Tag: Nature

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Miller Woods Loop

Have you ever been warned about screaming before beginning the trek around a short loop? Well, now I have, but what else did I expect with an early afternoon excursion on Halloween? A school film project brought these kids to the woods to film some horror scenes as I took my camera to enjoy the silence. Guess who got what they needed? Hint: It wasn’t me. At least, not on this trail.

This trail is extremely short at 0.3 miles but is a well marked loop in a pretty nice area. You will have to park on the side of the road, unless you are a member of the local community, but there is plenty of room for 3 to 4 cars on each side of the road.

I had originally contemplated sneakers for this trail, as it was short and I was just trying to get myself into nature, but I was glad that I always keep my boots in my trunk. The entrance to the trail was under about 3 inches of water due to its natural landscape and the constant rain from the week before. Even with my boots, the trail was slick due to the fallen leaves, but the day’s adventure truly tested the waterproofness of my hiking boots.

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Schroeter Park Loop

After traversing the one-lane road for the last half mile to the trailhead (which might be easier to do with an AWD or 4WD vehicle), I continued to test how waterproof my boots really are. This 1.2 mile trail in Canton was the wettest I’ve come across since Bishop’s Bog, which is a literal swamp. There are about 6 parking spaces, so you don’t have to worry about that, like I have in some places.

The trail itself, while extremely wet, was a nice mix of both open air fields and actual woods, so it was a very nice way to take in those big, gulping breaths of fresh air I really needed that day.

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Creekshead Nature Preserve Area Loop

Finally, I made it out to yet another nature preserve, but I will tell you, I almost didn’t find this one. Creekshead may be an easier trail to come across if you aren’t solo hiking, like I was that day. It was extremely difficult for me to find the trailhead, which has a sign, while I was driving up and down the road. Then, I had to park on the opposite side of the road of a pretty trafficked area, so, be careful and know your car might not be safe if you don’t get completely off the road.

It was nice that there was a pamphlet included at the trailhead that gave you some background. This type of information isn’t always still around, so I grabbed one and tucked it into my pack. The trail itself was relatively easy to traverse, although the fallen leaves, prevalent use of wood planks, and wet air and ground did make it slippery in places. The trail is tucked between two houses, but you don’t really seem to notice, so that was a nice feature as well.

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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.

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Another 2.8 mile excursion close to home, the Hewen’s Creek trails are not extremely well marked and we definitely ended up “off” our intended path. Still, it was a nice morning with my brother and I got some great shots of the local wildlife (both flora and fauna).

In my recent endeavors into the wild, I have learned I particularly love shots of mushrooms, and I was very excited for my couple of photographs featuring them this week.

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Of course, we don’t always get to plan out the weeknd before it gets here, so I took it upon myself to bookmark some “close” trails at the beginning of the Fall semester in case I couldn’t get away as I plan to every weekend. Because of this, my brother and I headed out to this 2.8 mile trek following a morning of quick errands.

It was a nice morning to take in the slightly wooded area and to soak up the sun. My brother was actually awake enough for this entire hike that our conversation took up the majority of our focus. I ended up leaving the park with only a single photo on my camera.

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Have you ever made your life harder just to see something that you could have planned to see in an easier way? That’s what we did when it came to our excursion at Haven Hill. The original hike was meant to be approximately 3.7 miles, but I was under the impression that the Haven Hill Estate would be visible from the loop. When we discovered this assumption to be wrong, we decided to detour and climb Haven Hill to see Edsel Ford’s old estate. This actually increased our hike to almost 7 miles and increased the difficulty, due to the steep incline up the hill, to much more than my brother and I were expecting.

Was it worth it? Absolutely. The Haven Hill Estate is a piece of Michigan history that truly speaks to the man that Edsel Ford’s father, Henry Ford was, as he created the “haven” to escape the pressures of his father and his business. The Fords lived there until the late 1940s and the estate was gifted to the state for preservation of the trails that wind through the area. The mansion no longer stands, but the ruins leave an interesting picture in your head and it’s definitely worth the hike up the long, steep driveway.

The Haven Hill Loop is also a popular area for horses, so keep an eye out for riders and the remnants of horse droppings. We went in late September and the greenery was gorgeous, even if the climb did try to destroy my legs.

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Remember that guy I was going to see after Cherry Hill? Well, yup, he’s back, and my brother is too. After meeting this student for coffee and hitting it off for 3 hours, I invited him along for the Sunday hike I had planned with my brother the next day, thinking they would get along too. (Now, I think I should make a disclaimer that “student” is just the term his title has for him, he’s a graduate student that works in my Library and is my brother’s age.) I wanted to show him some good spots as he settled into his new place, so we took him to the university’s botanical gardens trails.

Another 1.6 mile trail, the Matthaei Botanical Gardens Trails takes you through what the university’s farm lands have to offer. After getting redirected from a closed portion of the trail, we made our way to our cars and found that the gardens themselves had also been opened, so we checked out their gorgeous colors too!

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Another close hike, I headed out to Cherry Hill before meeting with a Student Worker I had just hired for my new job at the Library. As a socially anxious person, it was a good way to start my morning when I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Though, I will tell you that meeting went well and I made a new friend that day. (He might even be featured in a few of my upcoming writings.) 

Still, I headed out to Cherry Hill before meeting up with him and just took in the beautiful colors and the fresh air. I really enjoyed just how lush and green everything was. The 1.6 miles weren’t challenging at all and was a great way to start my day and my weekend.

Black Pond Woods Nature Area Loop

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Black Pond Woods Nature Area Loop had me questioning so many things, like where people can put trails in Ann Arbor, but it was a nice little path tucked behind a neighborhood that posed more of a challenge than I expected from such a short trail. I didn’t have much time this week to find things much longer, and I wanted to get out into nature after a long week, so this was pretty perfect.

You enter the trail between two houses, which definitely threw me off, but it is marked and the trail seems pretty well traveled. You never go too far into the woods that you can’t see the houses, but it still is relatively quiet.

The path itself is just beaten down dirt but it does get pretty narrow in certain areas, so watch your step. There was also a pond you could cross and some pretty challenging hills. We had just had some bad storms, so I also had to climb over a tree down on the trail about a quarter mile (if that) into the hike.

Traver Creek Park

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Then, just a 10-minute drive from this area, I enjoyed another short, 1 mile trek, at Traver Creek Park. I may have actually walked just as long to get to the trail as I did to actually circle the whole thing, but it was peaceful and led to some great shots.

I followed a pair of guys in that were in head-to-toe bug gear (which should have told me something), but it was nice listening to their conversation about the local fora. I ended up surpassing them pretty early on, and enjoyed the colors of the flowers all around me. About half way in, you end up along train tracks, which I didn’t much care for, especially because it seemed that this may have affected the trail’s maintenance, but I also love a good set of train tracks. I was sure to capture them from the top of them on my way back to my car.

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LeForge Woods Trail

Leforge Woods Trail is just a few miles from my home and a nature preserve I pass on a regular basis, so I was pretty excited to finally check it out. The beginning of the trail is largely just a field, so the “woods” part of it threw me for a bit, but approximately the middle mile is all wooded, which led to some lovely bug bites.

I went in the mid-morning to beat the heat, so it was still relatively wet, which always gets interesting when the tall grass comes up to above your head in most places, but it was lightly trafficked and a nice bit of fresh air.

This was also my first trail where the flowers were truly in bloom and at peak color, so that took a lot of my attention. It was interesting that part of the trail that AllTrails suggested didn’t look like it had ever been traveled, so I had to forgo that way, picking safety over my self-competition of properly completing the trails in the way they are suggested.

I did make the mistake of just going in a muscle tank, shorts, and a set of sneakers, but, as you’ll see in my next few posts, I clearly haven’t learned my lesson when it comes to just doing short, local trails.

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Parker Mill County Park Trail

Another trail I pass on a regular basis in the Parker Mill County Park trail system. A portion of the B2B in Washtenaw County, this old cider mill is usually pretty populated. It’s also mostly paved, which I kind of hate, personally. At least, I hate it for hiking. About a week later, my brother and I did the same path on our bikes, and it really is quite nice.

There were two parts of the trail that deviate from the bike paths, which were nice. One had an agrarian structure I found interesting. It’s a pavilion with a green roof so that it continues to contribute to the environment it exists in. I haven’t seen many structures like this around where I live before.

This trail also reintroduced me to a trail I had stumbled upon when I first moved to the area 4 years ago. While I didn’t go out it, it has reminded me that I would like to at some point. It’s a fully boardwalk trail through the boggy woods of the area with some really cool tree formations pretty deep in. Now that I’ve got my camera, I’m interested to spend some time out there and see what kind of shots I can get.