Details from the Bike Ride

It was hard to pick just a few pictures from our Cadillac to Tustin bike ride yesterday. I've decided these are my favorites.

On the side of a building in Tustin we saw one of the decorative, painted quilt blocks that are becoming popular. I've never seen one done in the basket design, so I really liked that.



The rest of my favorites are nature's offerings. If you click the picture, it will take you to my photo pages where you can see the image larger, and also other shots.

First, we have the charming calico aster. I showed this last year, but these were some particularly lovely plants. It's always been Aster lateriflorum, but with the new taxonomy, I see they are changing it to Symphyotrichum lateriflorum.



Next is also a familiar friend, the monarch butterfly. If you live in the northeast U.S., this butterfly is so common I tend to overlook it. However, it is a stunning insect. It's Danaus plexippus



Finally, it was sunny, but not too hot. It was just warm enough to coax the turtles out on logs to sun themselves. This painted turtle looks very relaxed, I think! I also stopped and moved a smaller one out of the bike path. Even though motorized vehicles aren't allowed, one isn't always looking down while biking- it would be all too easy to at least injure a careless turtle. I like its scientific name... it sort of rolls off the tongue, Chrysemys picta.



Tomorrow, top commenters for August, unless something spectacular comes along.

	See Quilt Barns See Calico Aster See Orange
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White Pine Trail- Cadillac to Tustin

Om and I decided to celebrate our anniversary (which was last week) with a bike ride, but we couldn't manage to schedule it till today.



Om wanted to ride some of the White Pine Trail south of Cadillac. The entire trail runs for 92 miles from Cadillac south to Grand Rapids. It's a rail-trail, on the former bed of the Grand Rapids & Indiana, which became Michigan Northern RR, which was under Penn Central. Of course, that means it's quite level and straight.



That said, it does climb gently to one high point, and there is almost a view from there.



We rode 11 miles to Tustin. There is a small museum there, the Pine River Area Museum, but it wasn't open. I'd like to go back when it is. Small-town museums can be fun, and the collections aren't so overwhelming. Then, we rode back, of course!



Then we went to Ruby Tuesday to eat. I'm not usually impressed with chain restaurants, but I have to say they had a really wonderful salad bar. They had real greens, not just iceberg lettuce, and a large selection of other veggies and toppings to add. There were a few other salads too- potato, macaroni, maybe something else.

We've been putting up with each other for 43 years. I guess we'll go for a few more.

Tomorrow, I'll show you some other things we saw.

	See Biking Date
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Is it a Karner Blue?

This little blue butterfly was flitting around my back yard a few days ago. I didn't get any stunning pix, but I was hopeful to get enough for an ID. Maybe.



This is the best picture I got. I was pretty excited, because I remembered just enough from my two days of helping with the butterfly count to know that the Karner Blue, an endangered butterfly, only has orange spots on it's hind wings. So far, that fit.

The real problem is that there is no wild lupine here at all. It doesn't seem to grow any farther west than about 10 miles from me. And the Karner Blue butterfly has to have it.

So, I sat down with my identification card that the Forest Service gave me, to try to figure out what this blue butterfly might be. Yes, it has orange spots on only the hind wings. That narrows it down to the Karner Blue, Gray Hairstreak, or the Eastern Tailed Blue. It's not the Gray Hairstreak; that one has lines on the wings, instead of the spots you can clearly see. If it is the Eastern Tailed Blue, it should have a funny little tail on the lower edge of the hind wing.

I sure can't see one, can you? But, as much as I'd like it to be a Karner Blue, I don't think it is. The KB should have a whole line of orange spots, not just two of them.

All the rest of the pictures I got are out of focus, but one of them is at a better angle to see the edge of the wing in silhouette. That could be a tail...



I think I have to conclude that this is the Eastern Tailed Blue butterfly, Cupido comyntas. It's quite common. You have to keep in mind that all these little blue butterflies are, well, little! With their wings folded like this they are about half an inch across. So I'm chasing little specks of blue through a field hoping they will sit still long enough for me to find that little spot through the camera and then hope that the camera will focus.

If I can hold on to the differences, that's three little blues that I know I've seen. I've put the other two in the links below.

	See Karner Blue Butterfly See Spring Azure
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Rainy Day

Today was supposed to be an Ellen and Joan Adventure. Instead we got some badly needed rain. It came down so hard it looked to be falling in white streaks, and the wind was blowing the pine branches around.

Although it was hard to give up a play day, the rain smelled and felt great. We sure needed it. I like how this picture makes the picnic table indistinct.



I did more with crabapples (stay tuned at Grazing the Ditches), and I played pinball. High score up to 8,675,900.

	See A Serious Addiction
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A Serious Addiction

OK, I'm going to reveal another fact about myself, without any meme which requires me to do it. I have a serious addiction. OK, I have several. Peanut butter, coffee, diet coke, hiking, apparently blogging, but really, this one is serious.

If I participate in this activity at all, I really can't stop. I've been "clean" for quite a few years, because I haven't have any opportunity to fall off the wagon.

It's... pinball.

My two favorite games won't play on anything higher than Windows 98. I still have that on an old computer, but that monitor died. So I've had enforced restraint.

But tonight I found a flash pinball that is free, fun, adorable, and deceptively difficult to get the high scoring prizes. My best score so far is 4,358,000. The top score is 25 times that!



It's called Power Pinball.

Sigh, I'm hopeless. Let me off the leash for just a short while, and look what happens.

	See When I Waste Time I Do it Right
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