We found ourselves back in Michigan this weekend and have a whirlwind 2 wks planned after that, so Wi State Parks will have to wait a bit. Even though we were there to celebrate Mike’s nephew, Jeff’s wedding, we didn’t want to pass up the ability to ‘Splore’ if at all possible. After a 12 hour drive on Friday, we decided to do our “Supper Club Saturday” a day early and stopped in Ann Arbor at Weber’s Restaurant. It was a nice old fashioned supper club with the BEST French onion soup we have had so far. There was even a nice older gentleman playing the pinao by the time we left. We drove a little further, checked in to our hotel and had a quick drink with Mike’s brother, Pete, his wife, Karen, and the groom-to-be Jeff!! Saturday morning was wide open – the wedding was at 5 pm with the bride and groom having a special immediate family-only event at the Ukrainian church earlier; this left us time to do some Splorin’!!!!
We wanted to make sure we had as much possible time hiking as we could, so we left the hotel early — 5:45AM. Whew, but we were ready. We started off the day at our favorite type of restaurant — good ‘ole fashioned family restaurant — Nick’s Country Oven in Shelby Township, MI. We had our typical omelettes and a salad. Of course we also got to see the locals that walk in and don’t even have to order -their food is just brought to them. Love it!! While eating, we kept glancing outside and saw that it was still very dark. We only had a 20 minute drive and hoped the sun would be up by the time we got there and we took off for parts unknown to make the most of the morning.
We were headed to a Detroit Metropark: Stony Creek. We’d heard good things about it from the groom himself, so we figured we had to be right on it!! First things first — to pay for entrance to the park. Having never visited a Detroit Metropark before we (obviously) didn’t know the process. We knew it would be $10 (woo hoo, $1 cheaper than non-resident WI State Parks), but had no idea where/how to pay. We tried online, but that was only for annual passes. We got to the park right at sunrise. We though we must have to stop at the Park Office, but that was locked up tighter than a drum and completely dark. We figured it must be “self registration” wherever we parked. However, a mile down the road we came to a toll booth and paid our $10. Good-to-go!! Off to the trails.
The first trail we took off on was the Osprey Rustic Trail. It was pretty chilly to start with — Tammy had a sweat shirt and long pants, Mike had his usual Splorin outfit of shorts and short sleeved t-shirt. Mike would have liked gloves, but we hadn’t purchased those….yet. This was a very pretty trail with walking along a very nice wooded marsh with some very beautiful views just after sunrise.
Most of the trail was not our desired trail surface — it was just cut grass. Our boots got pretty wet walking this trail. It wound it’s way along the marsh and then back through some prairie scenery. During this portion we had our first close encounter with a deer. It was about 50 yards away, we surprised it and it jumped right out onto the trail in front of us. It stood and stared at us for about 10 seconds then leaped back into the brush and disappeared.
Our next trail was the East Lake Trail — this was going to be a little bit longer. Before we started the trail we had to hit the restrooms — we were surprised to find a group of wild turkeys standing right outside the doors. Apparently they were just waiting for us because as we walked up, they just walked away. The fall colors were just starting to make their way in to the park
This trail would be what we would call a “double lollipop” — two loops with a connector in between. We saw lots of deer down this trail — Mike claims we only saw 5 while Tam thinks we saw 7. So, in all fairness we will say that we saw 6 deer (which makes us both wrong — that seems fair 😉 ). This was a gorgeous trail, but it started off with our least preferred surface — grass. As we got around to the backside we came across some HUGE houses (no, capital letters do not emphasize the point enough as to how large these mansions were). Shortly after the mansions on the first of the two “lollipops” we ran into a….road. Not just a dirt road to walk across, but a full fledged road with lots of cars. A quick look on Google Maps made Mike realize that we had veered off the trail and apparently followed a maintenance road. We back tracked about half a mile to find the trail that we were supposed to be on (no big deal, just an extra mile of exercise 😉 ). Getting back on the right trail was a godsend as it was our preferred trail surface at that point- compacted dirt and small (just wide enough for a single person). We finally saw a mushroom on this trail.
Before starting the Habitat Trail, we walked out to a little observation deck attached to the Nature Center. We had a nice view of a little creek (Stony Creek!!!) and could see a trail meandering along it. Mike said he thought that was the trail we were about to take (and, as usual, he wasn’t wrong 😉 ).
We followed the “left hand rule” again and began this trail in a clockwise fashion. We started off right along a very lovely little water hole.
This was a very pretty trail with lots and lots of color along it.
We finished up this trail with plenty of time to spare. We even had time to try to find a tie for the wedding….at Walmart — OH, they don’t have ties anymore….at Target — OH, they have three ties (so we bought on of them).
All-in-all Michigan Splorin’ Part Deux was a huge success!!!! Love us some Michigan!!!
Splorin' Saturday 