It’s New Year’s Day, so our North Country Trail buddies probably stomped the park. The state park next to the Straits of Mackinac, that is. We are NOT in the Great White North this weekend. I think I am still suffering PTSD from last year’s New Year’s trip up there. Although we had fun on that trip, we didn’t do a lot of hiking and we didn’t stomp the park. It was a business trip, so to speak, to wish our family’s long time friend Otto godspeed into the next world. The driving? Awful! Snow and ice and wind and horrible visibility. Beam me up! Please? And beam me back down too.

This has been a particularly slodgy holiday week here on the Planet Ann Arbor. After an absolutely gorgeous, sunny, unseasonably warm xmas day, the sun has deigned to make another appearance. As we have also had very little precipitation, it is fugly around here. I have mixed feelings about the lack of precipitation but we’ll go there another day.

So [thumbs nose at LSSU banned words thingy] yesterday I couldda pushed for a hike somewhere but I knew that the GG would want to walk downtown for New Year’s Eve (and so did I) so, wanting to conserve energy for walking downtown, I didn’t push for a daylight hike somewhere. Today we *had* to get out. We stomped Park Lyndon, locale of Lake Genevieve and a kame (google it if you dare) and hospitable(?) to The Great Lake State’s only poisonous snake, the Massasauga Rattler, although we certainly didn’t see any snakes today. It was too cold and actually the trails were very icy. Since there is a LOT of up and down (which is one reason I like to hike there) I was glad I had my hiking pole but also wishing I had my damn YakTrax.

We were the ONLY people at Park Lyndon today. I posted a photo to Instagram and found that a guy posted photos there yesterday. He and I are the only ones? This is a beautiful park. Anyway, we got back to the Frog Hopper and slowly made our way back to the Planet Ann Arbor with very light snow falling the entire time. We encountered a distillery along the way but even though it was open, we did not stop. I googled and they distill vodka, not our fave although bacon vodka might be worth a try.

Speaking of ONLY people, I am… Uh, where was I going with this? Which room am I in? Why am I in here? Oh yeah. I spent most of the afternoon reading my current book Station Eleven. I was initially reluctant to download this book although other folks in the fam were reading it and a paper copy of it is hanging around somewhere. It’s a kind of a sci-fi dystopian book and I was thinking that I had left the sci-fi genre behind long ago. Then I heard somebody on NPR interviewing the author and they were talking about how it took place largely in my own beloved Great Lake State, the state that I know like the back of my hand [snort]. I had to force myself to put the book down in order to get dinner going tonight. I CRIED when the guy who’d been living alone in his family’s remote yooperland cabin (I mean ALONE) walked outta the yooperland and across the Mackinac Bridge a few years before the center section of the bridge disintegrated and dropped into the Straits of Mackinac. Jeebus. That bridge is a defining factor in my life.

Happy New Year to all of my nine Reglear Nucular Taggers and anyone else who may have stumbled upon my humble little corner of the world wide web. I love you all.

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