In the Midwest, Mother’s Day is often associated with flowers–not because of the bouquets given to Mom to honor her on a special day, but because Mother’s Day is viewed in these parts as the traditional weekend to fill out your garden beds. If you wait until Mother’s Day to plant flowers, the folk wisdom goes, you’ll avoid the risk of your plants dying from an unseasonably late frost.
As is so often the case, this time-honored rule of thumb reflects a significant kernel of truth: May is a wonderful time to grow things in central Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest. Russell was in town for a visit this weekend, and he remarked on how green everything looks around here, with most of the trees fully leafed out, the grass growing like crazy, and flowers and flowering shrubs everywhere you look. As the picture above shows, in this season Ohio is a study in green. The air, freshened with recent rains and the fragrance of growing things, smells good, too.
Yesterday we visited the Dawes Arboretum, located on the outskirts of Newark, Ohio, about 30 miles east of Columbus. It was an overcast morning, but we hoped the weather would cooperate in allowing us to get in some good hiking, including tackling the Timber Run and Gorge Overlook trails. Alas, Mother Nature had a different idea.
The Dawes Arboretum occupies a big plot of land that covers familiar Ohio landscapes, from deep woods to rolling meadows and ponds–with some rarer territory, like a cypress swamp, thrown in. The grounds feature an extensive variety of plant life, all of which was blooming on a damp spring day. After paying our senior discount fee ($8.00, rather than the standard $10.00), we took the advice of the Arboretum employee at the entrance gate and did a drive around the grounds on the north and south loop roadways. Our first stop was the hedge letters, shown above, which spell out “Dawes Arboretum.” We climbed a viewing tower to get a better look and check for misspellings, but the hedge designers aced the test.
Our next stop was Dawes Lake, located next to the hedge letters. It’s really more of a big pond, with a mowed trail around the circumference. We took a nice stroll around the edge of the lake, encountering some geese and a bullfrog in full throat, when the sprinkles began. With the perversity that you often encounter with Ohio spring weather, the rain began to fall in earnest when we were precisely halfway around the lake, at the maximum distance from our car. By the time we got back to the Lincoln the rain was pelting down at a heavy rate and we were pretty well soaked.
The rain didn’t stop us from completing our auto tour, of course, and we saw some pretty scenes with some of the blooming plants and wildflowers that were drinking in the rainfall. Regrettably, however, the intensity of the rain increased, and it was obvious that the Timber Run and Gorge Overlook trails, which run for several miles to the east of the main arboretum grounds, would have to wait until another day. The employee at the entrance gate had cautioned us that they would be muddy from prior rains, and the new downpour wouldn’t make the hike any easier.
Before we left, however, I did get a chance to take in the Bald-Cypress Swamp, shown below, which has an interesting, otherworldly appearance. I half expected to see Yoda hobbling out from behind one of the trees. Swamps and wetlands are not common in the modern Buckeye State, but Ohio originally had extensive wetlands, located primarily in the northwestern part of the state. The Bald-Cypress Swamp at the Dawes Arboretum gives you a glimpse of an Ohio scene that undoubtedly was very familiar to the indigenous people who once roamed the Ohio forests.
After taking in the swamp, with no break in the rain in the offing, we decided the better course was to head back to Columbus, dry out in the car, and stop in Granville for lunch. We’ll have to return to Dawes for the trails when conditions are drier and Mother Nature is in a better mood.
Here’s another example of just how weird the whole British royal family situation is: on Sunday, Buckingham Palace released the nice picture, above, of Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, and her kids to celebrate the British version of Mother’s Day. It’s apparently the first photo of the Princess of Wales that’s been released in a while; she had an announced medical procedure earlier this year and hasn’t been seen in public since. You’d think people would be happy to see her smiling with her children.
But “confusion” doesn’t begin to cover it. Apparently the British Isles have been awash in crazy rumors about Kate Middleton’s true status, and the bungled photoshopping has put the conspiracy theory mill into overdrive. You can read some of the nuttier speculation here. It’s like the time back in the ’60s when some people believed that Paul McCartney was killed in a car crash and replaced by a substitute, and analyzed Beatles album covers and song lyrics for “evidence.”
Is it possible to feel sorry for the British royal family–or at least some parts of it? It must be, because I do feel sorry for Kate Middleton and her family in this instance. Family photos are notoriously tough to take, and I’m certain that photoshopping them is routine these days; indeed, photoshopping is so ubiquitous that some cellphones advertise their immediate photoshop capabilities. Speaking as a technological incompetent, I’m impressed that Kate Middleton knows how to use photoshop–I don’t. But never has an evidently obvious photoshop caused such a commotion. If people scouring a family photo for photoshopping signs and then developing outlandish theories about the backstory is the price of royalty, is it really worth it?
Built in 1886, when west Texas must have been a pretty wild place indeed, the Presidio County Courthouse is one of the landmarks in Marfa. It is a beautiful, graceful structure built of native stone, and the bell tower can be seen for miles, thanks to the flat surrounding countryside. I regretted that the courthouse was closed, because I imagine the courtrooms are beautiful, too, and I would have liked to see them.
When we were walking around Marfa yesterday the wind was playing games with the passing cirrus clouds, shredding them into ever-finer wisps, like wood shavings overhead, until they vanished from sight. I liked the combination of the thin, curly clouds, the deep blue sky, the peach-colored courthouse, and the sparse green of the courthouse lawn.
Our second hike at Big Bend National Park was the Lost Mine Trail. Named for a legend of a lost mine supposedly discovered by the Spaniards somewhere in the Chisos Mountains, the trail is one of the most popular ones in the park. The trailhead is also located quite close to the Chisos Mountains Lodge and the Chisos Basin campground. If you want to be sure of getting a parking space, plan to arrive early.
The Lost Mine Trail is one of the oldest trails in the park. In fact, it’s even older than the national park itself. The trail was created by the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that gave young men the opportunity to get paying work building roads and trails. The CCC established the Lost Mine trail in the ’30s, and Big Bend did not become a national park until 1944.
The Lost Mine Trail heads up the side of Lost Mine Peak, taking the hiker upward through a series of switchbacks. You can tell it is an older trail, because logs and in some cases stones have been worked into the trail as you climb the hill, creating a staircase effect. It must have been backbreaking work for the young men of the CCC, who labored exclusively with hand tools and human muscle power. They did a darned good job, because the trail has held up very well and is easy to follow. But be forewarned: there are a lot of steps. After you tackle the Lost Mine Trail, you won’t need to hit the stairstepper for a while.
Eventually you reach the top of the peak, and here is where the trail really gets interesting. You can follow the spine of the mountain for hundreds of yards. If you look carefully at the photograph above, you”ll see tiny figures in the far distance, following the path from one rock outcropping to another. The trail takes you past desert foliage and stunted, twisted trees, often requiring you to scramble over sheer rocks.
As you move along the crest of the mountain, you get a panoramic view in every direction–including down. If you peer over some of the rocks making up the mountaintop you’ll see dizzying drops of hundreds of feet to another rocky ledge, and the valley floor still farther below. The Lost Mine Trail involves more than a thousand feet in elevation changes, and when you reach the top of Lost Mine Peak you can see for dozens of miles. The most distant locations have a characteristic blue shade, as seen in the photograph below and in other photographs taken from the top of the mountain.
On the day of our hike, it was cool and overcast as we started our hike, but we warmed up as we climbed, and eventually a big patch of blue sky emerged to the east while it remained cloud-covered to the west. It felt good when the sun broke through the cloud cover, and the sun’s brightness helped to illuminate the colors and sharpen some of the ruggedness of the rock formations on the mountaintop.
We continued to work our way west along the top of the Lost Mine Peak ridgeline, enjoying some spectacular views and some stunning rock formations. There weren’t any park rangers up there to tell you where to go and where not to go. Hikers were expected to behave appropriately and take due care–which is pretty refreshing when you think about it. You could go as close to the end as you dared, but we didn’t see anyone taking any stupid risks. To the contrary, our fellow hikers on the Lost Mine Trail seemed extremely respectful of the potential perils of the Lost Mine Peak.
We decided we would continue along the peak until we reached the end. We watched our footing and moved along deliberately, mindful of not getting too close to any of the edges. The views were incredible, and it was worth every step.
As we approached the end of the trail and the sun peeked through the cloud cover, the colors became more noticeable. I particularly liked the almost fluorescent green lichen growing on the side of one of the rock faces, as shown in the photograph below.
When we reached the end of the trail, we found some smooth rocks that provided some good natural seating. We plopped down, took a few swigs of water, and enjoyed an energy bar or two as we took some careful looks around at the magnificent western scenery, the craggy rock formations, the mountains in the distance, and the valley far below. If felt like we were sitting on top of the world.
One of the interesting things about the Lost Mine Peak is that the rocks making up the mountaintop have different colors. The predominant rock color was a ruddy red, but at the end of the trail the red was framed by an almost chalky white vein of rock. The red and white color made a nice contrast with the green of the desert plants in the valley and on a neighboring mountainside.
As we got up from our seats on the rocks on the top of Lost Mine Peak and headed back down the trail, we noticed the sunshine highlighting the pastel colors of the rocks on the neighboring peak to our right, as seen in the photograph below. We saw subtle yellows and greens, beiges and tans, as if the hues had been carefully mixed by a master painter on a colossal palette. It was an absolutely beautiful sight–one that happened to be just one of many on a really wonderful trail. I give the Lost Mine Trail very high marks indeed.
One our first afternoon in Big Bend National Park, we checked out the Santa Elena Canyon trail. It’s a popular and very memorable hike for a number of reasons.
The Santa Elena Canyon trail is literally at the end of the road. A short boardwalk leads you to a body of water that is part of the Rio Grande River. That’s the river you see in the photo below. The river winds through a steep canyon, and the trail takes you part of the way.
Photos really don’t adequately capture the scale of the rock formations you encounter at the Santa Elena Canyon trail. They are immense, stupendous, monumental sheer cliffs that rise abruptly out of the dry west Texas landscape and thrust directly upward until they seem to touch the sky.
The trail hugs the perimeter of the right side of the cliff, shown above. You cross a dry river bed, scramble up to the foot of the cliffside, then starts heading upward to a trail that follows the river. To the left of the river the rock escarpment towers over you and heads off into the distance, as shown in the photo below. Julianne said, aptly, that the rock formation looks as huge and forbidding at the Wall in Game of Thrones. That gives you a good sense of the scale of the rock formation.
Once you get on the trail, you follow some switchbacks up the cliffside. The trail then runs along the end of the cliffside, with some steep drops down to the river, as seen in the photo below. The trail isn’t incredibly wide, and don’t expect to find any protective fencing; Big Bend National Park isn’t that kind of place. If heights trouble you, this might not be the right trail. I’m not freaked out by heights, but I kept to the inside lane, just the same.
Eventually the trail reaches wider spots along the cliffside, and drops down to the river level. You’ll see some gigantic rocks that have fallen off the cliffside, as shown in the photo below. The rocks are huge and are almost geometric in shape, as if they’ve been mined. The plants you see in the photo below grow along the river and are about six feet tall.
The trail ends at a small beach, seen to the right of the photo below. The cliffside on the left shows layer after layer of different kinds of rock in different colors. On our hike, there was not a breath of wind, and the water’s surface was as smooth and reflective as glass.
I took the photo below at the end of the trail, looking back. The two people give you a sense of the height of the cliffs. At this point of the trail, it was absolutely silent, and even our fellow hikers weren’t chatting. The immensity and grandeur of the place just filled you with awe, and a desire to try to take in and remember the feeling of looking skyward at those cliffs towering above. A respectful quiet seemed appropriate for the moment.
When I woke up this morning, the skies over the lodge at Big Bend National Park were clear, but when I went for a morning walk a ground-hugging mist was pouring into the Chisos Mountains basin from the east. As I watched the mist slowly spilled forward, gradually covering the mountain peaks like chocolate sauce covering the vanilla ice cream in a hot fudge sundae.
The ranger who spoke to us yesterday noted that the Big Bend National Park has many different ecosystems and is full of surprises. The morning mist is just one of them.
We had a great day at Big Bend National Park today, with some challenging hikes to beautiful areas, a very interesting ranger’s lesson, and fine food cooked on a gas grill. The day was capped by a magnificent sunset, and then the stars came out. It was about as close to a perfect day as a human being can reasonably expect to get.
The typical sunrise in Marana is different from the typical sunrise in Columbus. Because Marana is located in the middle of the Sonoran desert, the sunrises are often cloudless–as this morning’s sunrise, shown above, demonstrates. As a result, there is no dramatic underlighting of thunderheads on the horizon that can make Midwestern sunrises so colorful. Instead, you see a warm glow above the Tortolita Mountains to the east that gets gradually brighter until suddenly the sun clears the mountaintops and you immediately need to don your sunglasses.
Sunrise is a good time to be out and about this time of year, when the midday temperatures are in the 90s and bright sunshine is forecast. It is a very quiet, peaceful time, too.
Richard and I took an early morning hike today, tackling the Upper Javelina trail. Morning is the preferred time for a hike on days where the temperature will reach the 90s, and the conditions today were perfect—about 70 degrees, sunshine, a nice breeze, and not much dust. The trail is a moderate hike, several miles in length, that takes you up and down some of the Tortolita foothills.
The Upper Javelina trail is a great one if you are a fan of the mighty Saguaro cactus. They grow to colossal size here, with some exceeding 20 feet in height, and they cover the mountains and valleys. They are amazing plants, and it is awesome to walk among them on a bright, clear morning.
During our visit to Vermilion we drove to a farm just south of Oberlin to let the little kids in our group romp around in a play area, check out some farm animals, take a hayride through a cornfield and some surrounding woods, and generally enjoy a northwestern Ohio farm experience.
The farm had grown a bumper crop of pumpkins that were carefully placed on flatbed trucks and waiting to be sold to visitors. The offerings included not only some colossal orange pumpkins, but also white and yellow pumpkins.
You could tell from the pleasing round shape of the pumpkins that the farm family had paid a lot of attention to their pumpkins. A successful crop of large pumpkins takes a lot of work and careful attention. They require plenty of water, you need to trim the vines so only one pumpkin grows on each vine to ensure maximum size, and you need to position the growing pumpkins to place each pumpkin bottom flat on the ground to achieve the round shape and avoid the “flat on one side” effect.
Round pumpkins aren’t essential if you are going to use them to bake delectable pumpkin pies, but the sturdy round shape sure helps if you’re planning on carving jack o’ lanterns.
We’re staying close to downtown Vermilion, and this morning I decided to walk down to the lakefront area, where I stood next to the iconic lighthouse to watch the sunrise. It was a cold, clear morning that gave a hint of the autumnal weather to come. The waters of Ohio’s great lake were calm, the clouds were banked against the far eastern horizon and began to glow as the sun started to rise, and a passing train sounded its whistle and rumbled through town. To the west, the moon hung low in the sky, casting a silvery light on the waters of Lake Erie.
During our all-too-brief visit to Door County, we made it a point to get out and walked around. Fortunately, there are plenty of trails and paths to follow in the areas around the waterfront. On one stroll through the woods near our hotel we ran across this gigantic boulder, painted green by moss and fungus and the sunlight diffused through the leafy canopy above. The scene seemed to have just about every shade of green you might find at the Sherwin-Williams paint shop.
Egg Harbor, that is. The sun sank majestically over the spit of land at one edge of the bay, a lone sailboat bobbed quietly at anchor, and the lake water lapped against the break wall as night fell in this pretty corner of the world.
Webner House 