Meeting Tim and Tammy

 Today, I interviewed Tim and Tammy Martin who recently completed hiking the Appalachian Trail for the second time. Actually, I had met them long ago, but never really knew them very well. We spent 2.5 hours talking because it was more than an interview. We swaped hiking stories, and talked gear, and methods, and all that kind of stuff. It was a great time.

I'll be writing articles about their adventures.

After that, I went back to the School Forest with the goal of walking two miles. Guess what! I walked two and a half!

Best find was a poodle wearing a scarf.

And all this did not exhuast me. I came home and have done computer work alternately with reading.

Now, if I could just figure out how so many stink bugs are getting in the house!

See Building Stamina

See Me Walk a Mile

 I was determined to find out if I could do it. I had to run one errand that gave me a place to park on a side road, so I set out to walk a mile. I guess the snow was surprised to see me out there again. I was pretty tired, but I did it!

I can't decide if this looks like a swirl on a cinnamon bun, the letter 9 with a decimal point, or a comma and a period.

It was really lovely during the time I was outside.

Doug plowed our driveway, which is good because it was getting bad and we are supposed to get even more snow tomorrow.

Today was fairly energetic. The walk and bell choir practice. About 90 minutes of screen time, but bell practice is a lot of eye use, although not as stressful as the computer. I feel as if I'm really making progress, although I still have to take 5 ibuprofen a day. Hopefully, I can cut those back soon.

See Cottage Cheese Blueberry Bake

Eye See You

  Always on a quest to find something new to show you in the woods.

Found an eyeball!

Do you like brown eyes?

Or blue?

I like brown. How much creepier should we get. Two eyes?

Or maybe it's better this way.

Well, this is pretty frivolous, but at least you know I went for a walk today.

Other than that, I continued to work on all my projects and made yogurt. Being so disciplined on a daily basis is really NOT me. I wonder how long I can keep this up?

See Picasso in the Woods

Letchworth 3 - the Gorge

  Today was the best day of this hike, and we completed the Letchworth Branch. The trail was mostly well maintained with fewer deep dips to creeks. The temperature was drop-dead perfect, and after a brief mosquito-y start, they even gave up.

But, as everywhere here, the creeks are all lined with shale. This is a good example.

The very best though, is that the trail gives a number of views of this portion of the gorge of the Genesee River. This is sometimes called the Grand Canyon of the East, but that name is also applied to a deep gorge in Pennsylvania. No matter what you call it, it's impressive.

This is a closeup of that bump in the rock wall.

And here is a view looking upstream instead of down.

Just to give you a sense of this valley, here is a longer view of the floodplain. You can barely see the river down there.

And what is the point of this? Here we are at the Mount Morris Dam. This dam is 215 feet tall, and was finished in 1951. The purpose is flood control. Downstream from this location is the city of Rochester, which regularly suffered catastropic floods prior to this date. Unless there are serious storms, the water is just allowed to flow through the dam. There is no reservoir. However, in storms, the water is held behind the dam and then released gradually to prevent the damaging floods. Twice, the water has risen to within four feet of the spillway at the top of the dam. Now glance back at the floodplain picture. And keep in mind that this valley is 17 miles long. Think about how much water was being held behind that dam!

And this is the thing my dad loved about this park. He liked to go and look at the dam. I think he had experienced one of the Rochester floods, and he understood what a big deal this is.

We have now finished the Letchworth Branch of the FLT.

Letchworth Branch of the Finger Lakes Trail. 9.4 miles, approximately Ridge Road to the northern terminus in Mt. Morris

See Nice Trail

My Pet Dinosaur

  I watch my pet dinosaur out the kitchen window all summer long. Now you can see her too. She never wanders far, but she must hibernate in the winter. She completely disappears then.

This was not my finest day. I never used to have allergies, but something has started bothering me. Today was awful. I managed to work on the trail data book all day, but didn't do much else.

See The Tree Lecturer

Some Fun from Yesterday

  Sure, mostly I was trucking along knocking out the miles. But I had to take a few fun pictures.

How about the tree with octopus roots?

This stump isn't humorous, but I continue to be fascinated by the trees that grow in a helix.

This is one of the northern maidenhair ferns just opening up, but it has sort of an insect-ish, grasping kind of look- maybe like too many praying mantises. Total contrast with the cool, soothing aspect of the fully opened ferns.

Finally, there was this passive-agressive mushroom that couldn't decide whether to bite me or hug me.

I felt pretty good today- only a little stiff. I went for my 3-mile road walk just to keep limbered up. I will admit that I slept like a log last night! Spent part of the day starting to gear up to get back in the writing groove.

See 20 Miles See Helical

What a Great Day!

  I worked hard in the morning, and then headed out for an afternoon on the trail. The North Country Trail, of course. Can a shadow look happy? I think this one does.

Almost immediately there was this lovely treat growing right beside the trail. Flowering dogwood, Cornus florida. The brach is arranged so gracefully.

The flowers aren't all the way open yet. I haven't ever caught pictures of it at quite this stage.

My next call to adventure was this interesting map. I haven't yet explored this world. OK... it's just a cut birch tree. But doesn't it look like a map of some ancient land with a sheltered bay and two small pointed hills?

There were four creeks I crossed. This is Bear Creek.

And Tank Creek. I actually camped over beyond the upper left corner in 2016 when I did a short backpacking trip here.

Speaking of backpacking, I met one fellow, Loren, who is hiking the whole Lower Peninsula. It's so very, very cool to find that there are more than a handful of people who are doing longer hikes on the NCT now.

I walked until I reached the mileage I wanted, and took a short rest on this log. And look! The sloth hiking team has been there. (You know, the ones who say, "We will get there when we get there.")

Mostly just came directly home, but I did take one little mile of new back road. Talk about a dream day! The temperature was just warm enough for no long sleeves, but not too hot. Things are really getting green. The sunshine made the water blue. Pretty darn wonderful!

I walked 10 miles, collecting info for the data book. Just 5 more Newaygo County miles to go (so 10 to hike them out and back). Total North Country Trail miles for 2021 is at 276.

In other news: I edited in the morning. I'm a little tired tonight- I didn't get to sleep until about 2 am, so I'll probably fall asleep early.

North Country Trail, Newaygo County, MI. Oak Savannah to north of Tank Creek and back. 10 miles total

See So Wrong About the Dogwood See another sloth face

The Tree Lecturer

  I brought in a guest lecturer to tell you about some of the trees/woody finds from Wednesday. Trust me, he's experienced.

First, he'd like to assure you that it's always impressive to find a giant white pine still standing. It took two pictures to capture it all.

This much smaller tree is unique in that the hole into its hollow center is almost perfectly round!

In the middle of one of those fancy wetlands was this dead, bleached snag. Very interesting shape.

And another cut log with a star. Now that we know this is caused by cutting through a node where branches grew out from the trunk it seems less magical, but it's still interesting. This one almost looks like a star with a hand print in the upper left.

In other news: The human edited, and edited and edited.

See 15 Miles! See a better star pattern in a cut log

Watching for Spring

  This gnarly tree-gnome is watching to see if spring is happening. Looks skeptical.

The quaking aspen tree is surely trying to act spring-like.

Catkins on it are fully fluffy and about to start spreading pollen. Quaking aspen is dioecious, which means there are separate male and female trees. So this one is male. That said, aspen seeds rarely result in new trees. Aspens most commonly sprout from vast root systems. When you see a clump of aspen, it's likely actually all one plant with a shared root. The largest and oldest is called the Pando Clone in Utah. 100 acres in size, it is all one organism and is estimated to be 80,000 years old.

Here's a tiny bit of good news related to a not-quality event I haven't shared (because it did not make me happy). For some reason, the road commission took out 4 big trees along a road on my common road loop. I don't know why- they weren't dead or obstructing sight lines on a corner. Anyway, they cut them, ripped out the roots, and backfilled the holes. What I'm sure they neither knew nor cared about was that there were daffodils that grew beneath those trees in spring. Ha! Bulbs are tough. There are quite a few of them in bud, and one has already managed to bloom. Hooray for the tenacity of flowers!

The moss is getting sexy too! Spore production on its way.

And I suspect the red-tail hawk has a better view of the arrival of spring since s/he is more mobile than the tree-gnome. Love my hawks!

In other news: I worked on a volunteer project all day. ALL DAY. Then I took a 5-mile walk because I was feeling so antsy. Yesterday, shirtsleeves. Today, 37 degrees and winter clothes. Tonight, a dustng of snow on the ground!

See Anything But Brown