Critter Day

These were taken over the last few days. Here's my local woodchuck. They often take very human poses, and this one was standing upright for quite a while before s/he saw me and scooted away. Just needs a vest and tophat!

This is author friend Jean with one of her chickens that helps her sell books. This is Jelly.

Here's a Margined Blister Beetle. There were a bunch in the rock garden. I'm not sure what they were eating. Web says they eat alfalfa, but probably other things too. If you squish them the "juice" can give you a blister.

This is one of the red meadowhawk dragonflies. But it's smaller than the ones I usually see. Not sure which of the meadowhawks. This was also in a flower bed.

Here's the best one, but I couldn't move fast enough to get the best picture. There was a very large spider climbing up a rock in the rock garden. But it didn't look right. Then I realized that the spider was dead and it was being carried by about 5 ants that were probably taking it "home" for dinner. I don't think I've ever seen ants capture anything this large. You can see one ant hanging on the lower leg of the spider and one pulling at the very top.

Today, I worked my little part-time job, did some volunteer stuff and some gardening. Took a road walk after dinner- 4 miles.

Miles walked in 2026: 273.1
Onekama Challenge: 84.9 miles

See Ruby Meadowhawk

Arcadia- Authors and Animals

The final day of Arcadia Daze was shorter and calmer, with a little more time to do things besides interact with potential buyers.

John Wemlinger is an author I met at an event a couple of years ago. He told me I should try to get into Arcadia Daze, and that was good advice. I did well. I finally felt I had a comfortable enough margin that I could buy one of his books I wanted- The Cut- an historical fiction concerning the momentous and contentious cutting of a channel from Portage Lake in Onekama through to Lake Michigan. It dropped the water level of Portage Lake by 20 feet. I've just started reading it, but I can heartily recommend it.

He bought my sampler book, Accidentally Yours. I don't know if he's started it yet or would recommend it, but I'll tell you it's an eclectic collection of all the kinds of things I write. You may not like all the entries, but you'll probably like some of them.

John's wife Diane helps him with "marketing" (and moving all the crap around that one needs at these events). They make a great team. We had a good block of time before people really started coming through to talk about editing and publishing and all that sort of authorly stuff.

Since the vendors did not have to stay as long today, I popped over to Arcadia Marsh for a walk. The middle section of the marsh boardwalk is closed from April 15 to July 15 when birds are nesting, and I'd never managed to get there except during that time. But today, I got to walk all the way through.

I got some nice plant pictures but none of anything very unusual, so I'm going to show you animals because animal pictures are harder. Critters are more mobile than plants!

Who doesn't love turtles? Painted Turtles, and I chose this picture because their reflections are also in focus.

There were several Cedar Waxwings flitting around a space of open water.

Female Wood Duck swimming around.

And although this is just a female mallard- probably our most common duck, she's doing some nice contortions to get her preening accomplished, and notice the spread tail feathers.

I'm always tickled to get a good picture of a dragonfly. I've shown you this one before, but not very often. This is a male Widow Skimmer.

A nice Muskrat working its way around the same place of open water as the Cedar Waxwings. There was a lot of watercress here, and although cattails are their primary food, they will eat the cress too, so maybe that's what it was doing.

I thought that was probably going to be it for the wildlife. Another couple saw a green heron, but it was gone when I got to that spot. I walked the boardwalk trail twice to get in some miles, and almost at the end of the second time, I spotted a family of Trumpeter Swans. OK, it's getting so I see these fairly often, but I still love finding them.

An excellent day and weekend. The weather was neither too hot, too cold, nor too windy for an outdoor event. Developed a good relationship with a fellow author, made some money, and had a great hike. Can hardly improve on any of that!

Miles walked in 2026: 248.5
Miles walked for Onekama Challenge: 60.3

Streets in Arcadia 0.7 miles. Arcadia Marsh boardwalk twice 4.6, for a total of 5.3 miles.

See Arcadia Daze

Critter Day

How about some recent critters in my world?

This is the flicker that has been hanging around the deck. He comes to the birdbath, walks on the deck floor and perches on this bar. I've never had a flicker come so close to the house before.

One of the days we were out doing trail work we found this clean painted turtle on the trail. It's quite a ways from any water. Seemed a little odd, but a nice find.

Another visitor that is usually closer to water. This is a female Common Whitetail dragonfly. She was posing on a rock in the rock garden. You can see a male in the link below.

And here's quite an oddity- a black cat calmly sauntering through the driveway. I have no idea where it lives. I haven't seen evidence of a feral cat in our broken outbuildings lately.

I worked in the morning and had a Zoom meeting in the afternoon. Managed a few minutes in the gardens, but don't expect a lot from me this week. I don't do heat well. Mostly I sipped cold drinks and read a book. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. I have a couple of jobs I can do in our basement where it is cooler.

See Critters at MatthaeiI

Better Than the Average Beaver Pond - Day 434

This afternoon we passed (passed is a key word... not skirted or crossed the dam or waded) this truly lovely beaver pond.

The beaver pond earlier in the day was more of a challenge. Bill contemplates this pond, and he's standing in the opening where the trail used to go. Yes, right into the water.

The Peter Wolfe Chapter folks had flagged a good reroute around it, but it was a big pond, and the reroute was longish and wet. Here's the pond above the dam.

We thought we were going to have an easy 9 miles today because it wasn't very hilly. Ha! There were more than these two beaver ponds. There was a lot of lowland area with cedar swamps and difficult footing. We finally managed to pick up some speed on the final four miles which were more upland terrain through deciduous trees.

The Peter Wolfe Chapter had built some welcome puncheon in key areas that would have been awful to get across.

However, the day was nicely cool and dry. There were some fern fields in the morning, but we only got damp, not soaked. Well, until navigating mud pools around the beaver ponds. The mosquitoes were hungry. We were prepared.

One treat of the afternoon was finding a handsome dragonfly that held still for a picture. It's not a colorful one, but it is one I did not have a picture of. I think it's an American Emerald.

Miles today: 9.0. Total miles so far: 4769.4.

See Not Wet, Wet

Back to Midland to Mackinac - Day 3

  It was a pretty amazing day, but I'm beat. I hiked 14 miles, but only 5 of them were actually on the Midland to Mackinac Trail. Those miles were so difficult that I chose to take a longer road walk back to my car in both the morning and afternoon. In both cases, I walked the longer road miles faster than the trail miles.

The temperature was perfect- in the 70s, and the only wildlife I didn't like was the deer flies. But I kept my hair covered with a bandana and foiled their dive bombling.

I didn't get pictures of a lot of things, but I got a nice variety. Here's a Red-spotted Purple Admiral. I also saw Fritillaries, and I another orange one that I couldn't ID on the fly (literally).

I guess the next spotting was a Ruffed Grouse. It did not fly up, but did the pretend broken wing thing, so I suspected a nest nearby. The baby had fledged! I use the singular because I only saw one, but it flew right up beside mom. Mom landed and made a strange mewing sound. I've never heard that from a grouse before.

After that, a Woodcock flushed up right in front of me!

I loved the tamarack with the purple cones just forming.

This section of trail was a piece that was totally flooded two years ago, so I hadn't seen any of it. This was from Estey Road north to Guernsey Creek Road. I made it through, but it took me 2.5 hours to hike 2.8 miles. But it was wild and quiet and adventurous. I added quite a bit of blue flagging tape to help other hikers find their way with a little less trouble. Someone had been through recently enough to leave broken ferns. That helped me a few times.

Don't think that the road walks to return were so bad. Most were quite pleasant. This is Eastman Road.

After that, I decided to go back to the southern end of the piece I did on Monday. It seriously needed some additional flagging tape. I only found the trail on Monday because I'd spent a ton of time two years ago exploring all the places the trail was not. Perhaps foolishly, I decided to hike in from the next road south to see that section again. Hoo boy. It skirts a big wetland with treacherous footing, and then I had to hunt for blazes a few times. One benefit of that was finding this huge Black Oak. There are quite a few big ones in this section. The big oak also served as a landmark as I hunted for a blaze.

I went in as far as that infamous clearing and hung long streamers of blue tape that can be seen from each exit of the trail. Then I contemplated if I wanted to hike the two trail miles back- They had taken me over an hour to hike, and I'd gotten pretty wet getting around the wetland. I decided to do the 3 mile road walk back, which was also a bit of an adventure. The first mile was on a really old woods road. I briefly thought it was going to disappear into a huge marsh, but it did curve around that. Then it came out to the "real" road on private property. So, it's probably no longer a public road. Fortunately, I didn't get yelled at. After that it was a piece of cake to get to the car.

Found this cute little Northern Water Snake in the middle of the road. Someone needs to explain to him that he likes water. Anyway, I scooted him to the edge so that he might live long enough to find some water.

This lovely wetland with Bullhead Lilies didn't slow me down. What's a little unusual about this is that the water must have dropped after the lily pads grew. The leaves are standing quite upright instead of floating on the surface.

I did get held up there for a few minutes taking a picture of the Twelve-Spot Skimmer dragonfly.

I think I earned my dinner today! I made a new skillet meal that will last me a couple of days.

Anyway, I did 9 road miles and 5 trail miles. Tomorrow will be a little less ambitious.

Midland to Mackinac Trail- Estey to Guernsey Creek Road, and Mohawk Road to north of Rose Lane, and road returns. 14 miles

See Back to M2M - Day 2

Summer Morning at the Park

  Another boiling hot day here. The best thing I accomplished was meeting the Scottville City Manager at Scottville Riverside Park to talk about trail restoration and to look at one section together.

It was already standing-still-sweating hot at 9:30, but the river was very pretty. The new City Manager is a hometown boy who has come back to the area. He's excited about the park, and although he's being pulled in a hundred directions at once, he's planned an initial work day already. We had a good walk and talk.

There is a wide stretch of wetland in back of the beginning part of the trail. Naturally, it's wetter in the early part of the season. Lots of beautiful blue flag, Iris versicolor, there. This is a native wild iris. Good plant to have. It's not unusual, but very pretty. Bad news is there is a ton of poison ivy.

Got a couple of poor pictures of another new dragonfly. I think this is a Gray Petaltail. It's the only large one in my book that is so uniformly dark with no markings on the wings. They are completely clear. That said, I'm a total amateur on the dragonfly ID.

To help confirm that, look at this picture. You can't even see the wings against the asphalt! The shadow of its body looks unobstructed.

Best find of the day? A whole patch of Indian Cucumber Root which I also showed you last week. You may recall this is a high-quality plant. And... got a nice picture of the tiny flower!

I had lots of plans, and most of them didn't happen. But I didn't just blow the day off, despite the heat. I edited. I did a couple of errands, I worked on the data book. I'm posting early in hopes that after my Zoom event this evening, I'll feel cool enough to get outside and do a couple of things. It could happen. It's certainly not happening in the middle of the 90-degree days.

See Lopping, No Loping

It Doesn't Get Much Better

  It doesn't get much better than today, folks! I hiked 14 miles and finished collecting data for Newaygo County on the North Country Trail. The weather was beautiful. It was sunny and the high was 83, but there was a slight breeze that kept it from feeling too hot. And the humidity was low.

There are too many pictures in this post, but what should I leave out?

First of all, lets talk about a little geology. Most of the hills in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan are remnants of a huge glacial moraine that has eroded away in interesting patterns. There is a surviving ridge that runs somewhat N-S throughout Newaygo County. Just east of this ridge, and sometimes cutting through it are holes and channels that have become a series of lakes and wetlands. The NCT threads it's way along that ridge. Today, the southernmost lake in the series that I passed was Nichols Lake. It's also one of the largest.

Next one north that you can see from the trail is Leaf Lake. I think it gets its name from the odd shape.

That lake transitions into a long, long strip of wetlands that follow one of the eroded valleys. If this was Ohio or Pennsylvania, I'd suspect they were old mining pits. But I think these are just natural.

Condon Lake is a long, thin teardrop. You climb a hump in the ridge after a mile-long strip of wetlands, and it suddenly appears.

My hike today only took me a little north from here. But Highbank Lake, that you've seen a few other times, is in this same line. Then the trail veers west and leaves this geologic feature.

One very cool thing I found is one of the very few remaining Manistee Trail markers. That trail pre-dated the North Country Trail. And it looks like the porcupines don't care anything about history.

Best flower finds of the day are Frostweed, Helianthemum canadense,

And a Maple-leaf Viburmun, now with the flower fully open. But this picture wins because the sun helped make it a little artsy. I love the shadow on the leaf.

It was a great dragonfly day, especially along Nichols Lake, where I was "wading" through hundreds of zooming and flitting dragonflies. Getting any pictures at all was really hard. But I think most of them were Chalk-fronted Corporels. You can't see the distinguishing marks in this picture, but I did see a lot of them from better angles. I just couldn't get any pictures. There were other kinds as well. Notably some small blue ones, but no certain ID on those.

I just was trying to get lucky with a picture of this one perched on the grass. Couldn't tell what it was at all until I got home. I'm pretty sure it's the Calico Pennant, which I learned a couple of years ago.

And finally, I just like this picture. This was the edge of a wetland that wasn't terribly attractive, but the twisted shrubs and the lighting transformed it into something mysterious.

I met another long-distance hiker on the trail! Liz Jones is hiking from Croton Dam to Munising. Good luck, Liz! It's amazing that I actually encounter hikers multiple times a year, now. This is a relatively new phenomenon for the NCT!

It was also a good day for bullfrogs and mosquitoes and gypsy moths. The only negative for the whole day is that the gypsy caterpillars are hanging on their threads everywhere. I had "silk" threads touching my face all day long. I really could have done without that. But I prefer to emphasize how perfect the day was!

The only other news is that there was a Reading Regatta Zoom event in the evening.

North Country Trail miles for 2021 is at 335.

North Country Trail, Newaygo County, Michigan, FR 5633 almost to Tank Creek and back for a total of 14 miles

See MNF Challenge Hike #5