Leaf Peeping 2024 - Part 1

 Today was the one day this week that wasn't busy. The colors perhaps aren't quite peak, but they are getting close. This one is on Custer Road. Didn't even have to go off pavement

Look who I convinced to go with me! He's even smiling. I didn't make him walk much, and he actually said he had a good time.

Got off the blacktop, but still weren't anywhere I'd consider off the well-travelled paths. This tree is on Stephens Road.

We made a stop at Hoag's Lake. It was looking nice. The only ones enjoying it were the geese.

After that we made a big loop on some much-less-travelled roads. In fact, I think we took one I'd never been on. It certainly was not the road I thought it was. More on that another day.

For now, I'll tell you that we ended the loop by coming south through the Manistee National Forest near Nordhouse Dunes. This view is on Green Road, always one of my favorites.

Om had had enough by then, but we had to stop for one spectacular October sky picture before we got home.

I have found a few more places that need exploring! A quality day on many levels.

I have ordered a replacement camera.

See Fall's Final Fling

A Point of Reference

 This post may not hold much interest for you. It's a mostly bare flower flower bed with some lines of orange flagging tape staked down on it.

However, it shows the progress I've made this year. I did sit down and make a plan for this garden. Almost all of what I need I just have to move from other places. The orange lines define the sections. I've been weeding out the grass again which had come back since June, but it wasn't as deeply rooted.

Today I moved coreopsis, coneflower, the 'Candytuft' that may or may not be hardy, moss phlox (blue I think), and the pink showy sedum. I put in a bunch of daffodil bulbs I'd pulled out of this bed earlier this year that were not in good places. I also had a bag of grape hyacinth bulbs, and they went in too. I found one bulb that MAY be a regular hyacinth that hasn't bloomed in a while.

It didn't start raining until almost 4 pm, so I got a lot done. I still have some other things to move. Maybe I could spring for some petunias to fill in spaces next year. We shall see.

Here's how it looked in June. Yeah, about the same. I have shown you some of the things that bloomed, but because they were sort of haphazard and uncollected, it didn't look like much. It SHOULD look better next year.



Omer asked me if the dirt was any good there. I reminded him that its gravel underneath but the top 8 inches I carted here by hand in the wheelbarrow long ago when I created this garden.

We've had a nice soaking rain, and it's supposed to clear up and be mild for the rest of this week. Some days in the 50s, but that's nice enough as far as I'm concerned.

I'll leave you with another mood of my backyard. This is not so colorful as some have been, but it's calm, in muted shades of green.

I worked on a lot of things I'm supposed to be doing today. Yeah me. The camera is dead. I'm looking at options.

See Cleaning the Driveway Flower Bed See moods of my backyard

Spirit of the Woods Hike- October at High Rollways

  It's gotten to be kind of a tradition for our chapter to hike north of our section in the fall to try to catch the peak colors along the Manistee River. Today was maybe a few days ahead of peak, but the weather was fantastic, and nothing about it was shabby.

The bad news is that my camera may be on its last legs. I managed to crop these to be OK, but the entire right side of every image is blown out and blurry. We'll see if that persists. If not... another big expense. Even if it corrects itself, it can't be a good omen.

The reds perhaps aren't fully developed yet, and it was a little overcast when we started, but the sun did come out.

The yellows were good.

Ah! Here are some reds!

In our posed picture there are 20 people, a dog, and a ferret. But I know there was at least one other person that didn't get in the photo. Group photo by Loren.

This is a pretty hilly section. Out and back we only did 5.5 miles, but Loren's electronics said we did a total of 800 feet elevation change. From lowest point to highest was 260 feet, but we went up and down several times.

Miles hiked in 2024: 486.7

North Country Trail, Wexford County, Highbanks Rollway to Baxter Bridge Road and back. 5.5 miles

See Spirit of the Woods Hike- October

A Couple of Almost Surprises

 You know I've pretty much put the rock garden to bed. I hope to stick a few bulbs in yet. And the front flower garden got a final weeding even before the rock garden.

However, I did get the "Driveway Bed" weeded thoroughly back in June and then didn't do much else with it. But I'd like to get it weeded and some things transplanted before the snow hits. Today I got it about a third cleaned up again.

But I thought I'd show you a couple of fun finds. The first picture is actually from August. That tall sedum bloomed. One little flower. First time ever, I think. I'm pretty sure it's Hylotelephium (used to be Sedum) spectabile. I dug it up in New York years ago. Now I don't feel so bad because it's not native anyway. It had probably escaped from someone else's garden.

It got severely chewed again. One web site says the rabbits don't like it, but the deer do. So maybe that garden will have to be fenced next year too. Sheesh.

The other sort of surprise is that Cathy gave me a coneflower of some sort. I don't really care for pink ones. This is one of the yellow ones. Not sure which yet. But the seed heads should help me figure it out. They are pretty cool looking.

And even closer.

I took a short walk through the cemetery. Worked in the garden. Edited, worked on my projects. The days just fly by.

Miles walked in 2024: 481.2

See Cleaning the Driveway Flower Bed

Hiking Swag for 2024

 I've been wanting to do this post for quite a while, but I was waiting for one of the awards to come in the mail. While I was waiting for that, Pat Long, from Ohio, sent me some additional ones. Also, I found one that I should have shown you last year, and one set I earned in 2022/23, but didn't get around to submitting it until this year. Here's the entire collection.

Start at the top left and go down the left column. These are four patches that I earned in other years. I don't think you actually have to earn one of them, but I've been to the location several times, so it's all good.

Buckeye Trail: Ohio River Chapter Hikes. The BTA has divided their trail into sections supported by chapters. The Ohio River Chapter covers the Loveland and Williamsburg sections, which is pretty much the greater Cincinnati area, and the spur into Eden Park. Pat Long, one of their members, has created several patches for completing their area. This patch covers their chapter miles

Buckeye Trail: "The Junction" patch. This sign is located in Milford, Ohio. Eight trails converge there, and this sign was the brainchild of Brent Anslinger and Steve Boller. Supposedly, there is no other place where that many trails converge. See a picture of Denali at the actual sign in 2022, just below the patches.

Buckeye Trail: This patch is for the southern terminus of the spur into Cincinnati that ends at Eden Park. You can see me at that actual sign.

Wampum Chapter: This one I earned in 2002, but misplaced it. It's from the NCTA Wampum Chapter which has miles in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Denali at "The Junction" in 2022

Now for the middle row, top to bottom. That colorful card probably doesn't mean anything, but since all you got for a lot of activity was the sticker below it, I am keeping the card. New York State Park Centennial Challenge. More about that below

NCT 8-State Sampler Patch: "We" (NCT Long-Distance Hiker Recognition) just brought this patch out this year. Of course I'd earned it previously.

Bottom row: Wegman's Passport Finger Lakes Trail patch set. More about that below.

Right column top to bottom: NCT 2024 Hike 100. This is the 9th year of the Hike 100 Challenge. I wonder if they'll do something extra cool for the 10th Anniversary.

Finger Lakes Trail 2024 50-mile patch and sticker

Finger Lakes Branch Trail End-to-End. More about that below

Under that is the NCT Adirondack Challenge. More on that below.

Now for the ones I want to showcase.

First will be the New York State Park Centennial Challenge. I really think they could have sprung for more than a sticker, but I'll take it.

After Marie and I finished our "big hike" of this year, we visited a state park. There we found the flyer for this challenge. There was a long list of options, and you had to do 25 of them in the year 2024. Well! Of course I started counting, and we'd already done 12 of them by "accident" on our other hike. So we got our motivation together and did 13 more before I had to leave New York. Most of the adventures we did between July 21-28 counted toward this. I sent our completed forms before I even left New York, but the sticker just came this week.

There were many varied activities, but they all had to be at a state park- picnics, learning things from interpretive signs, hiking, paddling, reading a book under a tree, watching the night sky. Lots of choices, and you could do any 25. We actually ended up with 27 because we were able to do several at the George Washington headquarters.

The Finger Lakes Branch Trails is the set of trails that Marie and I finished this summer. You must hike all of the branches: Onondaga (also NCT), Crystal Hills, Interloken, Letchworth, Bristol Hill, and Conservation Trail. Since we started the Onondaga Branch in 1996, I guess you have to conclude that we are slow. Haha! You can find almost all of those hikes on the blog if you care. Conservation Trail 2024, 2023. Letchworth and Crystal Hills September 2021. Interloken and Bristol July and August 2020. The Onondaga was completed long before, and the intervening years we were finishing the rest of the main FLT and the rest of the Buckeye Trail loops and spurs.

This one is very cool! It was also created just this year, and I'm pretty sure I'm the first person to get one (well, Mary Coffin certainly qualified before they even made the patch!), but you can get one too! Of course, as soon as I saw the requirements, I immediately figured out that I'd done enough of them the previous year or earlier. There are 17 options, and I've done 16 of them! If you went to the 2023 Celebration, you MAY have done two. You don't have to do the entire trail, just spend either an hour or hike a mile on each choise. Here is a link to the NCT Adirondack Challenge form.

Now for the one I've coveted for quite a while. It's actually three patches that form a panorama. Along the Finger Lakes Trail there are posts with a metal plaque where you are supposed to make a rubbing. The three patches represent the Western, Central, and Eastern sections of the FLT.

This program was created with Wegman's (huge NY grocery chain), and is called the Passport series. You have to get 4 rubbings from posts in each section. There are plenty of posts to choose from, nevertheless, it took me forever to collect 12 of them from the right places. I passed up lots of posts on earlier hikes. At first I didn't realize you could get patches. I knew they were to motivate families (lots of the posts are reached by easy hikes from trailheads). Then I just wasn't focused on that goal.

Then I got serious. There is a booklet for each section where you can make the rubbings. It has a guide to each post. There are supposed to be booklets and crayons at each post, but you know things sometimes don't get maintained. Anyway, I had a couple of rubbings before the E2E hike, but I wanted to get the rest of what I needed on that hike. First two posts I came to, no booklets, no crayons. All I had with me was a pen. I tried getting the image to transfer to the back of my map, but it was basically unreadable.

Finally, I got a booklet. Got 2 from the west section, all the middle and east ones. Still needed two west ones, right?

Last year, on the Conservation branch, I got my last two western rubbings. Finally collected all the stuff and sent it in this year. I LOVE this. You also get entered in a drawing for groceries, but hey, all I want is the patches!

Just in case you didn't know... I like patches.

In other news, I worked on a lot of projects that needed doing today.

See Hiking Patches 2023 See Hiking Patches 2022