WALKIN', WRITIN', WIT & WHIMSY

This post is about a walk taken on May 30th. It’s my usual meander when visiting Dearborn, i.e. a trip that always begins at Ford Field Park, then finds me trekking along the Rouge Gateway Trail, stopping at the Fair Lane Estate, continuing along a trail parallel to Ford Lake and eventually ending up at the Environmental Interpretive Center.

Sometimes there is lots to see; sometimes not so much. This leg of the trek was a not-so-much-to-see day.

On that gorgeous day, wedged in between the beginning and end of this extra-long excursion was the Ford Estate visit, where I photographed lots of blooms and just before I reached my car, I got to peek at a 1977 Clenet automobile which looked like a vintage roadster. If you missed that walk, you can find it here.

Now returning to the before-and-after portion of that walk.

To get some extra steps in, I always park at Ford Field Park …

… then I walk over to the duck pond to check for feathered friend photo ops – there were none today as the pond was devoid of ducks and unbelievably, with all those big rocks, there were no sunbathing turtles.

I pass this bridge that crosses a portion of the Rouge River …

… there’s not much to see, but on the left side, the water is very peaceful …

… while on the right side, the water is raging, like rapids.

Next is a stroll through the neighborhood and in the Summer, this homeowner has a front yard, sans grass, just a lot of perennials, a bird bath and bird feeder.

I must pass the Dearborn Historical Museum – there’s not much to see there. I always pause at their herb garden and I noted the Thyme plant, missing its celebrated cohorts, a photo I shared with you in a recent Wordless Wednesday post.

The trailhead to the Rouge Gateway Trail is a wooden boardwalk and elevated wooden platform behind the former Andiamo’s Italian restaurant. After the restaurant closed, it’s being repurposed into Boardwalk Marketplace, still mostly a work in progress. It’s a great view of another portion of the Rouge River.

On this day, my eyes honed in on the board that was sticking up … it is one of many boards along the boardwalk that have warped, or become damaged and …

… stick up, not only along the edge either. “Hmm” I mused “well, that’s a tort just waiting to happen!” I was a legal secretary for almost 45 years, so old habits like using this phrase never go away. I concede most people would have used the word “accident” instead.

It was a tad raggedy-looking on the actual asphalt pathway – “stay in the middle” I told myself. That way I’d avoid ticks that like to await a passerby from the tip-top of high grass. It looked like “No-Mow May” gone wild.

Surprisingly, there were no wildflowers along the woodsy part of the Rouge Gateway trail and thankfully NO snakes, like the last time I was here.

By the time I reached the Ford Estate, I’d already walked 1.4 miles.

As mentioned above, this post is about after I left the Fair Lane estate.

Ater leaving Clara Ford’s Rose Garden, I headed straight down Jensen’s Meadow …

… toward Ford Lake. I planned to hike along the Lakeside Trail, a path that admittedly is not the most-exciting trek I’ve ever taken, but at least I did not zig when I should have zagged and gotten lost like I did two weeks later.

Ford Lake was looking beautiful that morning, with stunning reflections. There are several trails you can take. I need to expand my horizons and take the trail on the opposite side sometime, instead of just sticking to the Lakeside Trail.

This is a clever idea which was installed by the University of Michigan last year in conjunction with the Environmental Interpretive Center. Stand in this exact place to capture the changing seasons. I did that at Council Point Park one year and used it as a featured image in a post.

Just as the reflections on Ford Lake made for a picturesque photo, so did the sun-dappled woods. I swiveled my head over to the Lake and saw no ducks, herons – not even any turtles sunning, so I took this shot and continued on my way.

This part of the trail is short – you can just continue on the trail after walking through this open space, or you can veer off to the right. I was feeling adventurous, so why not take a right?

I channeled my inner “Dora the Explorer” and off I went.

Well, I’d never strayed this way before. There are several places in and around the wooded areas that are just rubble, lots of rocks and boulders which might have been a nice part of the landscape at one time when it was part of Clara Ford’s former Rose Garden and Summer House …

… but no longer. It is incredulous to me that so much effort is being done restoring the mansion and other buildings on the grounds, yet this area languishes in ruins. I’d estimate it is only a half-mile from the mansion and is part of the estate grounds.

Of course, I was angry at myself for traipsing into these weeds with tall grass climbing almost to my knees and likely tick-laden. Ugh!

This pond, like the other larger ones on the estate grounds, is overgrown and murky looking. This is not green pond scum – it is duckweed dotted with water lily leaves.

There was not much to see here, not even a frog on a lily pad, so I decided to return to the trail – maybe I could scare up a critter or two – maybe the Wild Turkeys would be strutting around today?

The trees made a nice canopy over the trail, with dabs of dappled sunshine on the path ahead.

Well, here we go again – here’s a trip-and-fall waiting to happen!

The joy of walking in the woods came to an abrupt end with all these exposed tree roots. I know it was really problematic in 2024, but last year they put down a lot of mulch which remedied the problem, but the mulch had evidently disintegrated since my last visit and this is what was left.

Another glance toward Ford Lake told me I was not missing out on any creatures, feathered or otherwise. I decided the tree branches and/or other woody protrusions in Ford Lake looked similar to the roots on the trail.

I rounded a bend, briefly in the sunlight again, where it would be easier to see the pesky roots, but that sunlight was short-lived. The below roots did not seem as bad and, with my long legs I could just step from one clear spot to the next, but still … sigh.

Along the trail, picking my way over tree roots was no fun – this is how it always was at Sterling State Park. They have removed the root-ridden pathways, paving over with asphalt, a project that took all of 2025. I’ll visit in the Fall as the White Pelicans migrate through.

Once again, I mused over legal terms like “trip-and-fall” or even “slip-and-fall” because as a legal secretary those terms indeed crossed my path (if you’ll pardon the pun), especially after I began working for my boss Ed Keelean, on August 2, 1993, exactly 33 years ago today.

I’ve done a wide range of legal secretarial work, some which I downright hated, but treading into the world of personal injury insurance defense work, now this was something I really enjoyed and I spent the most-rewarding years of my legal secretary career doing this work. I would have retired doing this type of law, but for the merger our Firm experienced in 2000. Yes, there were trip-and-falls, slip-and-falls and open-and-obvious cases too, the latter being “really, you should’ve been looking where you were going, or you wouldn’t have had that little mishap” …. even walking in the ‘hood these days presents one with pitfalls like potholes or uneven sidewalks. Or big dogs … we had a few dog bite cases too. 🙂

Well, you might want to wrap yourself in a bubble sometimes as there is so much to worry about these days.

As I compiled this post, I had already drafted 90% of it the day I took the walk. I HAD planned to write about these little aggravations in this leg of my walk. And, instead of writing this post, I SHOULD have been out on a trail, enjoying the hike, camera in hand, but instead, I was inside tap, tap, tapping away on the keyboard due to the extreme heat and poor air quality from the various wildfires burning. On the day I wrote this post, the Detroit area was #1 in the world for poor air quality.

And, also on my mind, as I grumbled about the lack of outings, was something way more important than heat, humidity and air quality … instead I was sad because Ed Keelean, whom I mentioned above, had passed away suddenly from a heart attack earlier in the week. So, coincidentally I had already planned for this post for August 2nd, but sadly it now will coincide with the day I began working for Ed, 33 years before … a little nod from me to Ed – rest in peace.

Now, I digressed bigtime … back to my walk.

Eyes focused on the ground and periodically glancing around for slithering snakes, I couldn’t help but notice a dark-colored blob up ahead. As I grew near, I could tell it was a turtle. Well, that was a first – I have never seen a turtle in the middle of the woods – this was not near the water.

Here is another shot of this Painted Turtle, a/k/a Painted Terrapin, which I also had in my featured image. It didn’t seem afraid of me. I pondered whether I should pick it up and take it back to Ford Lake. What if it couldn’t survive without water? I decided to leave it where it was.

While writing this post, my baby steps toward my year-end goal are probably as pitiful as those taken by this tiny terrapin, who likely took a long time to get where he was eventually planning to go.

Soon, I was back to a soft, mulched trail, the final leg in the woods and near the Environmental Interpretive Center. No Wild Turkeys that like to hang out near the area either, just the empty feeders.

There was nothing much to see. There are lots of flowers around the entrance to the Center, but it was too early for them, but I saw this Golden Alexander wildflower …

… and a bee hotel embedded in the Viburnum.

Not my most-exciting trail trek, but better than a stick in the eye as the saying goes. I’ll leave you with a thought which applies to my leathery friend and myself:

I will be joining Terri’s Flower Hour and Pepper’s #One Step at a Time later this week.