Evening Treat

The kids have been out of town, spending some summer vacation time with relatives. The wife and I have been acting like a couple of old empty nesters. She's been spending her days on cleaning/gardening/college and I've been at work. This week has been one of those rare oppressively hot weeks in Northern Michigan, too hot to have much energy left at the end of a busy day. We settled into the honey I'm home, dinner for two, small talk, watch the Tigers routine. We thought we should break the rut by going out for a night walk before we reunited with our brood. For a lot of obvious reasons, being in the woods at night with kids can be an extra challenge.

Yesterday was a slow day at work so I cut out a couple hours early, came home for a shower and hopped in the car with my better half. We headed up to Empire and had dinner here. I don't know if I would go as far as to call them world famous, but they have some tasty burgers. Then we spent a couple hours visiting with my parents before we headed out to the Treat Farm Trail to watch the sunset. The Treat trail is a wide half mile path that winds through the dense forest to the site of an old farm. The trail continues through a field and back into the woods where it climbs to one of the best panoramic views in the area. Let me pause the story for a minute and tell you that we have had an increase in reported bear activity in the area. Nothing scary, just a bear in a tree or digging through garbage, and doing general bear things. There are also whispers of cougars in the area. Of course, I'm not talking about a 50 year old woman in a cocktail dress who wants help with her yardwork. As we walked through the woods, we talked about bears and cougars. Kids make enough noise in the woods to announce their presence to every animal for miles around. We rarely come across anything bigger than turkeys when we go out with them. Moving quietly through the woods at night must improve your odds of seeing wildlife, although a scary encounter is still pretty unlikely, it never hurts to have a plan. We made our way along the path, trying to make it to the top before the sun went down at 9:24. We decided to take the long trail around, the direct route is a challenging climb and although we've gone that way many times (even with kids) we didn't want to reach the summit drenched in sweat. The long way followed the base of the bluff in a gradual climb. At one point, the path was directly parallel to a steep outcropping. I've been told this is prime mountain lion pouncing territory. I kept a sharp watch. After we cleared the steep ridge, we passed through the biggest blackberry patch I have ever seen. I made the decision then to avoid this route when we returned to the car. No sense in tempting fate. After we cleared the berry patch, the view of the approaching sunset kept our attention and we plodded to the top of the hill. Of course, the sunset and view were perfect and well worth the climb. It reminded us how lucky we are to be healthy enough to walk to a place like this. Beautiful view, great company, I am a lucky man.

After the sunset, our mission was to make it back through the woods to the car before any scary monsters could get us. Except for two porcupines, a snorting buck and a galaxy of fireflies, we didn't see anything and made it to the car un mauled.