Weekend Walks

Sunday: Hudson Mills Park

This weekend we went to some of our favorite walking spots. This morning, we walked around Hudson Mills park using various new devices. At right you can see our track as created by Len's iPhone. The google map of the park has every feature: the turnaround at the end of the parking lot, the bridge. I'm not sure if you can see the various channels of the Huron River that parallel the walking trail.

Besides the iPhone, we were trying out my new camera, which just replaced one that wore out from so much use I guess. It's also very small so I can carry it around and take pictures of what I eat or whatever interests me.

The fall colors will be brighter in a couple of weeks -- in town some of the maples are already red, but here they are still quite deep green with a few early changers. Anyway I've taken photos of the same trees several years in a row, so this time I did something else.

We started out at a place where the path goes over a series of bridges between islands in the river. Someone had built a wood structure in an open area near the woods. Further on, in one of the low-lying marshy areas, a whole cluster of trees had fallen down, crossing the shallow water and upending a large emmeshed root structure about 20 feet high.

Wood Structure

Fallen trees across the water

Upended tree roots

Saturday: Matthaei Botanical Gardens

The botanical gardens are another good place to walk -- and we've tested most new cameras here for years and years. We started inside the greenhouse, and continued outdoors, through the woods beside the creek. Like the river, it's rather full for this time of year as it's been raining often.

A cycad in the greenhouse

From inside a sculpture that has recently been constructed in the garden

I'm convinced that if you took refuge inside this sculpture, you would be safe from alien abduction. Better than a tin-foil hat, I think. Though from a distance I thought it was a reuse for old kettledrums.