Gale's Pond

I need to visit some places with short hikes for my next newspaper column. For Oceana County, I decided to go to Gale's Pond. It's a lovely place, but I haven't been there for several years. There was Covid, and then there was the big NCT hike, and just like that, my last visit was in 2019. Cathy and I went there today. We've both been busy and haven't had an adventure in a while.

It was a highly worthwhile trip. For one thing, there used to be just one picnic table, and no latrine. Now there are multiple tables and a porta-potty. There is also now a new brochure to go with the interpretive trail. It's well-done- talking about ecosystems and getting the user to observe things, not just identifying trees or whatever.

This is one of the stops on the interpretive trail with a nice bench.

The area is an Oceana County Park. The trail was originally developed with Michigan's Recreation Trust Fund money. This paid for a long boardwalk through the marshy area. This part of the trail from the parking lot is all accessible. The entire loop is only a half-mile long. We walked it twice. We also took a sack lunch to eat at the picnic tables.

There are some lovely views. The trees are just barely starting to turn, but soon it will be very colorful.

This cutie (don't touch ones with tufts of spines like this) is an IO Moth caterpillar. Nice find!

You know I'm always looking for water patterns. This is reflections in the creek.

And on the way home, we did one mile of another of my favorite things- Seasonal Road! It got quite a bit more dicey than this. But it was short and we had fun.

The best thing was that it was a great botany day! There is quite a bit of quality plant material at Gale's Pond. You'll see that another day- there is definitely enough for a whole post. I saw some familiar things, and a couple of plants in new seasons for me.

Before we left this morning, the time was filled with communicating with several people about various things. After the hike, I ate a little more, and cleaned up the kitchen. This took up all the time until the first bell choir practice of this season. So... not much happened on my ongoing projects, but I'll get back to them tomorrow.

See Oceana County Adventure