Autumn leaves.

You could take the blog entry title, "Autumn leaves," in a couple of ways.  It's a pretty season of the year and the scenery changes every day, with lots of colorful leaves all over every inch, pretty much.

A half mile of new path along 160th, nothing out there but blueberry fields and woods.  

More blueberry fields.

Tunnel Park.

Across the street from Tunnel Park. Autumn leaves, part two, is the fact that winter is knocking on the door and autumn is leaving fairly quickly.  Accumulating snow is in the forecast for today, and it looks like the forecast is right for a change.

And of course, today is Halloween, the very last day in October.  Again.  I got a text from the girl, who loves Halloween but has to work today until 8 pm.  Happily, they're allowed to wear Halloween costumes to work today, as long as they're work appropriate.  She sent me this photo of what she's wearing for a costume today --

Wednesday  Addams, from the Addams family.  Those are bat wing hair clips.  I hope she has fun.  Later on  I plan to go to one of our neighbors to watch a movie with friends, and I am hoping that it's not a horror film.  I really do hate those.  I doubt we'll have any trick or treaters here tonight, since it's particularly cold, windy, rainy and just downright nasty, but the movie isn't until 8, when trick or treating is theoretically over.  Since tomorrow is November 1, and I've committed to blogging every day for that month again,  you may well hear how both the trick or treating and the movie went.  Watch this space.  Happy Halloween.

Sunday walk along the beach.

OSLO and TJ were curious to see the extent of our local neighborhood beach erosion.  It's fortunately not as dramatic as some of the photos shown on the news, but it's still pretty interesting.  Here's a few pictures from the walk we took from here to Tunnel Park this afternoon. (The girl had to work today.)

This is at the bottom of the association access stairs nearest us.

We were pretty amazed at the sand cliffs at this point, about half way to Tunnel Park.

 We were inside the Tunnel Park fences when I took these.  The one with TJ shows about the tallest drop off we saw.  It was very close to the stairs that go to the top of the dune.

The stairs to the "Parthenon" are intact, and probably safe for quite a while.

I need to practice taking videos, obviously.  Here's my failed attempt at a video at the base of the tunnel at Tunnel Park.  Having TJ along was really nice, since otherwise I'm not sure I would have been able to make the scramble up the drop off.  November is coming, and it's a long month, so I hope to get a couple of better videos of the "no beach" at Tunnel Park eventually.

It's hard to be this bad at something, but I hope to improve as time marches on.

More Lake Stuff.

Here are a few more photos of the lake today.  It's much, much calmer today.

The traffic on the lake today was mostly barges.  This one has equipment to put in a seawall, an earlier one had big boulders on it.  Both headed north -- the area north of Tunnel Park is in bad shape, I have heard, as is the area north of Spring Lake.

This is how much foredune we have at this point -- the seawall is the other side of the bench, but I'm not sure how far.  I'm going to look for some more old photos for comparison, but here's one that is from a similar angle..

This one was taken two years ago --  November 2017.

My granddaughter wanted a photo of the stairs to the top of the dune at Tunnel Park.  I walked through the tunnel near the end of my (very cold) bike ride today, but I couldn't see the stairs from there.  The drop off is steeper than it looks.  And that's not much beach.

It's going to require a walk down the beach to get the picture she asked for -- if it stays calm enough I might try that tomorrow. 

High water, high winds, beach erosion

It's been a tough month along our shoreline with lots of erosion of the dunes.  Many people are much worse off than we are -- I don't think we're back to the sea wall yet, though I can't get down there to check.  And we have a sea wall.  Still, we remind each other that it's out of our hands, and Mother Nature bats last, and all of that.  This morning's walk included a trip to the end of the tunnel in Tunnel Park to check on the conditions there.  Not much left.

More later, most likely.

Outside in October taking random photos.

Today was the kind of brisk, sunny, lovely fall day that I am talking about when I claim that fall is my favorite season.  If my memory was better I'd remember all the cold, gusty, blustery days that make up most of this season.  Like GZ, I have a bicycling milestone in mind that I'd like to check off before the season ends, so I have dug out my cold weather gear -- languishing in the bottom of baskets since April, or maybe May.  Our cold, wet Spring meant late planting here and there's still a lot of corn standing in fields unharvested and still not dried down enough to harvest.  Picture taken from my bike today while I was out chasing that milestone. 

I've taken a couple of short walks on the beach this week.  Those old jetties have been buried under the foredune for close to 20 years.  It makes me sad.

Only one set of footprints, and they're mine.  Maybe that's why I like fall?

Bench.

Another "light at the end of the tunnel" photo.  Tunnel Park, of course, a couple of days ago.  Just walking around outside with my camera again.

One more from the neighborhood, just after sunset.  Zombie deer perhaps.  Creepy how they just stand there and stare.

That's all for now.

Blustery

Over the past weekend we had two days of 30 to 40 mile per hour winds here on the lake shore.  Going outside with my camera is pretty much how I decide what to blog about, and this was a very short trip -- these were taken from my deck on Sunday. 

So while I am hating the wind because of the shore line erosion, these people probably had a very different perspective.  There's a lesson there, I guess.  

October Rail to Trail bike ride -- a Time Line

Timing was an issue -- in so many ways.  The original plan was to do this ride on Monday -- which by Sunday night we knew was going to be a windy day.  And a head-windy day, at that.  So we moved plans around and re-scheduled for Wednesday.  For us -- two accountants and a math major -- estimating  how long it takes to bike 16 plus miles should be fairly easy, and I think we all knew that this would be an all day event.  We (my usual two adventurous friends plus me) met outside the garage about 9:30 yesterday morning to load up the 3 bikes.  The plan was to use two cars and to drop one vehicle with an empty bike rack in South Haven at the trailhead for the Kal-Haven rail to trail linear park.  The second car would carry the bikes to the beginning point of our ride.  (I need a diagram to keep the details of the "spot a car" technique straight.)  LH has a really nice bike rack that holds up to four bikes, but it took a while to get everything loaded on it and it was 10:30 ish when we pulled out of the driveway.  The trip to the South Haven trailhead took a bit over an hour where we dropped GG's truck with the empty bike rack, then LH drove the 3 of us and our bikes east to Bloomingdale, a (very) small town along the trail, to begin the ride back to South Haven.

We were ruthlessly efficient in the unloading process, and were on the trail by noon.  The trail is paved at the trailhead in Bloomingdale, but it's mostly hard packed dirt with some gravel and crushed concrete here and there.  This is the second time we've ridden this trail, the first time was 3 years ago in July.  Fall colors added an extra element but we rode the same section in the same direction.  East to west is still downhill (net) going towards the big lake, and we had a slight tailwind now and then.

Lots of leaves and a few bridges here and there.  Shaded and cool, with only a handful of other people using the trail for most of the trip.

The obligatory photos to prove that we were all there.

This is a pretty good representation of what it was like.  Note that it wasn't all downhill--

Our trail map showed a picnic table at about 9 miles into the ride -- it existed, but the town of Lacota only barely does.  We stopped for a snack and a sit down before continuing on.

(Note the bench to the left of the bridge.)  This covered bridge is less than a mile from the end of the trail, and is a high point of the ride.  It's very cool, but not original.

This was one of the few places where we saw vivid colors -- this was taken from inside the bridge.  The remainder of the trail was along the river, and near the end the trail dipped close enough to the river to be half covered in water.  The benefit of having done this section before was that we knew that the very last bit of trail involved a fairly long uphill into the parking lot where we'd left GG's truck.  The hill seemed less difficult this time,  though still long.  Not as steep as I remember it, though --  So... 16+ miles, with almost exactly two hours of wheel turning time.  Trail surface makes a big difference. Plus time for snacks and picture taking, it was well after 2:30 by the time we loaded up the bikes on GG's truck.  Part of these bike trips is pretty much always having lunch somewhere after we're done.  We drove the fully loaded truck into downtown South Haven only to find the planned lunch spot had closed for the season.  Fortunately there was a brew pub more or less across the street, and around 3:30 I texted JB that we'd just ordered lunch and it would be a while before we got back.  Lunch consumed, we piled into the truck for the trip back to Bloomingdale to pick up LH's car before heading home.  Hilly, picturesque, lots of blueberry fields turning red, asparagus fields gone to seed and orchards of one sort or another.  And lakes.  Typical southwest Michigan, but very pretty in the fall.  Home around 6:30 to unload and sort out all the bikes and equipment.  So the answer to how long it takes to ride 16 miles?  About 9 hours.  Totally worth it.

Just wanted to share these.

These were taken on an evening walk in the neighborhood by LH.

A Single Image

One photo, at least, is required per blog post.  The weather's been cool and rainy here -- not a surprise in October, for sure.  Water levels normally start going down around this time of year, but they seem to still be rising.  I haven't seen water over this path before today --

Taken along Ottawa Beach Road across the street from the marina.  I used the road to get around this -- I just cleaned my bike yesterday. 

(Not So) Old Siblings Photos

"Only photos and good memories remain," he said.  Old photos help me with the memory part of that and old photos have been pretty common on the blogs over the years.  Transferring them from one place to another is a challenge sometimes though.  Before serious blogging begins in November, this is a practice run at pulling some old photos off of Google Photos and doing a little photo editing before putting them here.  I wanted to use some photos with both Andy and Jim in them.  I remember all of the moments when these were taken -- maybe, or probably, because I have the pictures.  

The top of the dune at Tunnel Park in 2008.

Andy's back yard in 2010.

Emily's wedding reception in 2014.