Snow Detectives

We've often discovered that a park is on the other side of the street, or around the corner, from where the map places it. We can't blame the city -- which runs an efficient and informative parks web site. But the site relies on Google Maps, which is not always right! It can be a little frustrating, but more often it has turned us into detectives, and added to our adventures.

This Sunday we ventured into an unfamiliar northeast-side subdivision that boasts no fewer than four neighborhood parks -- Foxfire East, North, West, and South. These mundane (though geographically accurate and helpful) names imply a certain sameness, but nothing could be further from the truth. West is a largish natural wetlands area adjacent to the much larger, and newer, Olson Park, and East (which according to a recent AnnArbor.com story is a candidate for closure due to the City Council's continuing cost-cutting quest) is a small, undeveloped area primarily intended as a noise buffer from nearby M-14/US-23.

North was our favorite park of the bunch, by far. The sun peeked through as we hiked across the pristine snow, with only one set of cross-country ski tracks running through it. Just perfect for snowballs and the making of snowmen. We left a base near the playground that we hope will be added to and brought to life as a snowman. The park also includes a strip of land so large that a football and baseball game could probably take place simultaneously. And it boasts a play structure with the most educational features we have seen thus far -- a concentration-style flip board with pictures of wildlife on one side and descriptions of the animals on the other; and a mobile world globe, which stood out colorfully amid all the blindingly white snow.

To access Foxfire South you must enter on Dhu Varren Road at the trailhead for Dhu Varren Park, which consists of woodlands and wetlands, and then walk southward on the trail -- although Foxfire South is largely an inaccessible wetlands area (and apparently a butterfly haven as well). We might have been better off visiting this area in the spring or summer, when the beauty and allure of Firefox South and Dhu Varren are in full bloom.

We were still able to enjoy a pleasant walk through the slender Placid Way Park, which bisects a thin section of Firefox South, just south of the wetlands.

Before heading off for a well-earned breakfast we ventured less than a half-mile west on Dhu Varren and turned south toward the spacious Leslie Park, whose most striking feature on this winter morning was its slick sledding hill. We watched as a young girl and her father and grandfather enjoyed several trips up and down the slope -- until the girl took off by herself without her sled, and her brightly colored snowpants seemed to work just as well! From the top of the hill we were afforded many beautiful views of much of the city -- from the adjacent golf course on its southeast side to the U-M campus and downtown skyline in the distance to the west.