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Back in Ypsilanti and having rescheduled a couple of birthday parties and a Halloween party of October 23, we wanted to stay close to home but still get to the woods, so we headed out and planned for a 1.3 mile loop at Horner-McLaughlin Woods. We never found the trail head, even though we took a couple of approaches. AllTrails actually took us onto private property and, when we looked for another access point, we were met with a “No Trespassing” sign for what looked like should have been the trailhead.
Not to be deterred, we went with another University of Michigan trail we knew where to find. We made our way to Nichols Arboretum, which is an offshoot of the Matthei Botanical Gardens and doubled our planned trek to 2.6 miles. Due to one wrong turn (mostly due to an unclearly marked trail) we went 2.3 miles before we headed home to prepare for a fun-filled day.
Nichols Arboretum is located close to the medical campus and picked up the sounds of both a football game’s beginning and the cheers from the Ann Arbor half marathon, so it wasn’t exactly a quiet trail. Still, it was quite pretty and was a nice way to start an extremely busy day. The trail is clearly well-used and it appears that the beginnings of the trails are often used for strolls and lunches of the hospital’s medical staff.
Following the hike that day, we returned home to carve pumpkins, drink homemade hot chocolate, and party with a few of our friends on, what I would call, a successful October evening celebrating my birthday, my brother’s birthday, and the spookiest night of the year.
Raven K 