Summer of 1993 - After Hours

 So, what did I do with myself after the gates to Wetlands Research, Inc. were locked at 6 pm, or on the weekends? Other than making sure I was caught up on my lab tests, I basically did two things.

One, I started a private herbarium, collecting plants. I've since decided I'd rather just take pictures, but it did help me learn a lot. There was plenty of room in my trailer, since I really only lived in one room, and the other room had two long tables. I learned that several years later, this trailer got taken away by a tornado! Maybe I'll show you some of the herbarium another day. Maybe not. I've got another piece of the summer to share yet.

But the primary thing I did in my spare time was take advantage of the Des Plaines River Trail that I've already mentioned.



The northern terminus of the trail was about 4 miles north of where I was located. To the south it stretches through a string of forest preseves that protect about 76% of the river, and connects with the Cook County Forest Preserve. The trail is continuous all the way to Oak Park, IL. (I think- the maps are clunky.)

Anyway, here's what it looked like going south through "our" property. Yes, it's wide and graveled. It's a multi-use path.

This part is flat and open, but it quickly got into the very pleasant oak savannahs I showed you on the day we began this series.

Remember, Chips was a puppy. I was only walking him about 2-3 miles a day. So, I don't think we went more than a couple of miles to the south. But I could never get him tired out. He was a very high-energy dog.

Now we'll switch to a weekend when both Omer and Loretta visited at the same time. Somehow I talked both of them into taking a walk with me on the trail. Of course, Chips went along.

And these pictures are also taken from the trail. The beavers were not content to try to plug up our little culverts. Oh, no! They actually took on the river.

Look at this! They were serious.

So, it was getting on into late July, almost August, and I was determined that I was going to find out what it took to tire this dog. Well, we walked all the way to the northern terminus of the trail and back. Eight miles. He then was perfectly willing to curl up and sleep!

And that's how he became Chips, the hiker dog. I'm sure you've figured out that he was always ready for an adventure. This was his more usual look of the summer- covered in mud and anticipating whatever was going to come next.

There was one other big adventure of that summer. I'll have to scan some more stuff, but it's probably worth showing you.

In other news: I worked super-hard on the campsite section of the trail book. Five hours. My brain is just done, but I accomplished a lot.

See Critters

Summer of 1993 - Other Outside Duties

 One reason that I got to know Ike so well was that I was his backup person. He had to teach me how to do all the regular things he did so I could do readings in his absence, and we spent a lot of time together. I certainly wouldn't have been able to fix any of the electronics, but sometimes I did the basics.

This is Ike taking a reading from one of the rain guages. I think we had two of them at opposite ends of the property. These had a revolving drum and a roll of paper that took readings all the time and recorded it as a graph. I think the paper had to be changed once a month. Don't take me to task if you know a lot about these and I haven't remembered perfectly. It was a long time ago, and I didn't really do much with it. I think maybe I changed the roll one time.

I showed you on an earlier day that Ike took the readings from the weather station. But I knew how to do this too. It really was just a matter of plugging that handheld unit in to the feed from the station on top of the tower and making sure the numbers came through right and not just gobbledegook.

Doing all these things took time. It's a 500 acre site, and mostly I walked to the locations. They are still in operation. Their website says they have 4 ponds, so either they removed two or my memory is bad. Could be either. This was 31 years ago, and I didn't keep a journal.

Ike's top priority was to check on the main pump that drew water from the river. But he had to teach me what to do if it quit, which occasionally happened. I think something had to be reset every few days. Looks pretty compicated, right?

Well, it was pretty complicated, and I knew nothing except how to punch in the reset codes. However, it did go down late one evening when I was there alone, so they were extra glad someone was on site that day! If that hadn't worked, I would have needed to call Ike.

Ike's other primary duty, and he HATED it because it kept happening over and over, was to deal with this. Where the water went back into the river, in other words, at the far end of the property, was a small double culvert where the water flowed out. Well, you can sort of see where two holes are supposed to be at the bottom of that pile of cattails.

Yes, there were beaver, and it was their great burning desire in life to keep the water in the pond. Every couple of days, Ike had to go back there and clear the culverts. I often helped him.

It was amazing how quickly the beavers (whom I NEVER saw) would plug things back up. Sometimes they got really serious and used more mud than vegetation. This isn't the exit culvert. I'm no longer sure where this went, but they did a fine job. Ike was not pleased.

And how about that Chips? He was having a grand time learning about the world. Like how wind makes waves on the water and they require barking. He was still pretty little in this picture. He hadn't yet turned into the dog that could not be kept out of the water. That didn't really happen until he was maybe 6 months old. Before that, he wasn't afraid of it (Maggie hated the water), but at this he stage he would not yet jump into anything wet.

There was no particular amount of time I was required to spend working. I just had to complete all the tasks, which wasn't much of a problem as long as I wasn't a slacker. The inside jobs took a huge amount of time. We'll visit them tomorrow. But I'll say again that this "job" was heaven on earth for an outdoor-loving human and a puppy.

In other news: I'm almost done with the big editing job I've had for a while, and I'm working on formatting my own book, and played with the cover a bit. I've spent all day working with fonts and graphics and my head is spinning. Still no car.

See Regular Outside Duties

Sterling Marsh North

  Cathy and I managed to get a little hike in before the sky opened and poured water on everything. We hiked just north of where Loren and I went on Thursday. It had also rained before we got there, and the colors are always lovely and vibrant when things are wet.

We hiked past the northern portion of Sterling Marsh. This section is also covered with water lilies.

But the most interesting thing is this beaver lodge. I don't remember a lodge being here before. I wonder if this means we are going to start having problems with trail flooding. I guess we'll have to wait and see how the beaver think things should be altered. With that clear strip of open water, it sure looks like an active lodge.

The Bee Balm, AKA Wild Bergamot, Monarda fistulosa was in bloom. I thought I was going to get a picture with a little butterfly on the blossom, but it flew away.

I did get a nice picture of a male Ebony Jewelwing Damselfly. The females have black bodies instead of the bright metallic blue-green of the males. We also saw a beautiful black and green dragonfly, but no picture of that. Sorry.

Like so many of my recent hikes, this was double duty for some trail work. We added a few stickers, and put this strip on the post at the 76th St junction with the spur to the trailhead so you can clearly tell where to go when you approach it from the south.

We were safely on the way home before the rain hit. The humidity was 72%, so the shorter hike was just fine. I was soaked through with sweat even though we didn't get rained on.

In other news: After I got home I did some more volunteer stuff and then buckled down to finish Chapter 47 of Dead Mule Swamp Singer.

My NCT miles for 2021 is at 355, Cathy is at 52.5 for Hike 100.

North Country Trail, Lake County, MI. 76th St to Jenks TH and back. 3 miles total

See Sterling Marsh Again

Hiking with Denali

  I worked really hard all week so I could play all day today without feeling guilty. And that's just what I did!

Denali and I headed south on the North Country Trail. We worked it out so she could "slack-pack." That means she did not have to carry her full backpack for most of the day.

This is a particularly attractive group of Gaywings, aka Fringed Polygala.

I don't want to tell you exactly where she is, but you've seen this tree before. However, please notice (fresh wood chips) that the beavers are actively working on taking it down. They are just obsessed with this big tree!

We ate lunch with a nice view. Not quite enough sun yet to color the water, but it did get nicer in the afternoon.

Wild strawberries in bloom already. Spring is on a mission now.

I love how the understory is greening up- this is mostly Vaccinium pallidum, hillside blueberry, beneath the red pines. It's so wonderful to have a colorful world again! Especially one with a blue blaze on a tree.

And finally, we had to say farewell for this trip. You can conclude from our head coverings that the air remained chilly, but it was a nice temperature for hiking. She shouldered her full pack and hiked on.

We'll definitely be staying in touch. We have a lot in common and really hit it off. We both had a blast. I loved being able to help another hiker- so many people helped me.

So at 6 miles, I turned around and hiked back to my car. Then I drove her pack around to the last road crossing before she was going to stop for the night. And I walked out to meet her and back to the car again. I walked a total of 15 miles, and I'm not the least bit stiff or sore! Yippie!

North Country Trail, Newaygo County, MI. 96th St south past Highbanks Lake and back. Then north from Pierce Drive 1.5 miles and back

Tomorrow, I'll probably show you more from today- there are some pretty pictures from after the sun came out. I even did a favorite thing coming home- just followed my nose on back roads. I may have seen a couple of new ones. Definitely some I haven't been on often.

North Country Trail miles for 2021 is at 261.

See Dinner with Denali See Not Seen for Five Years

Not Seen for Five Years

  OK, it's only four and a half, technically, but it was 2016 the last time I walked these miles of the North Country Trail. It was October on that little backpacking excursion. Things look much different in March! I really wanted to see some piece of trail that I haven't visited so recently. This filled the requirement.

The theme of the hike was water features.

I took this hike yesterday afternnon, but am sharing it today because I wanted to post about bell choir yesterday. I suspect this beautiful wetland is barely wet in the fall. The reddish shrubs are leatherleaf, which will tolerate standing water but not all year round. This is right on the line between Lake and Newaygo Counties. (The road is not exactly on the county line, so there is a tiny bit of trail at the north end of this hike that is actually Lake County.)

A little farther south, we have a freshwater marsh with a different color palette. This one probably has open water all year. The reeds and hummocky grasses suggest that.

The trail actually snakes through a very large area of wetlands. I'm sure this one has open water year round. Two reasons- the standing dead trees...

and evidence that it gets continual help in maintaining the water level from the beavers. Gotta say, though, that when the beavers do fell this tree, I doubt they are going to be able to move it very far unless the water gets a lot higher!

The banks of Cedar Creek are still all brown, except for a slight flush of red on the red-osier dogwood. On the hike linked below, I stopped here to filter water.

Next up in the gallery of wetlands is a bottomland hardwood swamp, much maligned in literature as spooky places. I just think they are beautiful.

And my destination: Highbank Lake. There is a campground about a half mile off trail, but I did not go there. I ate a snack and turned around.

This made my total hike 10 miles, which was plenty for not getting started hiking until after 1 pm. No problem with time, though. I made it back to the car before 5. The temperature hovered above 60- I hiked in shirtsleeves. Obviously the sun and sky were delivering blue water. It was quite awesome. Living the dream!

North Coutry Trail miles for 2021 is at 127.

North Country Trail, Newaygo County, MI, 96th St to Highbank Lake and back. 10 miles total

In other news: It's all other news today, since this was yesterday! I painted for 4.5 hours, did a 4-mile road walk with Cathy, and now I'm doing editing. Oh, also took books to the PO to mail.

See 2016 Short Backpacking Trip

Hodenpyl Dam Pond in Winter

  Loren and I hiked today along Hodenpyl Dam Pond, which is a really lovely stretch of the North Country Trail. I hadn't ever hiked it in winter. Of course, Koa was there too. She loves the snow!

Warning: This is a picture-heavy post. Just to prove we were happy, here's another goofie selfie. The temperature stayed right around 20 degrees, but both of us had overdressed and had to shed a layer before we'd been out very long.

This bridge crosses an arm of the lake that isn't really a creek, it's more of a bayou.

Here's the view out toward the lake from the bridge

There was light snow falling almost all the time we were out. However, on our way back it started coming down a little heavier. This picture makes it look like a real white-out! That's kind of funny because the flakes never got really heavy, and it wasn't windy, but it sure softened the view.

Now for the tree "damage" section of this post.

An energetic beaver has been hard at work here. I've seen them try to take down even bigger trees, but this one is certainly a long-term project.

We found this hemlock tree striped with yellow-bellied sapsucker holes. And here's where I learned something new. After I got home I looked up hemlocks and sapsuckers because I haven't noticed them drilling their lines of holes in hemlock before. Guess I just wasn't paying attention! They love hemlock. Sapsuckers, as beautiful as they are, do a lot of damage to trees. I found a table with the mortality rates for live trees drilled by sapsuckers. It's as high as 67% for gray birch and 51% for white birch (more common here). They also like red maple, red spruce and hemlock. But the mortality for hemlock is only 1%. The hemlock seem to tolerate it better. This tree was completely riddled with their holes, but seemed healthy.

And we saw another interesting burl. With the swirling snowflakes, it almost looks like it has white Christmas lights strung on it!

Now for the extended hike section of this hike!

So, we got back to the car after doing 6 miles. I wanted to do a little more. I wondered if I could make it to 10. I looked at the map, and I'd have to go beyond Eddington Bridge and back. Think DOWN to the creek, UP the other side, then ditto on the return. Decided I'd see how I felt. It was neat to look down and see Eddington Creek winding along the bottom of the valley (the wavy dark line in the middle). You can't really see the creek that well in the summer.

Then up the other side, with a look back at the bridge. (But this is only the very start of the climb.)

I had to go all the way to the top of the hill to get to the turnaround point! But I did it. I walked 10 miles in snow and don't even feel too beat. Yeah!

Hike 100 Challenge 2021 is at 46.5 miles.

North Country Trail, Wexford and Manistee Counties, MI, South of Eddington Creek to middle of Northern Exposure Campground and back. 10 miles

Believe me, there is no other news. I'm not whipped, but it was enough. Made a grilled cheese sandwich when I got home. Yum!

See Teeny's First Overnight