Hemlock Crossing and More

I have landed at Jean's for the night with the Hollard Art in the Park tomorrow. We already have the canopies set up, and we've talked author and editor stuff till we kind of ran down.

I stopped on the way down here today and hiked at a new-to-me park. I think it's going to be my favorite stop on the way to Holland. Called Hemlock Crossing, on the Pigeon River (the short one that's totally in Ottawa County).

Here's another view showing the footbridge to the trails.

There are miles of ski loops mostly in the woods. Moderate topography. The whole thing also connects to a regional multi-use trail

I just liked this log.

I hiked 5.3 miles, and there are probably at least that many more miles of trail without duplicating very much.

At Jean's, she's been working really hard at cleaning up her hillside garden. It's looking fantastic.

I'll probably show you more of it another day, but for now, here's a coreopsis called 'Golden Threads.'

Best of all, I got to meet her new dog, a cheaglehund (chihuahua, beagle, dascshund mix) named Loki. She's going to have to watch me carefully, or he might end up coming home with me. He is 7 pounds of spring loaded beagle. I'm definitely in love.

I have to go to sleep now. I'm beat.

Miles walked in 2026: 269.1
Onekama Challenge: 80.9 miles.

Hemlock Crossing park, Holland, Michigan, various loops- 5.3 miles.

See Jean's Garden

When Life Gives You Orange

When life gives you orange, well... you have orange!

Orange is not my favorite color, but it's sort of interesting because there aren't very many flowers, and very few wildflowers, that are orange. Most of the ones that are orange are lilies.

The common "Ditch Lily" is always orange. It is not native, and a lot of people are trying to get us all to get rid of it, but it's so naturalized, I don't see that happening. All the day lilies are imports from Asia.

However, there are a lot of orange butterflies. This is a Northern Crescent. Google tried to tell me it was a Pearl Crescent, but my good butterfly book says Northern. They don't look THAT much alike. It's enjoying some Joe-Pye Weed.

Did you know that some kinds of baby carrots grow on tall stems?

You know I'm kidding, right? But I've never had Tiger Lilies before, so watching them color up and take days to open was sort of mysterious. These are also ornamental plants, imported from Asia about 200 years ago for gardens. There are some native orange lilies.

Here's a view looking up into the flower.

For one of the native orange flowers, here is Spotted Jewelweed or Touch-me-not. It likes to have damp feet.

I tried to make today be more calm. I did a good amount of editing, finished my LDN column for the month, started the third weed-through of the season on the rock garden, dug a little dirt in the moon garden where it was shadier- but there were biting gnats. If I can get my butt in gear to go get gas, I think I'll mow a little yet this evening.

See PFS 2019- Orange

Vince Smith Connections

Today was SO amazing!

Over and over, you've seen pictures of the Vince Smith Memorial Bridge that carries the North Country Trail over the Big Sable River. You might remember that the Forest Service and our trail chapter took out the old wooden bridge and replaced it with a fiberglass reinforced polymer bridge. That was in 2016. (The Forest Service wanted a bridge that didn't have footers in the river.)

The question of the day is, "Who was Vince Smith?" The answer, as we knew it, is that he was a key volunteer with the North Country Trail Association in the early days, before we were a chapter. We knew he spent a lot of time working on trail in the Manistee National Forest, and that the bridge had been named in his memory after he died of cancer. There was an article about him in the North Country Trail Association Newsletter (it wasn't even called the North Star yet) after he died, with a very useless, grainy picture.

The chapter had one tenuous connection. One of our charter members, Gordie Wilkes, had worked with Vince on the trail before he passed away.

Today, I got to meet his daughter Maureen (Mo), and nephew Craig, and their spouses. Here are Mo and Toby, Robin and Craig, on the end of the new bridge with the refurbished sign showing as well.

We got Mo and Craig down on the level with the sign.

Mo has sent me some newspaper articles, and this picture of Vince taken from the Ann Arbor News in 1991 is the best we've ever seen.

After visiting the bridge, we all hiked farther. Craig and Robin had their dogs Ila and Tanner with them. Here's Ila cooling off in the river. I guess I didn't get a picture of Tanner.

And we visited the "Blue Hole," a spring on the edge of the river.

Mo, Craig, the dogs and I hiked 6 miles on the trail plus the 0.3 to access the cars. Then we all went for ice cream at the Sweetfern Cafe.

This fills out a very incomplete story for me and our chapter that we've always wanted to know more about. I'll be writing an article for our chapter newsletter. And we had a great time!

Here is the original bridge the summer after our chapter formed. This is in 1999.

And here it is on one of our chapter hikes in 2015, the last year of the wooden bridge.

Miles walked in 2026: 263.8
Hike 100 Challenge: 98.7 (really close!)
Onekama Challenge: 75.6 (met the weekly goal)

North Country Trail, Lake Co., Michigan. South from 5-Mile Road, 3 miles out and back plus walk to car.

See Trail Adopter Training Day

Can You Guess Where I Went?

I'm working hard to stay on track with the goal I set for the Onekama Challenge. Today I hiked 7 miles. Can you tell where? If you are local and know the trail, you probably recognize this scene.

This remains one of my favorite local hikes. There is a loop, but today I did both directions on the North Country Trail part so that all the miles would count for Hike 100. This is Bowman Lake.

The lily pads were healthy and dragonflies were skittering around.

I found a Blue Jay feather. Nothing of interest was in bloom, but there will be in a couple weeks. We'll see if I get back there.

Tomorrow, unless something goes awry, I am meeting someone interesting for a hike, and this will complete the week-three goal for the challenge as well. So, tomorrow's post will probably include something quite new.

In other news: I edited and had a Zoom meeting in the morning.

Miles walked in 2026: 257.5
Hike 100 Challenge: 92.7
Onekama Challenge: 69.3

North Country Trail, Lake Co, Michigan, 40th St to 56th St and back. 7 miles.

See Taking MOWA to the Trail

Not Red White and Blue

This is not the first time I've attempted a porch planter, but I can't find that I blogged about it before. One year I had a rather nice looking collection in this old ice cream maker, but I don't know when. The link below is one year that I put some house plants outside for the summer.

So, I thought I'd do red, white, and blue. Betsy gave me a geranium which I assumed would be red when it bloomed. I bought a white petunia, I bought one of those very cool dark blue petunias with white spots. I put them all in the planter with some dangling sedum.

The blue petunia died. I really don't know how that happened since they are all in the same planter and were all watered at the same times. And apparently, I didn't even take a picture of it. That makes me sad, but maybe I can get another one next year.

The geranium has turned out to be pink! So pink and white it is.

One of the years that Loretta was here, I put almost all the house plants on the deck and added some railing planters. That was green and leafy and nifty. It doesn't look like I blogged about that either. O well.

Today the humidity was nearly unbearable. I don't function well. I worked my little summer job this morning, shopped, cleaned up the kitchen, walked 2 miles on the road this evening.

Miles walked in 2026: 250.5
Miles walked Onekanma Challenge: 62.3

See Porch Plants