The Rest of the Summer

When I wasn’t in the office doing research or galivanting across the state/country with my visitors, I spent the summer much as I have the last two summers. I walked, biked, and bussed my way to all corners of Ann Arbor. I went grocery shopping and attended church. I trekked through parks, natural areas, fields, forests, and fens; visited the farmer’s market; watched soccer; ate ice cream; and overall had a pretty good time.

Besides going to the arboretum a fair amount, I visited a couple of parks that I hadn’t been to before. Both were nice areas, but both were also plagued by my number one complaint about Ann Arbor parks: traffic noises. Is it really nature if you can still hear the cars roaring by at fifty miles an hour? If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there- Anyway, Furstenberg Nature Area on the east side of Ann Arbor features woodlands, prairie, wetlands, and marshes along the Huron River. It also connects to Gallup Park, which I’ve biked through on the Border to Border trail. I saw the river, some swans, and interesting clouds.

Clouds

All the way at the southeastern corner of the city, technically in Pittsfield township, is Lillie Park. I biked there, discovered the Costco and airport, did not get run over by any motor vehicles, and biked back, for a total distance of 21 miles for the day. Again, the park itself is nice, but it’s nestled right up in the intersection of I-94 and US 23. Nothing like some motors revving to go with the birdsong and wind rustling through the leaves. I walked some of the trails through the woods and across/around a couple lakes and learned about eutrophic ponds. In a eutrophic pond, plant matter accumulates faster than it’s carried away or decomposed, so the pond will eventually fill up and become moist forest or a meadow.

The eutrophic Duck Potato Pond

After peony season at the arboretum, I went back a couple times. In summer, it’s quietest when it’s raining, right after it rains, or when it might rain at any second, because that keeps the drunken tubers off the river and the fair-weather, also possibly drunk, picnickers away. My discovery of the season was very tall grass. It was taller than me, which sometimes isn’t saying much, but this was tall grass.

Very tall grass

Additionally, there was another visit to the botanical garden for yet more cactus/succulent photos. We survived another year of art fair. It was not a good year for the artists. Every single evening, it poured, and the high winds flipped at least one tent. As usual, I walked around but did not buy anything. I volunteered at a couple of engineering outreach events. At one, I mixed two hundred pounds of cornstarch with water to make a viscoelastic pool that I then walked across. It felt like I was being initiated into the ChemE secret society, except it was in broad daylight and a couple dozen middle school girls were watching. At the other, I was the photographer and got paid for the first time ever for photos that I took. I can now say that I’ve been a paid photographer. And finally, the two ice cream flavors I tried at Blank Slate this summer were peanut butter cone crunch (peanut butter butterscotch ice cream with caramel and chocolate covered waffle cone pieces) and campfire s’mores (caramel ice cream, chocolate ganache, graham crackers, and marshmallow cream). Would recommend both.

Road Tripping: The State of Ohio

Our last day on the road, we were headed west for Dayton, Ohio, then north back to my temporary home in Ann Arbor. My major accomplishment of the day was driving across the entire state of West Virginia. We stopped at the visitor center/rest area to switch seats and say we had physically set foot in the state, then I drove. If you’re familiar with US geography, you might know that West Virginia has a little spike that sticks up between Pennsylvania and Ohio. Yeah, that’s what I drove across. More hours in the car later, we pulled into Dayton. What’s in Dayton? you ask. The Wright brothers were from Dayton, and the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park is there, featuring exhibits, the Parachute Museum, one of their bicycle shops, and the Huffman Prairie Flying Field, with interpretive center.

We started at the interpretive center, where there was an exhibit about the Wright brothers and flight, covering their bike shop days, Kitty Hawk, and further experimentation at the Huffman Prairie. Because they no longer had the consistent winds of Kitty Hawk, they had to change from launching their flyers off a track to using a catapult. They spent two years improving their flying machine, then stopped flying altogether for two years to secure patents. After that, they travelled internationally, manufactured Wright Flyers, and trained pilots. Besides the exhibit, there was also one of those obviously educational videos with cheesy acting and blatant CGI/green screen. I thought it was great.

The next stop was the Huffman Prairie, the cow pasture where they tested their flyers. This is where things get interesting. The interpretive center and prairie aren’t in the same location, but they are both on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Some parts of the base – including the parts where the interpretive center and prairie are located – are accessible to the public. Some parts are very much not. After some help from the friendly ranger in the interpretive center, we found the publicly-accessible gate and followed the signs to the Huffman Prairie. Mainly, it’s a big field, but they have a replica of the catapult and their flying shed/barn, plus a wildflower walk and a bunch of signs warning you against trespassing. It was a bit of an experience.

Flying shed at the Huffman Prairie

At that point, we still had time to go into Dayton itself to see the Wright brothers’ bike shop and the visitor center for the National Historical Park. Their bike shop in Dayton is similar to the one Henry Ford hauled up to Greenfield Village. At various times, their shop occupied six different locations – the one in Dayton is the only one still in Dayton; Ford took their last building to Michigan. Our last stop was the visitor center. There, we saw some of their printing equipment from when they had a print shop, and the Parachute Museum. Unrelated to the Wright brothers specifically, related more generally to aviation.

The Parachute Museum

On the way back to Ann Arbor, we took a detour back to Columbus to have dinner and see a friend. I know Columbus best as the home of the Columbus Crew, not The Ohio State University, if that tells you anything about how much I care about NCAA football and the Big Ten. We ended up having dinner down the street from the university, walked around a bit, then made the drive back to Ann Arbor. Two countries. Five states. Four days. Would I personally have planned it that way? No, it’s not my style. We’ve established that I can spend entire days in a single museum. But I saw some sights I wouldn’t have seen if I had planned the trip, and spent time with my friend, which was my main goal anyway. And so ended my summer 2019 travels.

Road Tripping: Back in the USA

To circle Lake Erie in four days, we had to cover a significant amount of ground. Which is to say, we drove a lot on the last two days of our road trip. We drove out of Toronto in the morning, headed for Niagara Falls. Since we were already in Canada, we made a brief stop on the Canadian side of the falls. Having been to both sides, and having done some of the tourist activities on both sides, I will argue that I like the American side better. The Canadian side has a paved walkway with better views of the American and Horseshoe Falls, I’ll admit, but it gets worse as soon as you get away from that one area. Behind that street are casinos, hotels, souvenir shops, minigolf, Tussaud’s waxworks, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a Ferris wheel. You know, everything you really need to truly enjoy the natural wonder of the waterfall with the highest flow rate in North America.

Top: American (L) and Horseshoe (R) Falls from the Canadian side

Bottom: American (L) and Horseshoe (R) Falls from the American side

We stayed long enough to take some pictures, then made the border crossing, which took approximately five minutes. On the American side, we stopped again to get the opposite point of view. This side isn’t completely noncommercial – there’s still the Maid of the Mist and Cave of the Winds – but it’s within a state park, which at least tempers the commercialism. The state park is recognized as the oldest in America, but has been majorly refurbished in the past 20 years. Being a state park, there are trails away from the falls where it’s much less crowded and much more nature-y. Again, we mainly remained long enough to take pictures before getting back in the car for one of our longer stretches of driving. We cut south through New York on some alleged highways through a bunch of villages, hamlets, and towns with no grocery stores, gas stations, or traffic lights to be seen. Although we were stuck inching down the state at 45 miles per hour, it was a lovely drive. There were these things called hills. Everyone from the west is laughing right now, but the Midwest is actually, seriously, flat. You don’t always realize it, because it’s not like there are zero elevation changes across the entirely of the middle of America, but you’re rarely surrounded by hills. This brings my list of things I miss about New England to Wegmans, the northeast accent, actual snow, and hills.

View from Rimrock Overlook

Our destination for the day was Pittsburgh, but we made one more stop on the way. We stopped, again very briefly, in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania. Confusing fun fact of the day: the Allegany State Park in New York (just across the border) spells Allegheny without the h and with an a. I probably could have spent days walking around in there, but we didn’t have days, we had an hour, so we drove up to the Rimrock Overlook, and I hiked down a bit before hiking back up. It was almost quiet on the trail, if it hadn’t been for motorboats on the lake in the distance. But it was still a lovely walk, with plenty of trees, dirt, rocks, steps, and it was even slightly muddy.

On the trail

And I also miss hiking trails that look like this

When I returned to the car, we drove the last few hours to Pittsburgh. We got upgraded to a suite at the hotel, which has never happened to me in my life before. I guess this is what happens when you book using a business account instead of discount hotels R us dot com. I had dinner at IHOP because it was nearby and also I get hungry for breakfast for dinner once in a while. Back at the hotel, I settled into my personal bedroom to watch American Ninja Warrior and poker. Because no matter where you go, the hotel TV is always showing American Ninja Warrior and poker.

Road Tripping: 2 countries, 5 states, 4 days

I know. I just said that I usually like to only schedule one major event per day three posts ago. However, that’s when I’m in charge of the itinerary. I’m not usually in charge of the itinerary, for various reasons. Most of them being that I occasionally sometimes often have a different definition of fun than my traveling companions do. See: hiking 17 miles in a day with no practice or training, ripping all the skin off my hands, and walking around in snowstorms, for just a few examples. On this most recent trip, I was not responsible for any of the planning and was mostly along for the ride around Lake Erie through Toronto, Niagara Falls (New York), Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio.

We set out for Canada after church on Sunday. Normally, coming from New England, we cross the border at or near Niagara Falls. Even when it’s busy, I don’t remember sitting in line for more than 20 minutes. Wherever we crossed in Michigan, we got stuck for close to an hour. Eventually, we made it to Toronto, with a stop for Tim Hortons on the way. Because donuts.

In the morning, we set out to see some of Canada. We first walked to the Kensington Market/Chinatown area to look at the shops and eat a bit. We had dumplings in Chinatown, and poutine at Kensington Market just because I’ve never had poutine despite having been to Canada at least four times up to this point. It was fine. The cheese was good. The gravy wasn’t too salty and had somewhat herbal notes (rosemary, I think). After our breakfast/snack/lunch, we returned to our lodgings to pick up the car so we could drive to the beach. We went about half an hour up the lakeshore from Toronto to Bluffers Park along the Scarborough Bluffs, which run along Lake Ontario for about 15 kilometers total.

The Scarborough Bluffs

We walked around a bit before going to the beach. There, we discovered that they were banning/very strongly discouraging swimming or wading in the water due to high E. coli levels. I hadn’t been planning to get very wet anyway, so I wandered around some more. It wasn’t a great beach to sit around on. The sand was hard, and it was kind of crowded and noisy, but the bluffs were nice. We left a little after that to explore the lake back near where we were staying. We ended up walking through Coronation Park and the Toronto Inukshuk Park to get to Trillium Park where we saw some nice views of Lake Ontario. These parks are also right by Exhibition Place, which hosts shows, concerts, conferences and other events of that nature, and BMO Field, home to MLS’s Toronto FC, who are right in the mix of teams in the eastern conference playoff race along with the Montreal Impact, Chicago Fire, Orlando City FC, and the one and only New England Revolution.¹

View of Toronto from Trillium Park

Anyway, Trillium Park was very nice. It just opened in 2017. It has walking paths, play areas, a restaurant/café, a Cinesphere where you can watch movies, and a concert stage. Overall, it was a pretty good day in Toronto. I ate some food I hadn’t eaten before, saw some things I hadn’t seen before. I will admit Toronto’s not my favorite city (and my least favorite subway system). I don’t know why, but it isn’t. It’s reasonably bike/pedestrian friendly, with plenty of people doing both, but the roads are also very busy, and things can be a little spread out. If I make another trip to Toronto, I think at this point what I’d want to see is a Revolution game at BMO Field, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and maybe the Royal Ontario Museum. Other than that, I’ve been up the CN Tower, been to Casa Loma, eaten at Chinatown, seen the University of Toronto campus, and now explored some of the lakeshore. On this trip, this was our only full day in Toronto, and the following day we’d be off on our way back to the good ole United States of America.

¹As of writing. As of posting, the Revolution clinched their playoff spot with a 2-0 win over NYCFC last Sunday. It was a fantastic game.