Tour de Cute

Holland State Park

hottie with a body, cutie with a booty

First time at Lake Michigan.

para que siga gringuita

 

before you or me, this was

YTD on the NCT

170 flesh-powered miles in the last 4 months; 90 on foot and 80 on a bike

 

Route shown is an approximation, if you found the shortest point-to-point route on foot, which Google says is 110 miles.


Perspective is everything. Here's the same route:

This fictional route below is around 2,500 miles. If you walked 3 mph without ever stopping, you'd finish in a little over a month. Or, you could cover 75 miles / day on a bike and you'd finish in about the same time.

Motivation for early retirement I suppose...

Again, a God-eyed-view:

North Country Trail - Manistee National Forest (Croton to 3-mi rd)

April 22-23 in the Manistee National Forest. Twenty-five miles hiking in about as many hours, plus about as much biking. I like the "bike north, lock bike to tree, hike south to car, drive north, hike south to bike, repeat" method to cover as many miles as possible solo. Camping was easy (low of 32 degrees, no rain, and a very quiet night actually - just one screech owl). It was breezy, but very sunny. High in the 50s.

Hartwick Pines S.P., 2006

These public parcels were acquired after a deforestation so complete that some have called it a rape of the land. It's hard to argue that those words are too strong. There is no other way to more effectively and completely destroy this ecosystem (and thus the people who live within it). It was the 19th century lumber industry. Perhaps it's hypocritical for me to whine, as one could argue that I benefit today from the economic progress built by the sale of all that timber. But the land was not an investment, it was pillaged by companies who then sold the useless soil to families as "prime" farm land. After they all went broke, it came back to the state. It is now managed for multiple uses - recreation, hunting, timber, hiking, biking, and scientific research. One hopes that we truly learned our lesson the first time. Anyway, check out the Logging Museum at Hartwick Pines State Park, along with the insanely large pine trees there.

It was good to find a trail where I could walk for 7 straight miles (2.5-3 hrs) without even crossing a gravel road.

Sorry for the deluge of pics. The world is just too awesome to summarize.

So much easier with a road bike.

Trail maintenance never ends.

Small is beautiful.

Sunrise through the bark.

Here be woodpeckers.

Someone tell me what this is. I say it's a combination of tree excavation (the wood fiber itself) and dung. But a close look showed a lot of pellets. Could that all be dung? That whole pile? Who lives in there?![2015 update: I think a porcupine lives in there]

I wrote a poem (while going over internal rhyming on a sub job) on occasion of this Blue Racer snake:

I saw a snake, 'twas not a fake,

A warning sound I did perceive.

I heard a rattle, thought he'd bite my saddle,

But 'twas naught but his tail in the leaves.

It's the biological equivalent of you putting up a home security sign by your front door without installing any actual security. It wards off 90% of your enemies and costs you nothing.

North Country Trail - Barry Game Area, Yankee Springs, and road connectors

This next section was over 3 hikes/bikes in March/April, totaling 13.6 miles in the woods and 22 miles on two wheels.

Further north and west out of Battle Creek, you come to the Kellogg Biological Station pasture dairy center. You can watch robots milk the cows. No joke. I did. I believe the facility is even unmanned at night. I think each machine can do 60 cows, thrice daily. The set-up is also trying to maximize the cows' pasture time as well, depending on the weather/soil/alfalfa.

Even though the North Country trail was established in 1980, it's not nearly as developed as the better-known Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails. It will take decades more to cultivate donors and volunteers, get easements from land owners, and cut and maintain trail. Until then, road connectors are a reality. So I break out my bike. Given the rural nature of trails, you'll see a lot of roads like this:

Lot's of farmers' fields, obviously. Can you spot the lone sandhill crane? I've heard or spotted these beautiful birds about every week since early March.

The trail passes through, and along, several state game areas. There was evidence here of some slaughter, but not knowing much about hunting culture and practices, I can't say whether or not what happened was legal (given that several carcasses appeared to have been gathered together and dumped right on the side of the road).

 

Ready to go. And yes, that's a camo IWU cap. Thanks Joey V. Wearing hunter orange because I still hear some folks in the woods firing off something or another.

Walk on.

Very large (wide) ant hill in the middle of the woods. One of some 22,000 species that I know little about.

La primavera ya esta!

Longevity. Slow persistence seems to be the way of nature.

Boardwalk for a soggy section bearing skunk cabbage.

stoked

My first ride felt like what I imagine this to be: sitting down in a new Mustang after slumming around in a '91 Accord for 15 years. Ahhh..... (And what you're looking at is only last year's entry-level road bike).