Cardinal Flowers

It occurred to me while writing my previous post that the route I'd biked during that ride had skipped a half mile stretch of road where there have often been cardinal flowers blooming in the ditch.  It's this stretch -- which doesn't look too promising for finding that red flower, at least from this vantage point.

Closer inspection --

Even closer --

Ahh.  They are not in the abundance that we have occasionally seen, but they are there, and blooming.  Here's a current photo of my domestic flower for comparison:

The first annual sighting of the elusive cardinal flower in the wild is always worth the miles it takes to find them.  Plus this is the last day of the month, and those few extra miles to put into the bike log help me feel a little less ancient.

Florida Ride

In Florida, when the sun gets too high in the sky for afternoon biking, and there is seemingly too much water in the air to breathe, I have been known to take a few morning bike rides.  We're in a similar weather pattern here, and it finally dawned on me that I could take a bike ride before lunch, before the heat of the day gets so oppressive.  So yesterday that's what I did.

Morning light is different.  There was also plenty of shade that time of day.  I was looking for the wild version of the cardinal flowers, but they weren't blooming yet in the usual places.  Overall the ride was a success -- I think that it worked out well, and it's possible that I'll try it again.

July 25th comes every year.

July 25th has always been my birthday, at least for as long as I can remember.  I found out yesterday that July 25th is also the Feast of St. James the Apostle who was the brother of John the Evangelist.  James was one of Jesus' first apostles and he was also the first of the apostles to die.  He was also called James the Greater, perhaps to distinguish him from James the Lesser -- who was apparently shorter.  For perhaps obvious reasons, this information (thanks, NCW) made me smile.  Birthdays are harder now, but I spent yesterday in reasonably good spirits, though I was tired.  I put that down to my age (naturally), the excessive heat and humidity that's hanging on here, and a busy weekend with my Michigan family.  I have a few photos to share from the past few days.

A great number of power boats raced southward midmorning Saturday.  There were hundreds of them, but no one has told me why.  A couple of people (two, that's a couple) have asked me why.  I don't know, but it was quite a spectacle.  And loud.

Monday, the 25th, I planned a longish bike ride, but upon arriving at the PSPS, I decided it was too hot and humid to do the planned distance.  I took a photo of some Queen Anne's lace to prove that I was there, and headed home.

Also on the 25th, my cousin Carla sent me a photo of a lily that is growing in her garden.  It's a direct descendant of lilies planted by my mother at Yellow River.  Carla knew them as Lillie's lilies, and it's worth a look at my Facebook page to see them.  I think I have found a source for them, and will try planting a few of them here to see how they do.  The lily in the photo above is growing in my garden, and doesn't look much like the Turk's Cap lily in Carla's photo.  It is, however, a lily that I moved here with me from my previous residence.  It was a Mother's Day gift from my daughter several years ago.

I've had an ongoing fondness for cardinal flowers, as some of you know. They grow wild in the ditches along 160th Avenue along one of the routes to the PSPS. Some years there are quite a few, other years not very many.  This spring I found a cardinal flower perennial plant at a garden center here in town, and spent the $4.00 that was asked, and purchased it.  I had some doubt that it would survive -- I don't have many spots in my garden that get enough sun. I planted this one near my mailbox, the sunniest spot I could find.  Yesterday, the 25th,  it was blooming.  All of this, plus the lovely gifts from my family, the calls and emails from people I love, two family dinners, plus messages and good wishes from friends and family.  Time keeps moving on.  

Not Cool

Recently the weather station on our deck reported a temperature of 91 degrees -- and that was "cooler near the lake." It's the season for that, I guess, but I am not a fan.  This week we've taken to walking on the beach in the morning instead of through the surrounding neighborhoods, on the theory that it's cooler along the water at that time of day.  Our canine companion doesn't necessarily agree.

Temperatures along the lakeshore were still in the low 80's at midday on Wednesday, and I went out for a bike ride.  With inland temps in the low 90's, my route was an out and back on Lakeshore, the closest I could get to the water on my bicycle.  Well, except for this:

There were car issues that needed to be dealt with that day, so it was a short ride.  I made it home before the car repair place called to say that they needed to order a part.   So it goes.

An evening walk around the neighborhood in that hour before sunset is one of my favorite parts of summer.  We need to watch out for four legged pests, though.  This guy was snacking on landscape plants -- hosta, in this case -- and had no fear of the humans who were tiptoeing past him so as to not disturb him.  It seems like someone should have at least thrown a rock at him.

The neighborhood deck was full to overflowing when I walked past it just before sunset, but there was plenty of viewing space available at home.

I'll be trying to do a little more blogging next month, as there are plans by several members of my Minnesota family to visit us here then.  I do like to use this space to record those kinds of events, so consider this a first reminder to check this space in August.

Kal-Haven Trail State Park

Getting away for a few days for a bike trip is more difficult than it used to be.  It's not good to give up doing something like that that though, and the group that I usually do those rides with has been pretty flexible.  This year we broke up our bike trip into two one-day trips, the first one on the White Pine Trail, reported here, and we did our second one yesterday on the Kal-Haven Trail.  The Kal-Haven trail is a 34.4 mile rail to trail, paved primarily with crushed limestone.  34.4 miles is outside of the comfort zone of all three of us, so we shortened the ride by starting in Gobles, a small town about 12 miles west of Kalamazoo.  (The trail is imaginatively named, running as it does from Kalamazoo to South Haven.)  We parked G's truck at Gobles, unloaded our bicycles, and headed west.

The first town west of Gobles is Bloomingdale, where a railroad museum is located next to the trail.  Open weekends only.  It's also the site of one of the very few "facilities" along the trail.  Featured below.... we decided that we didn't need to declare our gender preference, and used them both.

The surface of the trail was described as crushed limestone on its website, so I rode my Bianchi Advantage, also known as my winter bike.  It is shod with German CountryGrip rubber, 28's, and has a squishy front fork.  I expected a gravel like trail surface (as I recall, that is what the Gandy Dancer Trail had), but the trail was best described as being hard packed dirt, what Michiganders refer to as two-track.  It was an extremely rideable surface, though I wouldn't have been quite as confident on my road bike.  There were a few sandy spots, usually near road crossings and bridges.

It's an old enough conversion from rail to trail that the woods surrounding the old rail bed has regrown, and we rode through what is primarily a forest.  There were several semi-swampy areas, but it's been a dry-ish year here, and there wasn't much water.  There were a number of cool old bridges, however.

We chose to ride east to west for a couple of reasons.  First, by heading towards the big lake the elevation (net) drops a few hundred feet over the 22 miles that we rode, though there were some uphills, especially near South Haven.  Secondly, there's an ice cream shop in South Haven (Sherman's) that has a reputation for excellent ice cream, and that seemed like a good end point for the ride.

This covered bridge was near the end of our ride, and I'm sure it's fairly new.  As are the benches along the way.  The weather was mostly favorable for our ride -- it was cooler and less humid than it has been here lately, and we enjoyed dappled sunshine through the trees for most of the ride.  We did have a headwind, but the tree cover minimized it -- so it was only noticeable crossing a few open fields.  We all decided that downhill with a slight headwind was a good choice under the circumstances.  As we neared South Haven we could see storm clouds gathering to the southwest, including some cloud tails hanging from the edges -- waterspouts, perhaps.  The rain held off until just before the South Haven trail head, when we did get caught briefly in a shower.  There was a shelter at the trail head, and we waited out the rain before heading off  to grab a bite to eat, meet our ride (L's significant other picked up G's truck with the bike rack and brought it to us, thus preventing a 44 mile bike ride, instead of 22 .....) and of course, Sherman's ice cream.  (I had a single dip strawberry cheesecake in a sugar cone.)  We toasted our birthdays -- over the course of the next week or so we'll accumulate a combined total of 206 years.  It was a good ride.

The Long Year

It finally occurred to me this morning that a more fitting title for yesterday's post would have been "Re-creating Memories" --  and it was a day well spent.  In the morning the three of us (Totally  Jammin', the College Girl and I) took a walk over to Tunnel Park, (When you walk, I'll walk with you) and came back home up the beach.  OSLO joined us during the afternoon, and after supper we walked back down the beach, up the sand dune and up the stairs.  (A woman at the top of the stairs high fived me for having made it up the stairs.  In fairness to her, I had just declared myself to be the oldest woman to have ever done that climb.)  We visited the "Parthenon" and my three companions recreated the traditional run down the dune.  I wasn't sure if I'd gotten a good photo of the actual run, so the three of them posed at the top of the dune for another photo, just in case.  There was laughter.  The College Girl told the story of the running joke she had with her Uncle Jim.  She apparently had taken to using the word "surely" on a regular basis, and he'd taken to responding with "Don't call me Shirley."  (When you laugh, I'll laugh with you.) Before they packed up we sat on the deck and told more stories and read the rest of Kelsey's poem.  I assured my little family that I had a plan for today -- a bike ride -- and that I'd be fine.  Of course this morning I woke to thunder and there's rain and lightening now.  So instead of biking I'm writing this post describing the photos from yesterday, day number 365 -- the traditional length of a year.  Today is day number 366 because of that leap day in February.  It's not looking good for outdoor activities today, but it seems to me that yesterday will suffice as a pretty decent day of remembrance for that guy who left too soon.

52 Weeks

I have pictures to share from today.

Bicycles and Brisket

Bike rides usually look like this for me -- this one was north along Lakeshore to my usual destination, the PSPS.  It's a pretty peaceful route, and I like it a lot.

I haven't been biking much this year.  There was one ride last week that rose to the level of blog worthy, though.  This little culvert along Wicked Creek, on the White Pine Trail provided a light at the end of the tunnel photo.  We rode from Sand Lake south to Rockford one morning -- and by "we" I mean my morning walking group occasionally known as Charlie's Angels.

A fair stretch of the White Pine Trail, a rail to trail, parallels the Rogue River, and at Rockford there are several decent places to eat overlooking this dam.

After lunch we continued south to Grand Rapids, where we'd dropped a car -- the significance of that being that we rode just the one direction.  It was (by design) the direction where the elevation dropped over that distance -- and with a light wind, it was a pretty effortless ride.

Our Fourth of July traditions here survived this past year mostly intact.  Higher water levels moved us down to the association beach for fireworks viewing, but that was a minor detail.  My Michigan family showed up in full force and spent the long weekend with us, and brisket was consumed once again.  (I'm getting a little tired of brisket....)  A few new photos, a few new good memories.