Corey Hurst, a Boy Scout in the Plymouth-Canton area fixed bridges, benches and trail markings in the Miller Woods, according to this Hometown Life article:

http://www.hometownlife.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/NEWS15/710280551/1032/rss20

The University of Michigan Urban Land Institute will host a forum about mass transit November 7 and 8 in Troy.  It is titled “Connecting the Dots: Linking Suburban & Urban Town Centers Via Transit.”

http://www.hometownlife.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/NEWS22/710280478/1039/rss15

Tom Henry of the Toledo Blade has a good summary column about the issue of Great Lakes water diversions:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/COLUMNIST42/710280328/-1/RSS06

The Battle Creek Enquirer has an interesting report on the Pine Creek reservation, home to members of the Potawatomi tribe:

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/NEWS01/710280321/1002/NEWS01

Steve Pollick of the Toledo Blade has a column about the problem of wild boars in Ohio:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071028/COLUMNIST22/710280332/-1/RSS06

The Muskegon Chronicle has an article about the trial focused on the 4,800 acre Owasippe Boy Scout camp.  The Chicago Boy Scouts have been trying to sell the camp to developers for several years over the objections of local residents and local governments.

http://blog.mlive.com/chronicle/2007/10/owasippe_trial_focuses_on_land.html

The Muskegon Chronicle also reports that a solar cell maker has set up operations in Muskegon Township:

http://blog.mlive.com/chronicle/2007/10/solarcell_maker_set_to_light_u.html

The Flint Journal has an article about plans for a Genesee County-wide trail system:

http://www.mlive.com/news/flintjournal/index.ssf?/base/news-47/119342281350000.xml&coll=5

The Bay City Times published a report on a new dredge spoils site on Saginaw Bay.  Our region’s coastline is just littered with these maritime dump sites:

http://www.mlive.com/news/bctimes/index.ssf?/base/news-10/1193415304116240.xml&coll=4

The Muskegon Chronicle has a neat report about a new park complex and walkway in Ottawa County’s Lake Michigan dunes area:

http://www.mlive.com/news/chronicle/index.ssf?/base/news-6/1193411720306370.xml&coll=8

The Monroe Evening News reports that DTE will restore a section of riverbank along the River Raisin near the DTE Monroe power plant to a more natural condition.  One day I would like to see where the two great natural features of Monroe County meet.

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071027/NEWS01/110270041/-1/RSSNEWS

The Evening News also has an article about a public meeting this Monday at 6PM to discuss plans to kill the excessive vegetation in the River Raisin:

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071027/NEWS01/110270043/-1/RSSNEWS

The Brooklyn Exponent has news about a new invasive species arriving in Michigan’s inland lakes - the starry stonewort:

http://tinyurl.com/3×3fqq

The Detroit Free Press has a small article about how some once-important names could be lost if Detroit completes its plan to sell 92 city parks:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007710260393

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007710260392

Steve Pollick of the Toledo Blade has a FASCINATING article about bears in Ohio.  You have to read this:

A young, 100-pound male bear, or boar, was seen in western Lucas County two years ago. It was thought to be a wanderer from southern Michigan and eventually it was struck and killed by a motor vehicle.

Can you believe it?  A bear sighting was confirmed in Lucas County?  That’s basically Toledo.  And if the bear came to Lucas from Michigan, that means it was in Monroe, Lenawee or Hillsdale Counties.  FASCINATING.

The article has a great map of Ohio counties in which bears have been spotted since 1993.  It is quite surprising:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071021/SPORTS08/71021016

BTW, we can add this to the wolf from Wisconsin that was found dead a few years ago along the border of Ohio and Indiana.  We can also remember the mountain lions that have been viewed all over Michigan, including Lenawee and Monroe Counties.  And, of course, wild boars are now a growing scourge in the southern tier counties.  Nature can be VERY surprising.

“It’s kind of like going to church,” the birder next to me laughed.  “Amen,” I responded as we laughed at the rows of birders silently waiting for the whooping crane to arrive.  The man had been studiously adjusting his spotting scope.  And the clicks of his equipment were the only sounds to hear on this late-October, Tuesday afternoon.  The benches at the viewing area even looked like church pews.

The man told me that he had raced to the preserve after work in an attempt to add a whooping crane to his life list.  For the previous weeks, the whooping crane had been a regular in the Mud Lake Marsh.  And given the fact that whooping cranes are extremely rare, the excitement was palpable.

As for me, a few minutes of the anticipatory silence were enough.  I stood up, marched down the trail and decided to take a brisk pace down the sanctuary trail.  Haehnle is not an ideal hiking spot.  Most of the terrain is marsh.  And most of it is closed to visitors, given the spot’s importance as a migratory bird staging area.

Still, the place has its charms.  The trail passes along the northeastern shore of Eagle Lake.  Then, it opens into a prairie area.  Finally, the trail loops back to the originial route through a mature forest.  The trail is short - maybe a mile or two.  But it is scenic.

After I returned to the makeshift chapel, I overheard a birder impart an important nugget of information.  “6:20.”  Apparently, the birders had watched the whooping crane so closely that they were aware of the exact moment at which the bird usually arrived for some nighttime marsh fun and frolic.

For whatever reason, I decided to leave prior to 6:20.  I suppose if I were a birder, I’d have waited around.  But the sun was speeding quickly to the horizon.  And I had a sunset to catch.

Here’s a previous post about the Haehnle Memorial Sanctuary:

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/expatriate/?p=304

Note: The map above was taken from the official sanctuary brochure.

Sanford Road Park in Milan has a developing trail system that needs some help.  If you are a local hiker or biker who wants to hike or ride a new trail in the Monroe County area, post to the following bulletin board page:

http://www.mmba.org/viewtopic.php?t=67658

The Lapeer County Press has an article about the Polly Ann Trail:

http://www.countypress.com/stories/102107/loc_20071021007.shtml

The Detroit Metro Times has a cool article about environmental activist John Nagy.  He has lived all of 53 years in Detroit’s heavily industrial Delray neighborhood.  Now he’s moving to - guess where - Frenchtown Township.  Welcome to the neighborhood, John!

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11955

Larry Gabriel of the Detroit Metro-Times has a commentary about what the environmental movement can learn from Detroit.  It includes a nice paragraph about the Dequindre Cut:

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11951

The Metro Times has another article about a Wyandotte Catholic priest who is leading his congregation in faith-based environmentalism:

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=11901

The Muskegon Chronicle reports that fall color peaks in West Michigan are delayed a bit this year:

http://blog.mlive.com/chronicle/2007/10/green_wont_leave_this_fall.html

The Monroe Evening News has a neat article about the federal “safe route to schools” program.  This program provides money to schools to help build sidewalks within two miles of school buildings:

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071026/NEWS01/110260051/-1/RSSNEWS

This coming Tuesday, PBS will broadcast a Frontline episode titled “The Undertaking” about funeral home families in the Detroit area.  It’s kind of a neat Michigan angle for a national program:

http://www.hometownlife.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071025/NEWS11/710250729/1028/rss08

The Alpena News has a good article with tips about how to buy a pair of binoculars:

http://thealpenanews.com/stories/articles.asp?articleID=5666

County parks in Monroe, Lenawee and Hillsdale Counties are something of a grab bag.  There are some nice areas, but lack of funding, poor planning and competing uses can diminish the natural experience in some of these places.

Today I visited a park that is really quite interesting.  Kathe & Cali’s Memorial Park in Hillsdale County’s Somerset Township memorializes two women named Katherine McNutt Zakrzewski and Calista Elizabeth Zakrzewski.  I have to admit that I don’t know the story about these two women.  The park web site doesn’t say and I didn’t see a plaque with an explanation.  But I am pretty certain that family members donated this twenty acre site to the county in their memory.

Finding the park is a bit of an adventure.  Visitors should take US-12 west from the intersection of US-127 and US-12.  After about five miles, one should turn south onto Jerome Road and then east onto Gray Goose Road.  Gray Goose turns into Lakeview Drive at Goose Lake.  This is a one-way loop through a cottage community.  Follow the loop until the county park access road appears.  This road is quite narrow and hilly.  It leads to a parking area next to a cottage.

Given the size of this park - twenty acres - it is quite remarkable that a visitor will find 2.5 miles of hiking trail here.  These official trails are found in wooded areas along the eastern and southern areas of the park.  The official park map, posted below, shows these trails in green.

The terrain for the green trails is actually pretty good.  There are some decent hills here.  The woods are mature and the ground is a combination of sand, grass, two-track and field stone.  There are many, many rocks here.  This area certainly received some great gifts during the last period of glaciation.

The northernmost area of the park shows the best evidence of this rocky, glaciated past.  The official park map shows this northern area as “8 acres for future development,” but this old field is hikeable.  The northern border of the park is one of the best preserved fieldstone walls that I have seen in any southeastern Michigan park.  It runs for almost the entire length of the park’s northern boundary.  It is impressive and recalls an interesting agricultural past.  I have placed this additional hike route on my rough virtual earth map that follows this post.

From the easternmost portions of the park, it is possible to see Goose Lake in the distance.  The park itself never allows a close approach to the lake.  However, the adventurous park entry road makes a perfectly hikeable path to the nearby low-use lake community roads.  These allow for an additional mile or so of walking and add some great lake views to the route.  I have placed these routes onto the map below as well.

All told, the park and adjoining cottage roads allow for a walk of 3.5 to 4 miles.  That’s a decent hike.  This hike is really just marginally worthwhile, given the close proximity to a much better hike at the Somerset State Game Area.  But it is an interesting place that seems to be the work of an incredibly loving family.

Here’s the Microsoft Virtual Earth map:

http://tinyurl.com/2bzcm8

This is the official park website:

http://www.co.hillsdale.mi.us/k_c_park/index.html

Click below for a lake map of Goose Lake:

http://tinyurl.com/yqeywv

A couple of nights ago, I set out with some intention of visiting the Stinchfield Woods near the Pinckney State Recreation Area.  However, as I was passing through Chelsea, I noticed the sign for Pierce Lake County Park.

I’ve probably passed the park a thousand times.  And I’ve always written it off because of the golf course at the park.  I’m just not a golf course kind of guy.  My golf career lasted exactly one day.  I played a scramble with some other teachers.  We used my ball once, on a putt.  That was it for me.

Anyway, I decided to stop in and see if there were any trails.  And I found some.

Now, understand that this is not a great place to hike.  The trail inside the park is only about two-thirds of a mile in length.  And this is a point-to-point trail, so you have to hike everything twice.

The lack of a circle route is especially disappointing because Pierce Lake is not a bad lake.  It has some good birdlife, nice woodlands and interesting vegetation.  The big subdivision and condo complex doesn’t help much, but it’s not a bad place.

The trail is actually a bit hilarious.  It starts at the golf club parking lot and follows the lake east.  In only a few hundred feet of boardwalk, there are five or ten wildlife viewing benches and overlooks.  Why there is a need for this many on such a short trail is beyond me.

The golf course, of course, adds more hilarity.  There is just something about watching well-dressed people careening by in the golf carts that is really pretty silly.

The last section of the trail passes right next to the back yards of VERY EXPENSIVE homes and condos.  I, personally, love the fact that there is a trail easement here, but you do get the distinct feeling that the people in the housing complex don’t really want any visitors there.

Luckily, the Pierce Lake Trail pops out onto East Old US-12.  This means that the trail can be connected to a Chelsea urban hike via city sidewalks or pathways through the Chelsea Community Hospital.

All in all, this is not much of a trail to write home about.  But it makes for some interesting possibilities in the City of Chelsea.

I don’t know of any good maps of this place, so here is my rough map on Virtual Earth:

http://tinyurl.com/29dehz

The Daily Mining Gazette of Houghton has an article about railtrails in the UP:

http://www.mininggazette.com/stories/articles.asp?articleID=9127

The Toledo Blade has an article about the science of fall colors and fall sunsets:

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071024/COLUMNIST33/710240370/-1/RSS06

Howard Meyerson of the Grand Rapids Press has a nice article about crane viewing.  It includes a slideshow about cranes:

http://tinyurl.com/2szgho

The Monroe Evening News reports that the Monroe Riverwalk has been the subject of vandalism during the past few days.

http://www.monroenews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071025/NEWS01/110250063/-1/RSSNEWS

The Detroit News has a small article about an upcoming Detroit City Council vote concerning Tricentennial State Park along the Detroit Riverwalk:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071025/UPDATE/710250467/1409/METRO

The MI DNR is pushing for increased hunting and park fees, according to this Detroit Free Press article.  Campground, trail and park closures could result if no fee increases are obtained, according to the DNR.  It remains to be seen if this is real or simply political posturing during a time of budget-cutting:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071024/SPORTS10/310240013/1058

One of the lesser-known area crossings to Canada is the ferry that runs between Marine City, MI and Sombra, ONT.  It’s a fun little voyage and makes a circle tour of Lake St. Clair a pleasant Saturday afternoon adventure.  The Voice has an interesting article about Coast Guard ice-breaking in the ferry’s area and some conflicts between the ferry owner and the Coast Guard:

http://www.voicenews.com/stories/101707/loc_20071017002.shtml

Mlive blogger Kim Schneider has a nice post about Mackinac Island with great pictures:

http://blog.mlive.com/traveling_coach/2007/10/pristine_mackinac.html

I went to see the cranes last night at the Haehnle Audubon Sanctuary near the Waterloo State Recreation Area. 

I’ll post about that in the next day or so.  But I saw the most AMAZING sunset on the way back when I stopped at Wolf Lake County Park in eastern Jackson County.

It started with some nice purples, then moved to fiery yellows and oranges.

Then, it ended with some really nice reds.

It was awesome!

While on our Fall Color tour on Saturday afternoon, Kathy and I stopped at the Iron Lake impoundment at the corner of Ely Road and Sharon Hollow Road in southwest Washtenaw County.

The lake is incredibly beautiful.  And the wind was so strong that day that the waves were crashing all over the lake.

There is a little fishing spot on the creek side of the impoundment with some nice rocky areas.

I posted a pin on Microsoft Virtual Earth maps to show you the spot:

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=42.098955~-84.084892&style=h&lvl=15&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=9852648&cid=628A87FDBE3AF2A!389&encType=1