of the year. A painted turtle, too scared to take a peek. But s/he's now off the pavement. Kind of a little one. Nice to see it.



In other news: I worked on North Country Quest in the morning, and on the Shagway Trail Map when I got home. Not much else to report.

	See Wildlife of the Day See First Turtle, First Rescue 2017
if you like this blog, click