Catching Up

We've been having a wonderful summer. We've been fortunate enough to have traveled out of town for long weekends a number of times and we took one full-week vacation with another one coming up shortly. And we've busy with work, in a good way -- so busy that we've only visited a handful of parks in the last couple of months and haven't even had a chance to post about them. So here, in brief, are the parks we've visited since our last post on Memorial Day:


It was a cooler evening when we headed out to three parks: Lakewood, Dolph, and Burr Oak. Lakewood had many trails and if our memories serve we ended our hike a bit prematurely due to unrelenting mesquito attacks.

Dolph is huge, with a network of trails hugging and skirting a large serene lake. There were a few cars in the parking lot but we only saw two others on our hike. For some reason we got a bad feeling about these two -- though it was just a feeling. So we exchanged a few quick words with them before taking our leave.

Nearby Burr Oak is a much smaller neighborhood park. We took a look around and sat on a bench and relaxed as the evening darkened into night

About a week later we walked from home after dinner one evening to nearby South University Park, on the southeast edge of the U-M campus. It's tucked away and set back and mostly out of sight on a busy corner near Washtenaw Avenue. It's a little run-down (especially the barely usable basketball court in a far corner), but there's a comfortable bench and an informative kiosk on the street side.

On our next adventure, a few weeks later, our 16-year-old nephew, Steven, joined us. We're not so sure he really wanted to come, but he was staying with us for the week so he might have thought he didn't have a choice. Or he may have been curious what his aunt and uncle were up to on these Park Walks. Whatever the reason, he humored us.

Off we went to White Oak and Barton Nature Area. We did a brief drive-by along Huron River Drive to determine where to start and after a brief trek through White Oak we continued on to Barton Nature Area. A narrow trail that began at the parking lot opened up on the other side of a bridge to a vast view of the Huron River. As we crossed over the bridge, Steve shared with us some of his adventures on the river -- which we won't go into here as his parents may read this. We kept following the trail, mostly northward, which took us out onto prairie-like terrain until the river meandered back around to meet us and we crossed another bridge, and the dam that creates Barton Pond --though until we arrived there we had no idea where we were. (In fact, a couple of canoers informed us.)

We headed up and around toward the dam on our right and at the top of the stairs we were looking out on Barton Pond.

As we left the pond we happened upon a fisherman fighting with a 10-pound carp. We watched as he struggled to reel him in -- yet as soon as he caught the fish he let it go. We stopped to congratulate him on his effort and he gave us quick lesson on bait and hooks and other techniques. We had no idea what he was talking about.

We didn't want to merely retrace our steps back to our car so we took a different path back -- which only resulted in us coming back out onto Huron River Drive what seemed like a good mile or so west of where we were parked. As we trudged eastward under a hot sun along the side of the road, we wondered what Steven thought of his goofy aunt and uncle and their ridiculous adventure. We should have him post a version of his own sometime. But we know we enjoyed having him come along.