Mount Wachusett

Last post from my trip home to New England, then I plan to post some non-travel related things before getting into my fall trip. Perhaps to make up for the past 5 years of walking in circles in flatland Michigan and 20 months since my brother and I had been home, we did a fair amount of hiking and other outdoor activities in a relatively short time span. The last hike we took shortly before I flew back to Ann Arbor to finish up my degree was up Mount Wachusett.

This was a quick hike up the 2,006 ft. Mount Wachusett in central Massachusetts. In winter, people go to Mt. Wachusett to ski, but during the rest of the year the state reservation is open for hiking. There is a separate visitors center for hikers, but we parked at the ski area parking lot because it’s free in summer. From the parking lot, we took the Balance Rock Trail, connected to the Old Indian Trail to the summit, then came down the Loop Trail to the visitor center and used the Donbrowo Trail to get back to the ski area. This loop is about 3 miles long and can be hiked in under a couple hours pretty easily.

Balance Rock

Like most of the rest of our hikes this summer, it was rocky. The trail is wooded and relatively flat up to Balance Rock, which, as you may have guessed, is a rock balanced on another rock. From Balance Rock, the trail starts to ascend more steeply up rock fields, occasionally crossing the ski trails. Near the summit, you emerge from a wooded section at the top of one of the ski lifts, nonoperational during the summer. At the summit, there’s a fire tower with a lower platform accessible. Depending on the day’s visibility, you can see a number of the surrounding hills/mountains, including Mt. Monadnock and the Berkshires. If it’s a really clear day, it’s possible to see the Boston skyline sixty miles to the east.

Ski lift

Summit fire tower

On the way down, we took a different route, which involved crossing and walking along the summit road for a portion of the descent. This trail was steeper than our ascent, so had stone steps for most of the trail. We stopped in at the visitor center to look at some of the educational exhibits on the flora and fauna found on the mountain, then took the flat Donbrowo Trail back to the ski area. At the end of summer, the ski lodge and surrounding accessory buildings were locked and silent, the ski lifts unmoving. There did appear to be an event being set up, but we weren’t invited, so we returned to the car and picked up Chinese takeout for dinner, which we enjoyed with some Long Trail Ale, probably my favorite beer since I picked it up in a Wegmans pick your own 6 pack during college.

View from an overlook on the descent

Acadia 2021 – Day 5 and Homeward Bound

I did not forget about day 5. On day 5, we made it to the Jordan Pond House for lunch, then revisited Sand Beach and the Ocean Path on a day when we could actually see the beach and the ocean. I’ve already talked about Jordan Pond and the Ocean Path, so I don’t have much else to add but some new pictures not filled with fog and a lunch report.

Oh hello, Bubbles

Jordan Pond House

The Jordan Pond House was open, but appeared to be operating at reduced capacity and possibly also with a pared down menu. We had about an hour wait, which we spent around Jordan Pond enjoying being able to see the pond (and even the Bubbles across the pond, imagine that). When we were summoned for our late lunch, there were a few parties seated indoors, but as usual we chose to sit outside on the lawn. The Jordan Pond House is known for popovers, so we ordered popovers with jam and butter, then I had shepherd’s pie. [Made with lamb. Technically if it contains ground beef instead of lamb it’s supposed to be called cottage pie, but especially in the US and on school lunch menus it’s often still called shepherd’s pie even if it’s made with ground beef.] Lunch was good, with a good view, and following the meal we headed back to Sand Beach to enjoy the coast for an hour or so.

Sand Beach from the Ocean Path

It was a pretty relaxed day, then the following day, our last in Acadia, I dragged everyone on one last hike involving multiple bodies of water, multiple prominences, and multiple peanut butter and jam sandwiches, as chronicled in my previous post. The last day of our trip, we packed, cleaned our lodgings, and I drank most of the remaining milk straight from the carton because no one else would.

On the way back home, we made a stop in Portland (ME, not OR) to explore the downtown/harbor area a bit and then see the Portland Head Light, another lighthouse popular with photographers (for good reason; it’s a very photogenic lighthouse).

The Portland Head Light, completed in 1791, is Maine’s oldest lighthouse, and is likely the inspiration for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Lighthouse.” It’s located in Fort Williams Park, which is itself a very nice park. Besides the lighthouse, there are walking trails along the ocean, the remains of Fort Williams, grassy fields for kite flying, picnic areas, and various other recreational facilities. It was a good stop on the way home to break up the drive (which wasn’t that long – we drove from New England to Florida all the way down I-95 when I was in high school).

Portland Head Light

By the end of the trip, we ended up covering somewhere north of 30 miles on foot over six days, with a decent amount of elevation change. I’m still a little surprised I was allowed to plan all our hiking, and everyone seemed to put up with it, but I guess the real test is if I’m allowed to plan all our hiking on the next trip. During the trip, I also made up to twenty-four peanut butter and jam sandwiches, took 752 photos (currently culled to 555), and finished reading my second Jane Austen novel (Pride and Prejudice, after previously having listened to Persuasion). Overall, I’m glad I managed to make it home and (finally) do some “real” hiking for the first time in awhile.

Acadia 2021, Day 6 – a lake, a nubble, a bubble, and a pond

When planning out our activities in Acadia, I’d left an extra day free in case of bad weather or some things taking more time than expected. Because the weather mostly held, we ended up getting to everything on my list in five days, giving me a bonus day of hiking. After considering some options, we decided to explore the area north of Jordan Pond. Ideally, the plan was to drive to Jordan Pond, park there, take the Island Explorer bus to the Bubble Pond stop, and hike from there back to Jordan Pond via Eagle Lake, Conners Nubble, and the North Bubble. Fortunately, we found a parking spot at Jordan Pond, so the plan was a go.

The last time we were at Acadia, we actually tried to hike the Eagle Lake trail (also on my recommendation), but some way in it got too muddy and I we were forced to turn back. This time, we would need to make it the whole way through, mud or not, in order to get back to the car. The 1.8 mile trail starts out at the southeast corner of Eagle Lake, wraps around the southern end of the lake, and goes partway up the western shore. It starts out as a dirt trail, then as you pass the southern end of the lake the trail becomes rockier. Along the way, you get to see Eagle Lake, Conners Nubble to the west, and Cadillac Mountain to the east.

The south end of Eagle Lake.  The lump left of center should be Conners Nubble.

Eagle Lake from Conners Nubble

The Eagle Lake trail ends at the Eagle Lake Carriage Road, but shortly before intersecting the carriage road it connects to the Bubbles trail that leads to the North and South Bubbles via Conners Nubble. This is the trail we took, just as it began to rain. Fortunately, the showers didn’t last, and from Conners Nubble (588’), we got great views of all of Eagle Lake, Cadillac Mountain, Sargent Peak, and the North Bubble. From the nubble, we descended slightly back into forest before re-ascending to the North Bubble (872’). This section of the hike was about a mile and a half long and had some sustained inclines up the nubble and the bubble with a wooded relatively flat section between the two where you cross the carriage trail.

North Bubble from Conners Nubble

Jordan Pond and the South Bubble from the summit of the North Bubble

At the summit of the North Bubble, we got the view of Jordan Pond that we didn’t get when we were on the South Bubble a couple days previously, which was nice. By this time, the sky behind us was starting to look sketchy again, so we began our final descent along the Bubbles trail. Instead of taking the trail all the way back to Jordan Pond over the South Bubble, we cut around the South Bubble (to spare ourselves some climbing since we’d already been there) using the Bubbles Divide trail and the Jordan Pond Carry trail (~0.5 mi.). Once in the forest below the North Bubble, it darkened alarmingly, so we continued along somewhat hastily. The carry trail meets back up with the Jordan Pond trail at the same spot where the South Bubble trail does, and from there we had a final ~1.2 miles to the parking lot and the car. Although dark clouds hovered menacingly over the Bubbles* and there were a few raindrops and a fair amount of wind, it did not really rain on us, and we made it to the car without incident. And as we drove out of the park for the last time on this trip, we saw a rainbow over the ocean. So #blessed or something, right?

*I’m aware that the sky is very blue in most of the photos in this post. It really was quite dark in the opposite direction, I promise.

Trees

Rainbow

This hike was probably the quietest of any we took on this trip. We didn’t summit anything big, but we still got some nice views, explored a new part of Acadia, and did not get caught in a thunderstorm. It was a satisfying end to a pretty great trip.

Acadia 2021, Day 4 – Go West, Young Man

Most of the “main attractions” at Acadia – Sand Beach, Cadillac Mountain, Thunder Hole, Jordan Pond – are located on the east side of Mount Desert Island (MDI). However, after cross stitching the Bass Harbor Head Light, I had to go see it in person, and the Bass Harbor lighthouse is on the west side of MDI. While looking through the guidebook for potential hikes I also found some trails on the west side, so we decided to spend a day over on that half of the island and see what it had to offer.

We started out the day summitting the 681 ft. Acadia Mountain for views of Sommes Sound, the fjord that splits MDI into its two halves. The hiking was similar to what hiking in the northeast can often be like – wooded dirt paths on the flat, then a lot of rocks and stone steps when you’re climbing, often transitioning to bare rock at higher elevation. It was a relatively quick, if rocky, 0.7 miles to the summit, so I convinced everyone we opted to continue along the trail and loop back to the parking area instead of backtracking. The trail continues toward the sound for another quarter mile, giving more views of the fjord before descending into the forest down to Man of War Brook. From there, you can connect to the Valley Cove Trail that follows the shoreline of the sound (when it’s not closed for peregrine falcon nesting) or the Valley Peak Trail that leads up to St. Sauveur Mountain, but we took the Man o’ War Truck Road back out to where we had parked for a total loop distance of about 2.8 miles.

Sommes Sound

The guidebook also praised the views of Sommes Sound from Flying Mountain, so we headed there next. This was another quick hike, just 0.3 miles to the 284 ft. summit. The views were nice, especially for a spot that can be reached in ten minutes, but somewhat similar to those from Acadia Mountain. Flying Mountain is further south, and it’s lower in elevation, so you do get a closer look at the area around the sound and the view out to the ocean.

View from Flying Mountain

From Flying Mountain, we continued onward in the direction of the Bass Harbor Lighthouse, making two more stops along the way. The first was the natural Seawall, featuring lots of rocks and ocean waves. It’s apparently a good spot to watch the sunrise over Great Cranberry Island or stargaze, but we just stopped by to enjoy the rocks and waves before heading on our way.

Seawall

Our second stop was Wonderland. With a name like Wonderland, how could we not stop? We made the (fortunately not serious) mistake of not actually checking how long the trail was (it looked short on the map and was wide and flat) and it turned out to be longer than it looked (0.7 miles one way), but it was fine. Wonderland is one of the main spots known for tide pools at low tide, but as usual we weren’t scheduling anything by the tides and we were there at the wrong time, though there were still a couple pools. I managed to see a few small fish, a couple snails clinging to the rocks, and a mini crab or two.

Wonderland

Finally, we made it to the destination that was the original reason for visiting this half of MDI, the Bass Harbor Head Light, just in time for the fog to roll in again. Yes, really. During the summer, the sun sets behind the lighthouse, which can produce some very nice photos, assuming the sun is actually visible. Which it was most definitely not on this day. Still, I got to see the lighthouse, and earlier in the day enjoy tide pools and a fjord, so I’m not complaining. Too much.

Bass Harbor Head Light

Acadia 2021, Day 3 – Jordan Pond

Day three of our trip took us to Jordan Pond. It was another marginal weather day, so we had planned to stop by the visitor center, then take the Island Explorer bus and try to get lunch at the Jordan Pond House. At this point in time, the Hulls Cove Visitor Center was open and requiring masks for everyone indoors, and they also had an outdoor tent station with park rangers answering questions. Inside, the visitor center had been reconfigured (as of winter 2019) since the last time we were at the park. Sadly, they no longer air the park film, which is a pity because there’s nothing quite like an educational National Park Service produced video to supplement your trip.¹ The store was moved into the old auditorium space and seems to carry fewer items, maybe thanks to online shopping and the internet. For what it’s worth, I planned out all our hikes using a physical book and map because 1) yes, I can still read a paper map (and an analog clock, for that matter), and 2) cell service in Acadia isn’t reliable once you go too far south on Mt. Desert Island.

As we were leaving the visitor center to catch the bus, we found out that the Jordan Pond House was closed for rest of the day unexpectedly, with no news on when it would reopen. They weren’t saying it, but the sudden unplanned closure pointed to Covid. We made the decision to go to Jordan Pond anyway and walk around the pond and up the South Bubble, a hike that we usually do when we go to Acadia. From the Jordan Pond House at the south end of Jordan Pond, you can either circle the pond clockwise or counterclockwise. The east side is flatter with dirt trails while the west side is more rugged with the trail either on bare rock or boardwalk. At the north end of the pond, you can connect to the hiking area around the Bubbles. The shoreline trail is about three and a half miles long, and the spur up to the South Bubble adds another ~1.2 miles.

Fog on Jordan Pond

As per usual, we set off counterclockwise up the eastern shore first. Similarly to the previous day, there were visibility issues, but at least it made for some interesting pictures. Because of its location and relative flatness, especially on the east shore, Jordan Pond is one of the busier hiking destinations in Acadia, which I found to be true, but I’ve heard about trails where there are so many people it’s like walking in a very long line, and it was definitely not that bad. At the northern end of the pond we took the trail up the South Bubble, which is also where Bubble Rock is. There were exactly zero views of Jordan Pond or anything else to be had, but we took the traditional photos of trying to push Bubble Rock over², enjoyed a snack, and headed down.

Bubble Rock (also sometimes referred to as Balance Rock)

Shadows in the fog

Back on the shores of Jordan Pond, we completed our circuit of the pond, caught the bus (free, multiple routes, masks required onboard during Covid) back to the visitor center, and got our standard photo at the park sign (which was also new). Another day at Acadia done.

More fog; the Bubbles should be visible right in the middle of the photo

¹I was in elementary school before the existence of YouTube. We watched a lot of clearly made-for-education VCR tapes on CRT TVs strapped to carts that were rolled around the whole school as required. I still know the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution thanks to the Schoolhouse Rock! song.

²Estimating the size of Bubble Rock as a rectangular prism slightly less than twice as high and wide as a person and 2-3 times as long gives a volume of 960 ft³ (~8 ft x 8 ft x 15 ft) which is 27.2 m³. Assuming it’s granite, granite is about 2.7 times as dense as water, 2700 kg/m³, for a weight of 73,300 kg, or 161,000 lb. – over 80 tons or 40-55 cars, so it’s probably not going to be pushed over by any given person any time soon.

Acadia 2021, Day 2 – Ocean Path

After hiking Cadillac Mountain on day 1 to “get it over with” (an anonymous family member’s words, not mine), I had planned for day 2 to be less strenuous, plus the weather was questionable so I didn’t want to tackle anything too ambitious. It was, in fact, raining when we made it into Acadia, but it let up enough for my family to agree to go on a walk along the Ocean Path. The Ocean Path is about 2 miles long (one way) and connects Sand Beach to Otter Point, passing by Thunder Hole on the way. It’s mostly flat, you can turn back at any time, and you get views of the ocean and coastline so it’s a good choice for people who don’t have much time in the park or aren’t interested in climbing anything.

The Acadia coastline

We started out at the Sand Beach parking lot. The beach, shockingly enough, was not filled with sunbathers and children building sandcastles but a small crowd wearing raincoats, carrying umbrellas, and gazing desultorily out at the waves. After walking up and down the beach to admire the sand and surf, we headed off on the Ocean Path. We explored the rocks along the coast as we went, and eventually made it to Thunder Hole, about a mile from the beach. Thunder Hole is a rock inlet where the waves are supposed to rush in, make loud booming noises, and create lots of spray. It’s best visited as the tide is coming in (and during bad weather, but if it’s too bad the park rangers close off access), and we were there an hour after high tide, so there was no thundering, but there was some gurgling.

The Beehive (I think) from Sand Beach

Thunder Hole

From Thunder Hole we continued down the Ocean Path. Most of the time the path follows the Park Loop Road, the scenic road in Acadia that passes by most of the major attractions in the park, but there’s a wooded part further from the road in this section, which is also where the fog really started rolling in. By the time we made it to Otter Point, we’d more or less lost any view of the ocean. Better this day than when we were hiking Cadillac, I guess. At this point, we hiked back to Sand Beach, got into the car, and drove off to get lobster for dinner, because what’s a trip to Maine without at least one lobster dinner?

Fog on the Ocean Path

On Walden Pond

So. I went home. In April, I received my first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, and was considered to be fully immunized by the end of May. By June, there were less than 20,000 reported covid cases and 200-300 deaths per day in the US, over an order of magnitude lower than the January/February peak, so I booked plane tickets for the end of July. Of course, by August when I returned from my trip some states would be worse off than they were a year ago without the vaccine, but I appear to have escaped from my sojourns on public transportation mostly unscathed. With students still away for the summer, the Blue Bus I took to get between North and Central Campus and the Michigan Flyer from downtown to the airport were both uncrowded. My flights in either direction were fully booked, with mandatory masking that was mostly adhered to on the Michigan end and almost completely followed on the New England side.

After I arrived home, went to Wegmans, and spent several days lounging on the living room carpet, my brother also made his appearance and we started to take some family day trips, the first of which was to Walden Pond. Yes, that Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau went to live deliberately in the woods a whole two tenths of a mile from the road into Concord (to be fair, he directly tells the reader that in Walden, which I do own and had to read parts of during a class I took at Cornell). For two years, two months, and two days from 1845-1847, Thoreau lived in a cabin at Walden Pond on land owned by his friend and fellow transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, the Walden Pond State Reservation is managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and features a beach area, hiking trails, and a replica of Thoreau’s cabin.

Walden Pond

When we arrived at Walden Pond, our first order of business, after parking, was a walk around the pond. The main path from the parking lot leads to the beach area, at the south end of the pond. From there, there’s an unpaved, but fairly flat trail around the pond that’s 1.7 miles long, part of which is a section of the Bay Circuit Trail that connects 37 towns in eastern Massachusetts. About 0.4-0.5 miles from the beach on the eastern side of Walden Pond there are signs leading to the site of Thoreau’s cabin (just the site; his actual cabin is gone and the replica is by the parking lot). Along the trail there are spots where you can access the lake shore, some with sandy areas where people were picnicking, reading, sunbathing, etc. During our circuit we encountered two or three dozen other people, so you were never very far from people but it also wasn’t crowded at all, and there weren’t any large groups blasting music and screaming, thankfully.

The site of Thoreau's cabin (cabin boundaries marked by the stone pillars on the right)

After circling the pond, we took a short walk up Emerson’s Cliff, elevation 289 feet, sadly possibly the highest hill I’d been on since before moving to Ann Arbor. From there, we got a view of nothing but trees (you might be able to see Walden Pond in winter), then descended to Heywood’s meadow, which was more marshy than meadowy. It did contain a beaver dam, and there was a potential beaver sighting, so that was a plus for the marsh meadow. By the time we returned to the parking lot, the visitor’s center was closed, so we went and concluded our visit with a stop by the replica of Thoreau’s one-room cabin. We visited on a summer weekday, and spent a little over 2 hours there. It was on the quiet side of busy, more so on the beach, less so on the trails, especially off the main pond trail. The only cost is parking, with in-state and out-of-state prices, and the parking lot can fill up on nice summer days and weekends, according to the website. Overall, recommended for anyone who wants to pair their hike and/or day at the beach with some history and vague memories of English class.

Replica of Thoreau's cabin

Dog Days of Summer

When we last left off, I was sweating in my apartment, watching lots of Netflix, and working my way through 3.5 pints of ice cream (chocolate peanut butter). Well, guess what? I’m still sweating in my apartment, watching lots of Netflix, and working my way through my carton of ice cream (it’s time for a new flavor soon). Coronavirus county numbers look decent, just in time for school to start and thousands of students to converge on campus. Ann Arbor public schools start out virtual this fall and will reevaluate as circumstances change; U-M seems determined to continue with move-in and ~30% in-person classes. So far at least UNC Chapel Hill, Notre Dame, and Michigan State have walked back plans for in-person activities, but it’s possible they may have been less strict about some things than U-M is being. I don’t know for sure, but I’m willing to try this reopening thing out since Washtenaw County looks okay (low hospital occupancy, no deaths for the past two weeks, 1-2 dozen cases a day for ~370,000 people), but I’m also ready to kick people out again if cases start taking off for the stratosphere. With that, here’s how I spent August.

I kicked off the month on Saturday, August 1 by cutting my own hairs and making a pot of curry that I ate for most of the week before freezing the rest for later. It rained on Sunday, August 2, but I was desperate enough to get away from the screaming children that I hiked out to a nature area by the river. Pros: low traffic, few people, nature, mud. Cons: a little damp. Over the week, I finished my single jar of kaya hand-transported from Singapore and picked up when I went home last Christmas, plus did research and all that other stuff.

Kayakers on the Huron River.

On Sunday, August 9 I continued my quest for Ann Arbor parks and summer game points in southwest Ann Arbor. (S)LPT¹ – Make your 82-degree apartment feel cool by biking 18 miles in sunny, humid, 88-degree weather in the middle of the afternoon. When you get back, it’ll be like you have air conditioning, except only for about ten minutes, and you don’t actually have air conditioning. Actual LPT – Have a cold fruit waiting for you in the fridge. It’ll be the best fruit of your life. I did basically nothing of interest the rest of the week besides finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and start the 80s mass-market fantasy book I picked up at the library bookstore for 50 cents months ago.

I headed to southeast Ann Arbor on Saturday, August 15 for my second-to-last group of summer games parks. I don’t go down there much because it’s not commercial so there’s not much in the way of places of interest, it’s not a bike commuter corridor so most of the way doesn’t have a designated bike lane, and the main roads aren’t residential so your options are questionable sidewalk (great for lower body massages) or “sharing the road” with five lanes of “35” mph traffic. Sunday, August 16 was laundry day and was also cool enough to bake a batch of banana walnut muffins. I continued doing little of interest throughout the week, though the internet drama regarding colleges starting fall semester in-person began mounting. I completed my mandatory online courses on sexual harassment (summary: don’t be a creepy jerk) and returning to campus in the times of coronavirus (summary: don’t be a jerk who parties mask-less while sick) to get them over with on Wednesday, August 19. And on Thursday, August 20 after group meeting I visited my last batch of summer game parks, again in the southern regions of Ann Arbor. With that done, I can now decide if I want to fill in the parks I skipped because I didn’t need to visit them before the end of the month or return to some of the hiking areas that didn’t suck to bike to/have bike parking. Or both.

August 20 was the same day the Revolution returned to regular season play (again), playing the Philadelphia Union at a fan-less Gillette Stadium to a 0-0 draw. It looks like the plan for MLS is to schedule about a month of games at a time with near-ish opponents so that the away team can arrive and return on the same day via charter flights. After the shortened season, playoffs will commence, culminating in MLS Cup on December 12. On Friday, August 21, my second major accomplishment of the week was finishing my rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It remains worthy of being my favorite TV show.

That weekend, Saturday, August 22 and Sunday, August 23, I took a break from hauling myself across Ann Arbor and started The Legend of Korra. I’d seen the first season before but remembered very little of it. Over the week I took a couple walks in the woods as students moved back to campus, and finished up my summer game badges. The Revolution beat D.C. United 2-1 on goals from Gustavo Bou and Teal Bunbury on Tuesday, August 25 in their first multigoal performance of 2020. On Saturday, August 29, friends from Cornell and I had a Skype call where we talked about, among other things, cat backpacks, jigsaw puzzles, and electric kazoos, and played skribbl.io, basically online Pictionary where I had to draw with a mouse with my nondominant hand, which went about as well as I expected.

Post-thunderstorm still pond.

I finished out the month with field trips to Target on Sunday, August 30 for water filters and sunscreen (bad idea; all the students were shopping for towels and plastic storage bins) and to the library to check out my first book since March. The library is doing contactless pickup so you request a specific item, then they put it on the pickup shelf for you to collect. When you arrive at the library, you’re watched over by a librarian on a TV screen who you can say hi to and who will also answer any questions you might have. Today, Monday, August 31, was the first day of classes (first day of 21^st grade!) but I don’t actually have any classes, so I stayed in my apartment all day thinking about my micelles. Lunch this week is ham and cheese sandwiches, so I made a batch of spicy peanut tofu for dinner.

I’ll be keeping an eye on the coronavirus situation, but it’s already shaping up to be an interesting fall to go with an interesting spring and an interesting summer.

¹LPT = life pro tip. The S makes it the opposite of a LPT on a subreddit. It stands for something else on Reddit, but here we’re going to say it means “subpar.”

Socially Distanced Summer

We are well into summer around these parts. Temperatures in the 80s, humidity anywhere from 40-90%, depending on the time of day and weather. The backs of my hands are happy, my palms not so much. This will reverse in about six months. Michigan kicked off the month by reclosing indoor bars after a coronavirus outbreak was traced to an East Lansing bar known for its college-age clientele. Nationally, the number of cases continued its steady climb upwards, taxing medical staff and facilities in multiple states. But let’s all go to Disney World and get ready to send the kids back to school, why don’t we?

I started the month of July by finishing a fairly typical work week with research, Netflix, and lying around dehydrating from the palms and soles. On Friday, July 3, I snuck out early to bike the Border to Border trail for the first time this year. I’d been avoiding it for coronavirus crowding reasons, but I was hopeful that early on a Friday morning of a holiday weekend would not be a popular time to be physically exerting oneself. I was right, and the people who were out were the people who tend to be more intentional about walking/running/biking and generally have better trail etiquette, as opposed to the family of six who spreads out across the whole path and lets little Timmy zigzag along the trail as he likes or shirtless jogger guy with headphones blasting who wouldn’t hear you if you were dragging a string of cowbells behind you.

Saturday, July 4 was grocery day. I hid out in my apartment for the rest of the day and finished Community, which I would recommend, though the first three seasons are better than the last three. To replace it in my Netflix rotation, I started Parks and Recreation since people say if you like The Office you’ll like Parks and Rec. Full judgement forthcoming. I headed back out on my bike on Sunday, July 5 to check off the parks in northwest Ann Arbor. I might have gotten back a little late for the start of church, but I did not miss the Facebook sermon.

Monday, July 6 began another week. I started editing changes in my code into the official version and running test simulations. Long live Fortran. While the apartment was still a nice cool 79 F at 7:30 in the morning, I baked a batch of orange cranberry muffins on Tuesday, July 7, except I didn’t want to eat an orange so I didn’t get an orange for orange zest when I went grocery shopping so the muffins didn’t taste very much like orange. On Wednesday, July 8, I finally returned the library books and DVDs I’d had since March so someone else could enjoy Spider-Man: Far From Home.

The big news for Thursday, July 9 was that the Revolution played their first soccer game in four months at the MLS Returnament and won. I finished off the research week and ventured (on bike) to the downtown area for the first time since March on Saturday, July 11. I was lured in not by the prospects of specialty boutiques or exotic bistros but library summer game points¹ and my self-inflicted checklist of parks, which overlap in a major way thanks to a series of badges featuring the Ann Arbor parks. The main streets downtown were more crowded than I expected, but I mostly avoided them on my journey to visit no less than 18 summer game sites in one trip.

Huron River, Barton Nature Area

It was back to work on Monday, July 13, but by Thursday, July 16, I got fed up enough with the banshee-screeching children outside my window to go for an afternoon bike ride and get some more parks off the list. I tried another morning bike ride to the west side of Ann Arbor on Friday, July 17, but spent most of the first half of it playing leapfrog with the compost truck. The Revolution’s second group game in the Returnament was Saturday, July 18, which they tied thanks to an atrocious back pass gone wrong. They finished group play on Tuesday, July 21 with a scoreless draw, which was enough to get them into the knockout rounds.

I spent the rest of the week mostly doing what I’ve been doing for the past 4 months. In other exciting news for the week, Jeopardy! opened their vault and showed episodes from the first decade of Alex Trebek hosting. We got to see the first game of its current syndicated run, buzzing in before the clue was read, really bad final Jeopardy! betting, his and hers tennis racket prizes, a maximum cash winnings cap, and more. A couple more bike rides over the week leaves me with mostly parks along the southern reaches of Ann Arbor. At the very least I can say that I didn’t get less fit because of coronavirus. Saturday, July 25 was groceries in the morning, my longest bike ride of the year so far (~17 miles) in the afternoon, then I had a video call with friends from Cornell at night and I stayed up to watch the Revolution lose to the Philadelphia Union in a late-night MLS in Florida during a pandemic special 10:30 pm match. Why do I keep doing this to myself? Why did I come to grad school? Why do you always plug the USB in the wrong way the first time?

I finished out July spending until midnight on Tuesday, July 28 making a birthday card, which required taking out my colored pencils for the first time in months. It was just like being back at Cornell working on problem sets at absurd hours. And on Thursday, July 30, my turn to give virtual group meeting came around again, so I talked about my micelles and computational simulations.

Heading into August, the coronavirus numbers aren’t great – cases have been slowly but steadily rising, though hospital usage, at least in Washtenaw County, has remained low. The university is planning for some in-person classes, so students should start coming in next month, but we’ll see how long we make it before something goes wrong. I hope we get to Thanksgiving as planned, because that would mean people are behaving responsibly and thoughtfully, but I wouldn’t be surprised if things go pear-shaped by/in September.

Blue jay feather

¹The library puts on a combination summer reading program/scavenger hunt/events spectacular where you earn points for reading, writing reviews, attending events, searching the catalog, and visiting certain locations. In the catalog and at locations you either get a code to enter directly for points or have to find specific signs/objects to assemble the code (e.g. if you’re at a park the code might be “color of the slide + number of swings” and you’d enter something like “orange5”). Some of the codes are grouped together in badges and completing badges gets you more points. The points can then be traded for a finite number of objects in the summer game store.

One Hundred Days of Solitude

Well, we’ve reached over a hundred days since I intentionally went to a public place to interact with real live people. Besides a five-minute visit to my office to pick up my books before labs were shut down, I’ve been to exactly two indoor locations – the grocery store and my apartment. I haven’t ridden the bus, been driven in a car, or flown anywhere for the better part of four months. We’re technically allowed to go places now, but I’ve stuck to my apartment and outdoor locations while waiting to see how reopening goes. Approaching the end of the month, the numbers in Michigan looked pretty good, both in terms of cases and deaths. Michigan Medicine posts the number of COVID-19 positive inpatients they have every day, and they hit a low on June 17/18 since this all started in March. However, that number then rose 50% in 4 days. Time to lock everyone back in their closets? Not quite yet. They went from 6 to 9 patients, and only time will tell if this is statistically insignificant or the start of another wave.

At the beginning of the month, Governor Whitmer lifted the stay-at-home order, effective immediately on Monday, June 1. Indoor gatherings with less than 10 people and outdoor gatherings with less than 100 people and social distancing were permitted. As this was only a week after Memorial Day and its unknown numbers of barbeques with unknown quantities of people practicing unknown degrees of social distancing/facial covering, I declined to do anything other than stay at home and do research and watch Netflix. On Sunday, June 7, my church restarted in-person services outdoors. I didn’t attend because 1) I didn’t want to bike there and 2) unknown quantities of people practicing unknown degrees of social distancing/facial covering. I did, however, bake a pineapple upside down cake. It was a midcentury-esque masterpiece.

Pineapple upside down cake

By Monday, June 8, retail, restaurants, pools, libraries, museums, offices, etc. were all allowed to be open with varying social distancing and capacity restrictions. The places that were left closed at this point were things like gyms, bowling alleys, movie theaters, and nail salons, where groups of people congregate and/or are in close contact for not strictly essential activities. I did my roughly biannual intensive floor washing on Tuesday, June 9, because turns out dust is a thing. On Wednesday, June 10, I finished watching all of the Great British Baking Show episodes available on Netflix. Friday, June 12, the Ann Arbor library started the coronavirus/socially distanced/virtual summer 2020 Summer Game and I started rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is even better than I remembered.

The weather was too nice on Saturday, June 13 to not go out, so even though I knew it would be “crowded,” I set out on my bike for the Bird Hills/Barton Nature Areas area. After the world’s most unnecessary detour, I made it and added a couple more parks to my list. It was indeed busier than my usual mosquito-infested, swampy haunts, but not too bad away from a couple spots. On Sunday, June 14, I again watched church on Facebook live, then did a load of laundry, and ate my last two freezer pancakes for dinner. I did my semi-annual file backup/SD card reformatting on Monday, June 15 and otherwise got research done over the rest of the week. Plus baked a batch of popovers for the heck of it on Wednesday, June 17 (I got flour at the grocery store and it wasn’t 900 degrees in my apartment).

Looks very refreshing.
(Fuller Park pool, closed, at the beginning of June.)

On Saturday, June 20 I went grocery shopping in the morning (still basically 100% of people wearing face coverings¹) and in the afternoon headed out to visit another group of parks. Why the city of Ann Arbor thought right next to the M-14 was a good place for a nature area is beyond me. Nothing like the sounds of the birds and 75 mph traffic as you walk through the woods. Anyway, joke’s on me because I took the time to visit this park. I still wasn’t attending church as of Sunday, June 21, so it was another Facebook sermon with questionable audio for me. The rest of the week was research as usual; I also visited parks, ate sandwiches, baked apple cobbler, watched Netflix, reread books. The university committed to a partially in-person fall semester with a modified schedule, but we’ll see how well that works out once students return en masse.

On Saturday, June 27, I took my bike out to the northern half of Ann Arbor to visit my remaining parks north of the Huron River. With that done, I’ll have to start ranging farther afield into lesser known territories. On the plus side, biking in high heat, humidity, and sun makes my 85-degree apartment feel cool . . . for about ten minutes when I first get back. Another Sunday, another Facebook sermon on Sunday, June 28. Then I finished out the month with a couple days of work. On to July. I’m still not making plans to go anywhere/do anything while I wait and see how things go. Like I said, the numbers in Michigan still seem pretty good but other states are not looking great.

¹A side note on masks/face coverings from my science-ish perspective: Even if they aren’t super effective, and are hot and uncomfortable, I’d rather be careful. And no, you are not suffocating yourself, with carbon dioxide or otherwise. 1) Air is already mostly not oxygen (78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen by volume). 2) You don’t extract all the oxygen from air you inhale. Exhaled air is still ~16% oxygen; in other words ~80% of the oxygen that’s inhaled is exhaled. 3) Masks are porous. The pore size of cloth is on the order of microns. Air molecules are hundreds of picometers, or 5-6 orders of magnitude smaller. Your exhalations are not hitting your mask and rebounding back into your respiratory system. (Virus sizes are on the order of nanometers, so would not be filtered out by a cloth mask, but respiratory droplets are again in the micron range and could be stopped by a mask, which is the point.) 4) Doctors, nurses, dentists, construction workers, etc. are not all passing out at work from hypoxia every time they put on a mask. So even if you don’t really think masks do anything, you’re not killing your brain cells by wearing one, and you might even be helping other people. Isn’t that nice?

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.