Tag Archives: Ann Arbor

Arcade Barbers

Posted on by
2
Arcade Barbers

Arcade Barbers

We are back in the Lou tonight, after a lovely visit with Anne’s family over the Christmas holiday. The drive home was mostly nice, except for the stretch on US-24, between Toledo and Fort Wayne. This bit of road is the latest innovation in our continual optimization of our commute to Michigan. It is a beautiful road, with brand new pavement and because it is still relatively undiscovered, low traffic. Compared with its predecessor, I-94, it is a dream or so it would seem. Maybe it is more of a nightmare? At least for us, this road has been a bit of a Jonah. We have only been using this route for a couple of years, but in that time, we’ve nearly run off the road on one occasion and been snarled in traffic for over an hour in another one. Today, US-24 offered us lake effect snow. The right lane was pretty clear and we saw multiple plows out working, but stretches of the passing lane had about an inch of snow on it. We saw one car that had spun-out and gotten turned around in the ditch. Anne called 911, but it had already been reported. She still felt good about reporting it. Once we got to Fort Wayne, the snow disappeared and it was clear sailing all the way home. It was 52 °F when we got back here. It will be good to sleep in our own bed tonight.

Mute Swans in Dazzling Sunlight

Posted on by
Reply
Mute Swans in Dazzling Sunlight

Mute Swans in Dazzling Sunlight

Anne and I went for a walk today in Gallup Park. The sun finally out and we found fresh signs of construction at the park. It looks like a lot of work went into making new bicycle paths, with bridges over the river. The bike path now runs along both banks of the Huron River and crosses the river twice to make a loop. There is also a much longer trail called border-to-border that runs along the railroad tracks on the south side of the river. We hiked this path too, but never did find the end of it. It would be nice to explore these paths on a bike and really get around them. On the river, we saw buffleheads and swans, both Trumpeter and Mute. Afterwards, we headed downtown to the Grizzly for soup and sandwiches, with cider. We also had Crème Brule for dessert. Yum!

The Rock

Posted on by
2
The Rock

The Rock

Ann Arbor’s most famous glacial erratic is “the rock” that sits at the corner of Washtenaw and Hill. This chunk of Canadian limestone was originally deposited by glaciers in a gravel pit off of Pontiac Trail. It was moved to Ann Arbor by then city parks superintendent Eli Gallup in 1932 to become a memorial honoring George Washington on his 200th birthday. Buried in the foundation of the rock is a box describing its history. Originally the rock was painted grey and had a copper plaque in tribute to President Washington. There it sat unchanged until the 1950s when a group of Michigan State hooligans adorned this stone with the letters, “M. S. U.” This graffiti was soon covered up and a tradition was born. In subsequent years it has been painted hundreds, if not thousands of times. A few years ago, one enterprising student took a core sample of the paint and found it to be an inch and a half thick on its top side and five inches on the bottom. My all-time favorite paint scheme occurred at the time that NASA’s Skylab station was falling back to earth. The rock was simply painted silver, with the NASA logo. It looked like molten aluminum.