11 posts tagged “hiking”
Michigan weather is simply amazing. Yesterday saw a heat wave reaching 40 degrees that melted much of the several inches of snow on the ground, but 40+ mph winds this morning will plummet the thermometer below 20 degrees later today. The weatherman called it a "flash freeze", which I guess means that we had a "flash thaw" over the weekend?
Recently we picked up Jan, our 54th foster dog, and she's been such a great dog that Amanda keeps saying stuff like "if we ever want 3 dogs, Jan should be the 3rd one". :)
To me she's not a "Jan" - she's too sweet and spunky for that calm-sounding name, so I've been calling her JJ. Not "J.J." but "JJ" because there's no initials - that second "J" doesn't stand for anything.
Taking advantage of the balmy weather yesterday, I loaded the entire pack - Haven, Beacon, JJ - into the car and all 14 of our feet embarked on a hike in warm, wet snow along the Flat River. JJ has been good enough that I let her run off leash; she's only the 3rd or 4th foster dog to earn such freedom! She wasn't perfect and tended to ignore my whistles occasionally, but she kept us in sight. Of course to her, "us" can mean just Haven and Beacon so sometimes the three of them were a few hundred yards away chasing some intriguing scent!
Eventually we slipped and slid our way up and over the steep hill that leads to "Beacon's Landing" - his favorite fetching spot on the river, a small sandy delta where a foot-wide stream drains into the 200-foot wide river. Immediately downstream of Beacon's Landing is "Haven's Cove", a backwater area of eddy flow caused by the delta. Lots of flotsam and other debris collects here and Haven loves to explore it at low water levels in hopes of finding a stinky fish carcass to eather eat or roll in.
In the winter Haven's Cove freezes over due to the still water and during this hike the ice was 2 inches thick, extending 15 feet into the river and running 60 feet along the shore. Standing at Beacon's Landing and waiting for JJ to catch up to us, Beacon began insisting that I throw him something to retrieve. I was scanning the ground for a stick when I heard a splash...
Looking up I saw JJ had fallen through the ice! She was at the far end of the ice shelf on Haven's Cove - she had walked too close to the edge and a 2-foot hemicircle of ice had broken away. JJ was in that hemicircle trying to climb back on to the ice with no success. Her front paws were hanging on with her rear in the water; occassionally a hind paw would appear on the ice edge but the river was about 3 feet deep there, so she had nothing to push off of.
At first I tried to coax JJ to exit the hemicircle and swim upstream around the ice shelf - there's almost zero current in Haven's Cove - but JJ apparently doesn't have enough labrador retriever in her genes to give her such instincts. She wasn't panicked but she was intent on climbing out, which she couldn't do without help.
Haven seemed to realize this - as soon as we saw JJ in the water, Haven went running out onto the ice right up to JJ, putting her nose right next to JJ's. How kind! If only Haven had thought to grab JJ's collar and haul her out, but Haven apparently was only intending to provide moral support. :)
JJ was about 12 feet from shore, a shoreline that's steep and covered in woody shrubs so I wasn't going to reach her from dry land. I also didn't want to wade through a waist-deep, ice-cold river along the entire 60-foot ice shelf to get there. I decided to press my luck by walking out onto the ice shelf.
It was pretty solid, but obviously thinning out toward it's edge. Beacon joined me when I set foot onto the ice, and Haven got excited and ran over to Beacon... and slid right past him! Yes Haven, ice is slippery. The two of them must've figured I had things under control as they ran back to Beacon's Landing.
I managed to get about 6 feet away from JJ before my weight pushed the outer edge of the ice just below the surface and water began to flow onto the ice. Rats, I couldn't get any closer! How was I going to help JJ out of the water? I pulled the leash out of my pocket - I could make a "lasso" and toss it over her head, giving enough of a pull that her back paws could push her out.
As I was preparing to toss the leash, Haven and Beacon came running out onto the ice to see what I was up to, coming all the way out right next to me. I weigh almost 200 lbs and the ice barely supported me, but add in 140 pounds of pooch and guess what? The ice breaks!
I fell through the ice and verified that the water was indeed waist deep. Yow, was it cold! Haven fell in right next to me but Beacon was on the safe side of the crack, still standing up on the ice. JJ was now in front of me in the water so I picked her up and placed her on the ice and she ran for shore. Then I turned and helped Haven climb back onto the shelf - she's a pretty good swimmer and comfortable in the river, but she wasn't too thrilled to be dog-paddling in icy water!
As I helped Haven I heard a splash behind me... Beacon! The silly boy had jumped into the river and was swimming back to me with a large chunk of ice in his mouth! He saw pieces of ice from my fall-through floating in the river and he leapt in to retrieve them. However, he couldn't climb out so I then had to help him back onto the ice shelf but he never let go of his prize.
Naturally if I fall through the ice with three dogs, I'm the last one out! They're back on shore at Beacon's Landing, shaking off some of the chilly water while I'm forced to make that trek that I opted against earlier - a long wade in chilling, waist-deep water to circumnavigate the ice shelf at Haven's Cove.
Back near shore I stepped on the ice edge trying to break off a chunk, but lo and behold nearly the entire shelf cracked free! A huge 10x50 foot island of ice floated out into the river, but rather than heading downstream is simply spun. The backwater eddys were evident as the upstream end of the ice floe rotated out into the river and downstream, while the downstream end actually moved upstream. It did this twice before I left, so who knows if it ever drifted downstream or just kept spinning there! Pretty cool stuff for a nature and science geek.
By the time I stepped on to dry land my feet were almost numb, but otherwise I felt pretty good. The dogs were noticeably cold from their bouncy behavior, but they weren't shivering or stressed out; in fact they were already exploring the woods while awaiting my return. Once I arrived, however, Beacon began trying to lead us back to the car - he was ready to go home. He was right, of course - we'd been out for half an hour and had a 15 minute hike back to the parking area so no need to hang around in wet clothes (or fur) when there's snow on the ground, even in a Michigan heat wave.
I wish I'd thought to get some photos of the ice shelf, but perhaps it was all the best that I had the camera and my cell phone stashed away in double ziploc bags. They both survived the dunking - luckily I took such precautions despite no intention of getting wet. Running in the woods with three dogs? Anything can happen! What a blast.
Amazingly it was in the mid 40's yesterday - it felt like spring! Don't worry, it won't go to my head - we're supposed to get a few inches of snow tonight.
I took advantage of the spring-like air and brought the dogs along on a mini hiking excursion at our usual spot by the river. There was still plenty of snow on the ground but it was wet and slick; there was also thick ice on the shore extending a bit into the water. Early on Haven and Beacon learned that the edge of the ice might break under their weight, but they didn't seem to mind getting their paws dipped in the icy water.
To my surprise, they didn't even mind swimming! Beacon got so impatient for me to throw something for him to fetch (I wasn't planning to take them swimming) that he did his best to convey his desires by jumping right into the freezing river! He stood there and waited, and when I wasn't able to find a stick fast enough he swam over to an approaching ice floe and bit off a big chunk of ice to bring back to me as his prize. When Haven saw what he had she jumped in to "help" him carry the ice chunk.
If they were going to swim, I decided to hike up and over the big hill, on the backside of which is a nice access point to the river with some shallow areas. Near the top of the hill I heard a loud trill and looked up to see a bald eagle launch from a tree and glide down out of view along the river! Often times when spotting a bald eagle it's hard to be sure - at a distance the long wingspan could be an osprey or even a rough-legged hawk. But this time there was no doubt - it was so close to me that not only were the tell-tale white head and tail evident, but I could see the yellow beak and feet and even distinguish the outlines of feathers!
For some reason it reminded me of the lines from Solsbury Hill: "Climbing up on Solsbury Hill... an eagle flew out of the night... he was something to observe... came in close I heard a voice..." Well, everything but the name of the hill, it was daytime, and I didn't hear any voices. :)
Today I went running for the first time in almost two weeks thanks to my bout with the flu. It was just 2.5 miles on the treadmill but it felt good to run again. Clearly the sickness took a toll - not only was my resting HR unusually high at 63 today, but my HR during the run was 10-20 bpm above normal for the slow 9:30-10:00 pace.
A couple years ago Amanda and I were hiking on the North Country Trail at dusk when suddenly two pairs of sinister green eyes appeared in the distance. We turned and ran but the eyes kept getting closer. A repetitive "th-thump th-thump" grew louder and louder; was it the approaching footsteps of these beasts or the pounding of our hearts as fear overwhelmed us? In a last ditch effort we tried using the camera flash to scare them off but alas, they were already upon us. Fortunately we only suffered a few slobbery seconds before the tongues of the Great White Demon Dogs ferociously licked us to death.
Do you have a pet? What kind of pet do you own, and why did you choose it?
Submitted by Brendz.
Yes, of course! Haven and Beacon (hence "havybeaks", an amalgamation of their nicknames), two sibling yellow labs that are closer to white than yellow. They turned 4 years old in June.
I've always wanted dogs of my own. I grew up with two small dogs (a westie and a sheltie) but for some reason my heart was set on big dogs. In middle school I pictured myself someday owning a german shepherd and a golden retriever, but I really wasn't that picky. When Amanda and I got the opportunity for Haven and Beacon, we jumped!
This year we're keeping track of our dogs' activities and thanks to Saturday's race and an easy run with Haven yesterday, the dogs can boast some milestones:
Haven - 202 miles and 5 hours of swimming
Beacon - 150 miles and 9 hours of swimming
The miles include on-leash running and off-leash running and hiking; the swimming is mostly fetching sticks in the river. If we could teach them to ride a bike they'd make great triathletes!
Amanda is a bit worried because Haven is keeping up with her! Amanda is at 208 miles, so I'm teasing her by saying I'll take Haven for a 12-miler this weekend. Although Haven needn't worry because I have yet to see Amanda swim in the river with a stick in her mouth. :)
For a while now my dad and I have been planning to do a 50-mile ride together on the White Pine Trail, and we finally settled on this coming Saturday for the big ride. He's been logging some impressive training miles - he keeps calling me in the middle of his rides to say "Hey, I'm finishing up a 25-miler" or other such friendly boasting. Last week I realized that thanks to a broken bike seat, I'd only logged 12 miles on two wheels this year!
Sunday morning I decided it was time to make sure my cycling legs were ready for a long ride and I set out for a 32-mile loop north of town. Fortunately no mechanical breakdowns this time! The first section was 27 miles as I finished at a trailhead to meet Amanda for a hike. We walked a few loops and she took a few pictures and an hour later, I was back on my bike for the 5-mile ride home.
So my legs passed the test - I felt good during the ride and had no problems aside from a mild case of cyclist's butt. Thankfully my running has kept my endurance up, so Dad better be ready to go! :)
How about run 500 miles? I forgot to mention that back on April 25 I ran my 500th mile and on May 3 I went for my 100th run of the year. Just 500 more until 1000... "I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more..."
Today was a 9.8 mile long run - I ran to Meijer where Amanda met me and we went grocery shopping afterwards. Before and after the run I felt really good and somehow managed a 9:17 pace despite thinking that I was taking it easy - walking up a half-dozen hills, stopping to enjoy a couple scenic views along the river, etc.
Later today we took all three dogs - Haven, Beacon and foster dog Honey - to my Grandma's pasture to run around. We spent two hours hiking around and the dogs are completely worn out now! They got to have a ton of fun - they chased a rabbit, two nesting turkeys, a ruffed grouse, a deer, and a pheasant! Amanda will post the pictures as part of her DITL for today.
Yesterday I put a nifty new post on Why Run? about the physics of speed, pace and energy. I started thinking about it when Katiebell described some frustration when treadmilling recently:
"I was shocked to find that the difference between 5.4 miles per hour and 5.7 was negligible, but bump it to 6.0 (a mere ten min mile) and I could barely keep on pace...6.5 and I was struggling."
Thursday I was on the treadmill doing speedwork and it dawned on me how explain the physics of this phenomenon. If you're curious then check out my Why Run? article which even has a couple of cool graphs!
Bike
Today did not go as planned, but it turned out very well. Due to a minor achilles injury that caused me to skip my race this weekend (bummer!), I geared up myself and my bike this morning for our first ride of the year, planning to roll along some country roads for about three hours. All was going well for the first half hour - beautiful clear skies and 60 degree temperature that was rising quickly - when things suddenly fell apart, literally. I'm pedaling along a flat stretch when I hear a loud SNAP followed by the clinks of metal pieces falling on the pavement. My seat broke off!! Luckily I didn't fall; a triathlete friend of mine broke his arm falling due to a seat failure in college.
I phoned Amanda, who had to abandon her walk less than five minutes after starting to come rescue me. While waiting for her I managed to ride about two miles closer, during which time I learned two things about cycling with no seat: 1) your calves get really tired if you keep the standard position of centering the balls of your feet over the pedals, so I centered my arches on the pedals instead; and 2) the bike gets quite unstable descending steep hills. I'm not sure why for #2, but I guess it's due to a forward center of gravity putting too much weight on the front wheel?
Hike
Amanda took so many photos that we were making slow progress around the 4.5 mile loop. We wanted to get home in time to watch a Detroit Tigers game - a rare opportunity to see them on a air-broadcast channel. Halfway around the loop we decided I should run the 2 miles back to the car and pick up Amanda at the north parking lot (we started at the south lot).
Run
Fetch
Once we got home we traded Haven for Beacon and drove to the river where I played fetch with him for half an hour while Amanda drove out to Subway to fetch our dinner. Beacon needed his turn getting some fun exercise and he really loved it, screaming as he waited for me to throw the next stick. He finally started getting tired just as Amanda returned and we all went home for dinner.
Icing on the cake: we got to watch the Tigers beat the White Sox in a 12-inning thriller complete with two-outs-bottom-of-the-9th home run heroics!
It's nice and warm here - almost 60 - so we took advantage of the weather to hike with the dogs and play a little fetch. I'm just going to write about the hiking part since I had the camera during that portion.
For the rest of the hike go visit Amanda's blog where she covers our labs doing their retrieving thing.
Saturday my parents drove out from Ann Arbor to take Amanda out for her birthday dinner. We did far more than that, however! A little after 9am we meet them at Grandma's pasture to go hiking. Dad brought along Uncle Bob, Amanda and I brought along the dogs. There wasn't any real purpose to the hike - we just started walking and whenever we thought of something interesting to check out, we headed in that direction.
First was passed through Tarzan's Jungle (named by all the grandkids when we were very little), a dark, tree-lined stretch of two-track with a mucky stream beside it. As we exited the "jungle" Beacon spotted three deer about 200 yards away and he took off like a Navy jet launched off an aircraft carrier! Haven didn't notice and by the time I got her attention pointed in the right direction, she was 100 yards behind.
Those three deer saw Beacon coming and bounded away easily, but out of sight to the right were five more deer that neither saw Beacon, nor did Beacon see them until he was right upon them! The deer bolted in the direction of their herd-mates and Beacon was right in the middle, getting within five feet of one deer with two more behind Beacon! Alas, poor Beaks, the deer were too fast. Haven got there just in time to make a show of giving chase. After making sure no more deer were hiding nearby, Haven and Beacon returned to us - very tired and very happy.
We hiked past our woodpiles from last week's lumberjacking then maneuvered among the long rows of pine trees, following the many highways paved by deer hooves. There were plenty of turkey tracks to be found as well, and finally we caught up to them after about 90 minutes. Haven and Beacon ran in pursuit as we watched the clumsy birds crash among the tree branches trying to fly away. The dogs were so tired by now that their chase only lasted about a minute!
Lastly we trekked through a marshy area of the property that we usually don't venture into because it's usually rather wet and ill-suited for vehicles. It's a nice setting back there with occasional clearings and stands of thornapple trees - quite different than other parts of the pasture. After chatting briefly with Bob and Therese (and Gabe) we headed over to Grandma's (dad's mom) house to go over some WWII information about Grandpa.
Dad and Mom are compiling some info about Grandpa's military service for a local historical group and they wanted to let Grandma check it over for accuracy, etc. They also wrote up stories for Grandma's four brothers, each of whom served in WWII with a different branch of the military: one each in the Army (Air Corps), the Marines, the Navy, and the Coast Guard. Grandpa himself was in the Navy as a mechanic, and Grandma worked at a factory building ailerons for aircraft. As Grandma put it: "After Pearl Harbor, everybody supported the war effort. You didn't worry much about how it affected your life. We just did what needed to be done."
We continued to discuss life during a war, then and now. Mom asked how 9/11 compared to Pearl Harbor. Grandma explained that they were similar, but noted that "nothing really changed" in our quality of life after 9/11. During WWII there were gas rations; for example if Grandma and her friends wanted to go hang out, they had to find someone with enough extra gas rations and pile into her car. There were collections of surplus metal, war bonds to purchase, and everyone's job converted to supporting the war. Grandma's factory where she worked stopped making springs and started making ailerons. Grandpa joined the Navy.
Speaking of which, Grandma noted that her parents were unable to attend ANY of their five children's weddings! She took the train to San Diego to marry Grandpa while he was stationed out there. Her four brothers also married far from home; the closest was a few hundred miles away and her parents didn't have the gas rations available to attend "so they just couldn't go - that's the way it was" says Grandma.
As we found out later, that's the way it was for my other grandma, Grammy. Kinda spur of the moment we decided to pay a visit to my mom's mom following lunch at a deli in Ada. It didn't take long to start looking through old photos and we soon found a wedding photo of Grammy and Grampy. She also traveled west, to Los Angeles, to marry my grandfather while he was on duty out there. Ironically, both sets of my grandparents got married in California despite living in Michigan all their lives! That was life during WWII. They also directly supported the war - Grampy taught navigation using Link Trainers while Grammy installed hydraulic lines in bomber cockpits. Was anyone not involved with WWII during that era?
Grammy also showed us a photo of her grandparents and other relatives of similar age! I don't remember when it was taken but those people were probably all born between 1850 and 1875! One of them is related to Commodore Matthew Perry, but I forget exactly the relation; I do know that I'm not a direct descendant of him, but he's somewhere in my family tree.
I forgot to mention that on the way to Grammy's house we took a little tour of Grand Rapids, driving by: a house that Amanda and I almost bought; the first house I lived in, also the first house my parents bought together; the first house my dad lived in after college, right on the Grand River; and a few other curiosities.
Finally we made it back home where we played a few rounds of a board game called Compatibility, where each player has a deck of cards with photos on them. A word is read (e.g. "retirement") and then you have to select, in secret, 2-5 photos that you feel best represent that word. You play with a partner, so the object is to pick the same photos as they do. So for "retirement" do you pick the photo of the old man, or the dollar sign, or the sunset, or the card that simply contains the word "happy"? Very fun game. Amanda and I managed to win both rounds by just one space on the game board!
My parents left to go home around 9:30 at night (for a 2-hour drive!), making it 12 hours that we spent hanging out with them!
