Shedder and Shorts

We took a trip to Oregon this week to visit family. I’ve never been here before and was skeptical because I really like Michigan and really really like Maine. It’s been great to be here though. There’s loads of great thing to see, and the different wildlife and plants have kept both Anna and I one our toes. The dry, cool weather has been a great break from the miserable heat and humidity in Lansing and the varied terrain, including pine and douglas fir forests have been inspiring. Maybe best, there’s more spots I’m excited about seeing next time we come out here. Also, on a day other than those listed below, we saw two blacktail deer from the car (a first for me).

Anenome

Pacific City. We came out to Pacific City today and spent a few hours playing with Anna’s nephews on the beach near haystack rock. The beach was fine sand, with sandstone cliffs to the north and dunes behind them. Checking out tidepools, we spotted sculpin, anenome, hermit crabs, etc. While we were there some boats came into the beach from salmon fishing. The guys on one had two chinook salmon they’d caught. A wildlife researcher or officer or something came over and asked them about the catch, checked the length and weight, and scanned them for RFID chips that the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife plants in hatchery salmon before release (these two didn’t have chips). After the beach, Anna and Aaron and I took a hike out to the tip of Cape Lookout through temperate rainforest. It was about three miles each way, first through woods and then along the edge of very high cliff. Conditions on the north side of the cape were wet but the air on the south side was dry. The pines and fir were thick and tall and beautiful and made for a very different kind of forest experience than those to which I’m accustomed. We saw a ground beetle and banana slugs and cormorants on this hike. As we neared the tip of Cape Lookout the air began to smell fetid; Aaron surmised there was a rookery on the cliffs below. This looked to be a pretty good judgment, as in some places we could look down and see manure-covered ledges just above the surf. At one point on the trail was a marker for a plane crash site. We looked it up when we returned and found that a WWII B-17 on a training mission had crashed into the cliff, killing all but one airman.

Silver Falls

Silver Falls. Silver Falls is a state park east of Salem. We hiked a seven mile trail around the park that took us past an astounding nine waterfalls (out of ten in the park). The landscape was formed by two volcanic explosions, and see the striations in the volcanic rock that surrounds the gorges into which the water falls. Anna pointed out that the geological time periods affecting this area were far older than those referenced in Michigan, where the glaciation that marks the landscape occurred just 12000 years ago. (This was one of the first times in my life geology has seemed interesting.) Saw some turkey vultures circling at north falls. At one point on the hike, Anna and I spotted a large rodent emerging from a burrow beneath the path. It had some ferns in it’s mouth and paused slightly to look at us, about five feet away, then scurried away. We weren’t sure what it was, but when we described it to Aaron he identified it easily as a nutria. We were disappointed that it was an introduced pest, but, again, it was fun to encountered something new and different in the wild.

Detroit Lake

Detroit Lake. I had wanted to get out to the Cascade Mountains on this trip, and while I wasn’t quite able to fit that in, this trip to a reservoir just west of them was pretty rewarding. There aren’t very many lakes in Oregon, and those that I was able to spot on maps were all impounds. Detroit Lake is formed by an enormous dam in the North Santiam River, constructed in 1953 for power generation and flood control. It’s also a very popular spot for boaters; there were loads of them out on the water. We rented a canoe from a marina in Detroit. We paddled across the lake, against a headwind. There were very nice views of the eastern cascades to the west. I fished a bit but didn’t catch anything, despite the fact that the lake was stocked with 100,000 trout in June. I haven’t done well with trout. Hopefully that will change. The eastern edge of the lake was very shallow, with lots of stumps standing a few feet above the surface. From there, we saw a bald eagle. This was another great spot to spend a day, although in the future I might pick one of the smaller reservoirs, as there was more activity on this lake than I enjoy.

I recently visited my family in Maine, at Great Gott Island. I’ve spent a lot of time on the island over the years, but, as a youth I took for granted a lot of the naturalist’s fodder in this isolated coastal community. The time I spent outside on this trip involved going places and seeing things I’ve experienced hundreds of times before, but looking a little more closely this time around.

Deer skeleton

Woods. On the first afternoon I went for a walk through the woods, out towards the east side of the island. The island was completely deforested late in the 19th century, but now these woods are thick spruce. Very little sunlight penetrates and moss and mushrooms cover the granite ledges that emerge from the soil. These woods are rarely walked by people, and, consequently, are a web of deer trails, eight-inch wide swaths cut through the needles and moss. One of the first things I noticed out here was that most of the deer scat was very really soft, which didn’t surprise me because my dad said they eat a lot of blueberries. There aren’t any nut-producing trees on the island, so the deer mainly feed on the apple trees and berries. About a mile into the woods I found a nearly complete deer skeleton. The skull was missing, but almost everything else was there.

Pollock

Fishing. Fishing has always been a big part of what I do on the island. Usually, I’ve fished for mackerel with silver jigs or colorful trees meant to mimic very small herring. People on the island have rarely caught cod or flounder in my lifetime, but the lore is that it used to happen all the time. These waters used to teem with ground fish. History books are filled with descriptions of these waters in the 18th century, carpeted with fish that could be speared without getting one’s pant legs wet. Today, overfishing has pretty much eliminated the commercial ground fishery. By the time I was a kid, catching a cod on a long line was a rarity. In the last 10 years, it seems like there are fewer mackerel, too (probably tied to the reduced herring fishery, which spelled the end of the prospect cannery). Pollock is now the most common catch for recreational anglers on the island. There are exceptions, though, and people seems to feel that the ground fish may be gaining numbers. I caught a cod on a rotten hotdog in 2001 and another guy got one two years ago on a clam. Then, this year, someone else reported he’d been finding flounder in his lobster traps. Emboldened by this undeniable trend, dad and Larry and I set out fishing. We tried a few spots on the east and south sides of the island, running bait on the bottom and lures beneath the surface. In the end, we came up with four pollock. I blame it on our timing: the tide was ebbing, while the fish seem to be more likely to move on the incoming tide. We also saw a porpoise about 50 yards off the boat. It surfaced maybe three times within our view.

Meadow. Got up early the next day and headed for the north field. I was hoping for a nice view of the mountains in Acadia National Park as the sun rose. Unfortunately, I forgot that the sun rises a lot earlier in Maine than in Michigan and when I got up at 4:45 it was already light out. It didn’t matter, though, because there was thick fog anyway, and there would be no view of the mainland. I walked up to the field with a lawn chair and binoculars and sat down facing north, with an apple tree 100 yards before me and the clay cliff before ocean 100 yards beyond that. Before too long I noticed some shadows in the fog, and then spotted a doe. I watched her for a bit, and then a spike buck came into view a ways beyond her. While I watched for the next 30 minutes, the fog shifted continually and both deer faded in and out of view. I was watching the doe through binoculars when she first caught my scent, snorted and bounded in the forest.

Kayaking

Kayaking. I think the current popularity of the kayak should be some sort of marketing case study. They were a rarity on the Maine coast 25 years ago but are everywhere today. And, I’m all for it. They’re easy, and safe, and practical. My dad got one a few years ago and I took it out on a beautiful day. I paddled west to Placentia, an unoccupied island maintained by the Nature Conservancy. After beaching the kayak I took the trail up to the foundation where the Kellam house used to stand and then continued into the trail-less forest. I’d never walked through the interior of Placentia before. There’s a rock wall across a portion of the island, and a lot of swamp. The walk was really quite difficult, as the terrain was so thick. Anywhere a tree had blown down, scores of small spruce were vying to take its place. By the time I reached the western shore, I was dreading the return trip, but managed to make it back. I saw diverse and abundant mushrooms in these woods, too. I took pictures of maybe a half dozen and plan to identify them. I haven;t paid much attention to mushrooms in the past, but these were so different from one another, and some exotic looking, that I they really captured me. On the paddle back, a seal popped up nearby the kayak, but for some reason, didn’t turn around to look at me. Usually seals are super interested in people, but this one floated about 30 yards off the kayak for five minutes, only showing me the back of its head. I wouldn’t have thought I could become a bigger fan of seals, but this defiant behavior was completely endearing.

Originally I had intended today to drive down to the Battle Creek Area and take a look at the Kalamazoo River, site of the recent worst midwest oil spill ever. Preparing to leave the house, though, I found I wasn’t ready for that kind of heavy trip and decided I’d just like ot spend some time in the woods. So I headed for the Portland State Game Area with compass and map in hand, thinking I’d check out some off-trail spots I wasn’t familiar with and scout some good spots for small game hunting come fall.

I hadn’t been here since May, and the landscape had changed a lot. Places that I was able to walk through easily three months ago were fierce thickets now and the minimal insects I encountered then were now great swarms undeterred by repellent. After parking the car I had headed east into the woods, knowing I’d reach the river within a mile. I came quickly came across a nice meadow. It was actually probably nicer before the autumn olive invaded, as parts that should have been tall grass are now thick shrub. I walked the meadow and found it rife with deer beds, with some paths tunneling into alder and autumn olive thickets.

Along the way I noticed some decent oaks, but always surrounded by solid underbrush that would make hunting around them tough. Kicking around in there I also saw some very vintage litter: beer cans with the pull tabs, and the old barrel-style bottles. After an hour I came out at the river and followed a very rough two-track that parallels it heading upstream. Walking the two-track, I saw no more signs of wildlife than I’d seen before, but an increase in junk (chair left in makeshift deer blind, cassette tape, empty bottles, etc.). To the west was the river, and after a bit there were some decent-sized cliffs between the two-track and river. The forest was mostly maple and beech with thick understory. At one point in a low spot it turned to cedar, and towards the point where I departed the two-track, there were some decent oaks with a nice duff floor to the east.

After walking upstream I cut back north and started hiking downstream, through an area I’d hiked back in May. This is the spot that was easy walking then, but trying now. In the meadows the shrubs and brambles were chest high. More annoying, poison ivy was rampant beneath the brambles, covering every step and rising to my knees. Once I moved through the meadows things cleared out a bit, but the understory was still mostly filled with poison ivy and invasives. Among all of this, I found a spot with some decent hickories and oaks at the foot of a hill.

I was in the woods for four hours, walking almost the whole time. It was a good day, and while I didn’t see much in the way of wildlife, I was able to concentrate a bit more on trees and plants. Interesting to see how different this area was in mid-summer as opposed to spring.

We left for the Jordan River Pathway early Saturday and got to the parking lot a Deadman’s Hill at about 10am. As we got our packs together at the car, a rabbit appeared within a few feet. It was a domestic rabbit, an odd thing to see in a parking lot in the middle of the woods. Just about the time we had our packs on and were ready to head out, it started raining. We dove back into the car and napped for about 30 minutes while it poured. When things started to let up the rabbit was no where to be seen and we donned our rain gear and started down the trail.

Fen in the Jordan River Valley

The loop from Deadman’s Hill (named because a logger died on the hill) to Pinney Bridge walk-in campground and back is 18.5 miles. We hike south on the west side of the river. The first several miles of trail twists through beaver ponds and fen before meeting the Jordan River. The river is a beautiful sandy-bottomed stream of cold, clear water. The shore along it is often peat, and the numerous fallen logs in the river turn it into a maze through which the current twists. We saw some interesting things along the way: two moths in congress, lots of american toads, and some deer flies eating three dead carrion beetles. We got to the Pinney Bridge campground around 4 p.m. and set up the tent, at which point it started to rain again. We hung out in the tent for a while as rain fell, and then went down to the river before having dinner and turning in.

Pinney Bridge campground is nice. If you don’t walk south like we did it’s about a 1/4 mile walk in from Pinney Road. There are maybe 15 sites circling a meadow that used to be a logging camp. We had fun imagining the logging camp, and Anna joked about a Park Service “evening program” about the grounds’ history as first a logging camp, then a Conservation Corp camp, and finally a state campground.

Snail on the Jordan River Pathway

Sunday was a beautiful day, especially in the woods. We hit the trail for the 10-mile hike back north through beautiful woods and over more challenging terrain. Spotted an interesting pawprint in the sand where the trail passed through a meadow. Not sure what kind of animal it was. Anna talked a bit about how, going on hikes is more interesting for her know that she’s not doing scientific fieldwork; said that for the past several years going on hikes was a bit too similar to going to work. When we got back to Deadman’s Hill at about 3pm and the rabbit was there at the car again.

This is a great hike. I think even nicer than the Manistee River Trail loop.

Looking for a good day trip not too far from Lansing, we elected to hike the Long Lake trail at Yankee Springs State Recreation Area. This spot held a few attractions for us. There’s an interesting kettle there called the Devils Soup Bowl, but there’s also a lot of swamp, and we were hoping some of it might turn out to be Prairie Fen, the rare habitat that’s an academic focus for Anna. We hit the trail head around 11a.m. Jim Dufresne outlines a nice loop in his book 50 Hikes in Michigan that has one hiking out on Long Lake Trail, then Hall Lake for a view of the Devils Soup Bowl and returning along Chief Noonday Trail and about 1.5 miles of road. We quickly ruled out that loop as the heavy traffic would have made the road portion of the hike unpleasant for us. So, we headed out on Long Lake Trail with the map and figured we’d piece something together, avoiding the road and, hopefully, spotting some fen.

Tiger Beetle and Soldier Ant

We wound up circling around a circuit involving Long Lake, Hall Lake, a few other trails. We went out probably 3 miles to the Devils Soup Bowl, which is an interesting geological formation. The trail around it is pretty sandy, the usual sign of esker, but there wasn’t the pronounced distinction between esker and kettle that I’m familiar with from the Kettle Moraine area in Wisconsin. The Yankee Springs website lists the Devils Soup Bowl as a major attraction, along with Grave’s Hill Overlook.  The overlook, however, doesn’t exist anymore (I’m not the first person to blog about this). The thick stand of autumn olive that obscures whatever vista was once there is a great illustration of an invasive species running unchecked. In this second half of the hike, the part further east near the Soup Bowls and Hall Lake, there were lots of invasives like Autumn Olive and Japanese Knotweed covering the understory and filling the fields.

There wasn’t as much wetland as we’d hoped for here, but there were one or two spots that Anna said might well be fen. It’s difficult to make the call without really getting into them, though, and when folks lay trails they usually avoid fens because they’re not super friendly (water, hummocks, smelly, poison sumac, etc.). The neatest thing we saw was a tiger beetle eating a soldier ant. We watched the beetle struggle with the ant for a while, with the ant gradually growing more placid. Then we walked to the car and drove home while I imagine the beetle ate the ant.I guess the ballet of life goes on, or something.

Took a gamble and headed up to Leelanau County hoping to get a July 4 campsite at Sleeping Bear Dunes without a reservation. At park headquarters we were turned away, but regrouped in the parking lot, went back in with some persistence, and wound up with the precise site we wanted. There are six back country sites in the Platte River area under the name White Pines. The walk in from the road is just a little over one mile. Once we packed in and had the tent set up Anna napped while I took a four-mile round trip hike to Bass Lake.

Lake Michigan Shoreline

White Pine is just a few tenths of a mile from the Lake Michigan beach. The shore is beautiful, and because there isn’t any road access, there were relatively few people around. We went swimming in the lake on Saturday afternoon and watched the sunset in the evening, feeling fortunate to have such a great place to visit. On the path between the campsite and lake we saw a very small bird. Anna guessed it was a robin because there was a robin calling nearby. Too small to fly, it was sitting on the ground, swaying softly side to side. When we returned on the same path about an hour later it was gone.

This was a great spot. I’d like to come back, either to this area or perhaps to North Manitou Island.

Had a big day planned and it turned out okay, but not great. The intention was to fish the Muskegon River east of Newaygo, then do some hiking in the southern end of the Manistee National Forest. The fishing on the river was a bust, mostly because the spot where I thought I have good access, off Thornapple Road, is a State Boating Access site. The first annoyance there was that my State Parks sticker doesn’t count at a Boating Access Site, so I had to pay the DNR another $24 for another sticker, even though I wasn’t boating. The second annoyance was that this spot is a popular staging area for folks to float down the river on tubes and rafts and things like this. They have a lot of fun, which I can appreciate, but in sections like this there are a lot of them and they remove any sense of remoteness from time spent of the river. There were no hiking trails here, just a poison ivy laden path 300 yards down the river. I fished for about 30 minutes and left in a funk.

Headed up past Newaygo into the national forest and parked at an unmarked lot 50 yards into the woods off 40th street. This is a North Country Trail head. I hiked south for about twenty minutes with traffic never out of earshot. Crossed state highway M37, some railroad tracks and a bunch of dirt roads, at which point the trail ended (this point is marked as a “temporary connector”on the map). Turned around and walked back to the car, then kept going north for another 20 minutes to a parking area at M37. Walked back to the car and left. If I ever decide to section hike the NCT, I will really appreciate having already completed this part.

Drove back down through Newaygo, which seems like a very nice place. If I had this to do over again, I bring Anna, hike some spots further into the forest, and get lunch in Newaygo. As it was, I just cut east and headed for home. Made a brief stop at at Marl Lake on M46 near Edmore. Lots of small bluegill in there, caught one. Saw a guy with a stringer of five/six fat bluegill and a nice looking kit-built kayak from Chesapeake Light Craft. Helped him load the kayak into his Econoline and then drove home.

I hiked south along the North Country Trail in Manistee County and then crossed the Manistee River and hiked north along the Manistee River Trail. I spent one night backcountry camping. This is commonly listed as one of the best hikes in Michigan, especially in the lower peninsula.

I left Lansing on Saturday morning and got to the Seaton Creek campground south of Mesick at about 10:30 a.m. At the beginning of a long hike, I’m always kind of jittery and I want to make good time, so it’s usually pretty intense right off the bat. There’s no such thing as a leisurely first day of hiking for me. Within 30 minutes I’d arrived at the cable suspension bridge that connects the Manistee River Trail on the east side of the river and the North Country trail on the west side. In this area there were a lot of people, but I quickly found it easy to convince myself I was in wilderness as I headed south along the NCT (in the ten miles I hiked saturday, I saw only three groups of backpackers).

Manistee River

The terrain along the North Country Trail is really quite spectacular, with lots of topo, lush ravines, and alternating pine plantation and hardwood forests. There was none of the scrubby invasive understory that is so familiar in southern Michigan. There isn’t a lot of water on the trail, though (about seven dry miles between Red Bridge and Eddington Creek), and the three scenic vistas that Dufresne mentions are completely obscured by trees. Despite this, it’s really quite beautiful and offers a feeling of genuine wilderness. By 4pm it was threatening to rain, so I set up the tent on a ridge to the west of the trail. There were no mosquitoes, but there were huge black flies as I ate. Once the rain started I lay in the tent as it came down until it was time to sleep at 8pm. Adding the spur from Seaton Creek to the NCT trail, I had hiked 10 miles.

When I woke at 6am, it had stopped raining, but everything was still very very wet. I rolled up the tent, hoping the sun might come out later and give me a chance to dry it out. Then I started hiking. Within an hour I arrived at Red Bridge, where I ate breakfast at a Park Service picnic area and filled my water bottles. Then I started north on the east side of the river. The Manistee River Trail skirts high bluffs along the winding river, offering phenomenal views and ocassionally dipping down into ravines and crossing creeks. It’s really a beautiful trail, although obviously more well-traveled than the NCT across the river. There was drizzle off and on through the day, but no rain. It never got dry, but windy enough that when I stopped for lunch at an oxbow in the river I was able to get the tent dried out.

I had intended to stay a second night on the Manistee River Trail, but at 4pm I was just 2 miles from the car and it was looking like rain again. I figured I could spend three hours sitting in the tent in the rain, or I could make for the car and spend those three hours driving back to Lansing. I chose to head home, and the rain started just a few minutes after I’d started up the car and headed out of the campground.

In all, I didn’t see much wildlife on this trip. I saw some trout in the river, and a doe in the woods. There were some cranes I couldn’t identify as well. I also saw a very large burrow (about 10 inches across) that appeared to be abandoned.

Anna and I went to Pinckney State Rec Area today. It’s a little ways northwest of Ann Arbor and the drive from Lansing in about an hour and fifteen. We brought a lunch and planned to make a hike or two, as there are lots of trails. One of the most interesting is the Waterloo-Pinckney Trail, which stretched out for 36 miles. Working from the book “50 Hikes in Michigan” by Jim DuFresne, we opted to take the Losee Lake trail first. This is a foot-traffic only trail and we joked about DuFresne’s anti-mountain biking hangups as we drove into the park, but the value of knowing which trail would be void of bikes became immediately apparent. The parking lot was full of chachis in super hero outfits, talking about their graphite frames, titanium seat posts, and how bad their balls hit the crossbar at that one race last summer. I was looking forward to being rid of them.

The first trail we took was a 3.5 mile loop through some wetlands and around the edge of Losee Lake. The first half was maple and beech forest. By the time we got to Losee Lake the habitat had turned to reclaimed oak woodlands. We stopped at the lake to fish. There were not a lot of access points, so we opted to fish at one just off Dexter Town Hall Road. The northeast side of the lake is private land, and there were folks out over there, but otherwise no one around and traffic on the road was sparse. We caught two bluegill on worms and a slip bobber. Both were very small. I also tried a hula popper. The ‘gills nibbed at it, but nothing big enough to get hooked showed itself.

Turtle Eggs

We got back on the trail and almost immediately saw a slew of broken turtle eggs. Whether they hatched or were predated, I don’t know for sure, but, we assumed some critter ate them. There were maybe two dozen at the edge of a sandy path about twenty yards from the lake and fifteen feet higher. Any potential hatchlings would have had to cross the road to get to water.

After the Losee Lake trail, we had lunch at the beech unit, which had gotten crazy busy while we were walking (about two hours). We found a shady spot and ate some snacks, then rested, and decided to take the Silver Lake trail to Pickerel Lake, about 2 miles, round trip. Mountain bikes are allowed on that trail, which requires some special erosion control measures. On many of the grades, there are combed mats sunk into the trail. For whatever reason, bikers tend to avoid these, instead riding just to the outside. I’m sure the erosion control measures make for a bumpy ride and offer unsatisfactory traction for climbs, but, the result is that the trail is often up to three feet deeper than the area immediately surrounding it, and, in some places, considerably more erosion is evident. This whole area was rife rife with poison ivy (and, in the wet places, sumac, too), with leaves growing to the size of dinner plates and climbing trees to greet us at face level. When the bikes went by, we had to step aside, inevitably exposing ourselves to the ivy, which was annoying (I realize I have a hang-up about poison ivy).

At Pickerel Lake there was a bridge and we could see a number of bluegills swimming about in the shallow water, but there was no decent access point for fishing. There was a beach from which boats could be launched, but all the rest of the shore, was wet and marshy. We looped back, and then decided to extend the hike by heading on the Potawatomi trail further southeast. The previously sweet habitat yielded a thick understory of nasty invasives and the third act of our day had all the tension of a Shakespearean play. The extension we’d selected added about four miles onto our walk, and we began to lose steam. By the time we got back to the parking lot at Silver Lake we were both tired and thirsty. Anna had a backpack full of garlic mustard she’d pulled, and said she’d “got rid of a number of populations.”

All in all, a great day.

Finished fishing the Rogue at about 1pm and still had plenty of day left, so I headed to the Ionia State Recreation Area in Ionia, MI, which surrounds Sessions Lake. I got there around 2pm, bought a park pass and got a trail map. Sessions Lake looked to be a smallish, irregularly shaped and shallow lake. I parked at a spot on the north east edge, near where the state runs a campground, and decided to hike around the lake on the 3.5 mile long trail. I brought my rod and camera with me. Walking along the lake, I could see the small panfish darting about in the shallows. The east edge of the lake has a fair bit of topo as the trail winds through a forest of beech and maple. There were a number of bridges constructed by the conservation corps and boy scouts spanning streams and ravines. This part was a very nice hike.

Sandhill Crane

At about the halfway point, the trail breaks out into reclaimed agricultural land. It’s a mowed trail at this point, and the vegetation includes a lot of autumn olive. It’s the kind of nature Anna calls “junky.” It was hot and the trail was all in the open, lots of sun. At one point, I came to an old parking lot and saw a deer hanging out on the pavement. A hundred yards down the trail, I startled the same deer again, and as it bounded off I spotted two sandhill cranes in the grass about twenty yards away. I’ve never knowingly spotted a sandhill crane before. These were pretty big birds and made a racket.

At the north edge of the lake there’s a spillway, which created the first adequate fishing access of the hike (the rest of the shoreline was far too shallow). Standing at the edge of the spillway retaining wall, I could see bluegill and sunfish nests in the shallows. I hooked a bass that spit the hook once I tried to land it and then caught another one. By this point, I’d been out for about three hours and I headed for home.