Urban Forest Trails

  Today, Cathy and I walked through two urban forest areas in Ludington. It would have been a good choice for a different day (or to have had snowshoes), but we sure got a good workout. Took a couple of streets to reach the Ludington School Forest. This has a nice loop with various cutoffs. It gets a lot of use, so I figured the dog walkers would have packed it down well Sunday and yesterday, since the snow had pretty much stopped Saturday night. Nope. Really unbroken snow except for occasional ski tracks. Even though it's not groomed, we tried to stay out of them.

Maybe the lack of walkers is because of the temperatures. The high today was 14 degrees, but be were bundled up and it was no problem. My new boots are keeping my feet warm and dry.

Then we crossed the road and entered Methodist Church property. Someone had skied there too. I just liked the tracks.

I've showed you some of these trails before. But today we went out farther, where I've never hiked before.

We weren't sure we were even on church property, but we finally picked up some snowshoe tracks and were following those. Before long, we came to one of the many wooden crosses in the woods that I think they use at Easter time for some sort of meditation walk. So we knew we hadn't strayed too far.

And then, when we were almost at the end of our time... the sun came out for a little bit. It sure was nice to see bright light shining on the pine needles!

The sky never really cleared, but there were blue patches, and it was a gorgeous shade of blue!

We only managed to walk 3.5 miles, but our knees know we did something. Nice time.

In other news: I did some volunteer stuff in the morning. Then Doug (Cathy's husband) came and plowed out the driveway, and tried to get the snowblower running. He couldn't get it to go either, so I feel better. Then I did errands, walked with Cathy, and then had bell choir practice. After that I bought groceries, and then finally I got to come home and eat. Full day!

See Methodist Trails