Escape from Black Friday 2018 - Follow That Floof!

we're coming, floof!

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:D / >
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kayak smiley not really appropriate but haven't used in so long!

Another Black Friday succesfully escaped. In Michigan this time! We got an absolutely beautiful Friday morning after a cold and gray but great Thanksgiving with the Michigan clan and also some old friends of the family. My sister Karen had come up from Texas and had found this park built around a complex of ponds earlier in her visit. The ponds began with one that was a local effort and expanded to 5 as part of the Depression-era Civil Works Administration. The ponds, which were terraced and interconnected to each other and the creeks that supplied them, were used to raise fish through the 1960's. My uncle Bill referred to the area as "The Rearing Ponds"; my dad, who's been visiting the area since he was a kid (he and my aunt Kathy used to spend their summers with grandparents who lived nearby, that's where the Michigan connection comes in) actually didn't know about it, so this was a fun discovery.

There weren't a lot of people here on Friday, but it must be busy in the summertime. Fish are not officially being grown here anymore but their descendants are still living here and there are brightly-painted little fishing piers all over.

This wasn't the most ambitious Escape from Black Friday ever, there was an aunt and uncle from Detroit who were arriving at noon and we didn't get a particularly early start, but the trails around the ponds made for a very scenic short ramble for me, Dad, sister Karen, Aunt Lovi, family friend Mike B. (very good photographer who kindly loaned me an SD card when I discovered that the one I'd grabbed as I dashed out the door heading for work with my bag on Wednesday morning was a really old one with my digital picture frame slide-show, so had very little room on it) and of course Belle the dog, who was very happy to be included. My dad had originally suggested a 2-part walk, starting here and then continuing on the fairly new Jonesville rail trail, but there was a lot more here than he'd imagined from my sister's description and we decided to leave the rail trail for another walk.

A couple of notes, then it's all pictures, click on one to get to a slideshow view:

1. The rustic bridge that appears to be made out of wood is actually made out of concrete. I don't know for sure but I was wondering if it was by the same folks who built the charming bridges and benches in McCourtie Park in Somerset Center, which I got to visit last summer. I never shared my photos from there, maybe I'll go back and take a look at them one of these weeks when I'm being too boring to post. In the meantime, McCourtie Park is neat enough to have an entry in the Atlas Obscura!

2. In the picture where Mike is taking a picture of something on the ground - that something is a butterfly (or maybe a colorful moth). Not something you expect to see in Michigan in November, but we saw it fly by and land beside the road and Mike got some good pictures of it. Have to ask him if I can share one! 

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Aunt Lovey, family friend Mike, my dad Bob, my sister Karen, and of course once again featuring my folks' dog Belle as da Floof.