Chikaming mountain bike trails honor their founder. Plus fall colors and jellyfish.
It was last year. A lover of birds and nature, Kirk Schrader was puttering around by the mountain bike trail that he’d conceived more than four years ago as a proposal to the Chikaming Township Park Board. Several former volunteers had come to ride, impressed by the progress since their last visit.
Among them, Pierre Crevier of Stevensville straddled his two-wheeled steed. His years of volunteer work on other trails meant that he knew the sweat and love that goes into these hard-packed ribbons of dirt.
“Hey Kirk,” Crevier called out. “Thanks for having a dream.”
Schrader would have turned 56 last Wednesday, a day when dozens of people came to ride the trail in his memory at Chikaming Township Park and Preserve in Harbert, Mich., three miles southwest of Warren Dunes. Schrader, who’d worked as cemetery sexton for the township, had recruited many of them to labor on the trail, now more than 6 miles and growing. Others hiked, led by his two adult sons, Nick and Alex, as they pushed Schrader’s mountain bike.
His wife, Janet Moore Schrader, and their sons had just unveiled the new name on the trailhead kiosk: Kirk Schrader Mountain Bike Trails.
Kirk died of cancer just before Thanksgiving last year, but his followers are carrying his dream forth. Chad Sperry has been leading volunteer work crews. Stay tuned for a possibility to help with trail building.
Janet says that, at first, Kirk had resisted the name change, saying it was volunteers who made the trail a reality. Last Wednesday, Janet gave awards to 10 volunteers who’d poured at least 50 hours into the trail thus far: Tony Dlouhy, Stefanie Brown, Rodney Summerscales, Tiffany Summerscales, Cory Schiller, Lanny Ross, Eric Nevalainen, Jack Kirkpatrick, Chad Sperry and Bruce Jones, plus service awards to J.V. Peacock and Pat Fisher for encouraging people to get outdoors.
Janet envisions that “Kirk’s Ride” will return each year around his birthday as a trail race.
This is one of 15 trails scattered across Michiana that keep mountain biking within easy reach, thanks to various volunteer groups and parks. The Chikaming park is north of U.S. 12 on Warren Woods Road, just east of Interstate 94 and 1.4 miles east of the Red Arrow Highway. The trail kiosk is in the parking lot.
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Fall colors strike the shore of an island on Hall Lake last week in Michigan's Yankee Springs Recreation Area.
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Fall colors
You don’t have to go far. You sure can, and right now you might find peak fall colors in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and near peak in northern parts of the Lower Peninsula.
But a two-hour drive took me to a friend’s lake cottage last week into a land of rolling terrain, plus a cluster of lakes and wetlands — water, where autumn strikes earliest and most richly. It was north of Kalamazoo and Battle Creek and south of the state’s 5,200-acre Yankee Springs Recreation Area, which boasts trails for hiking (30 miles), mountain biking (12 miles) and horse riding (10 miles). With bending and tree-lined roads, it felt like it was further north.
Of course, I did hike a bit of the North Country National Scenic Trail that runs from North Dakota to New York (nps.gov/noco), tracking across both of Michigan’s peninsulas. It eventually leads to a scenic stretch in the Huron-Manistee National Forest near Cadillac known for its oft-photographed “Little Mac” suspension foot bridge.
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Marked with blue blazes on trees, the North Country National Scenic Trail passes through Yankee Springs Recreation Area in Michigan.
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I picked up a wooded portion of the trail by the relatively small but scenic Hall Lake, which has parking on Gun Lake Road in Yankee Springs. The Chief Noonday Chapter volunteers maintain access to the trail in Kalamazoo, Barry and Calhoun counties, posting updates on its Facebook page.
Before that, I toured the undeveloped Hall Lake in my kayak, tooling around its three color-tinged islands. I found freshwater jellyfish by the lily pads closest to the road. Yes, jellyfish. Not much bigger than your pinkie fingernail and harmless to humans, they’re translucent, like a dull air bubble in the water, pulsing. Native to Asia, they appear in lakes in most states, including Saugany Lake, north of Rolling Prairie, which doesn’t have public access. But not in all waters. Retired researcher Terry Peard of Pennsylvania used to run a website that listed where they’ve been reported, but he says the data became too much for the site to accommodate. He still collects reports of the jellyfish, though. They are typically most visible in September-October.
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Freshwater jellyfish swim in Hall Lake last week in Michigan’s Yankee Springs Recreation Area.
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There and at local waters, fall colors are striking, especially where a lake meets a wetland — and where you’re likely to see lots of the native, shrub-like swamp loosestrife that has turned a bright red.
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Swamp loosestrife turns red last week along the shore of a lake north of Kalamazoo.
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Awesome autumn
• Night climbs: Rum Village Aerial Adventure Park in South Bend has begun its night climbs, which are each Friday through October. New this year, strands of neon-colored lights will dangle from above, adding to the twinkly lights on the main platform and the star-shower lights from below. You’ll have a lamp on your helmet as you embark on two- or three-hour climbs starting between 5 and 8 p.m. The zombies won’t return, Edge Adventures manager Sally Burch says, to avoid scaring the youngest climbers. The season’s final Zip ‘n’ Sip will be a Thursday nightcap on Oct. 15: one hour of climbing starting between 5 and 8 p.m., then a flight of Crooked Ewe brew for $25. The season runs through Nov. 8 launching between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Burch says the aerial park has been staying at its pandemic capacity, releasing 10 climbers every half hour unless they’re all from the same group. Gloves are required; you can bring your own or buy a pair for $5 there. Standard cost for a two-hour climb starts at $39.95 per adult and $34.95 per youth ages 7-15. (800-590-8347, edgeadventureparks.com)
• Love trail: A park naturalist will lead the Harbor Country Hikers on a two-hour hike at 10 a.m. Saturday on the trails at Love Creek County Park, 9292 Huckleberry Road, Berrien Center. Face masks are required at all of the group’s events.
• Owl banding: Each fall, visitors wait with a bird expert on dark, cool evenings for the tiny saw-whet owl to arrive. The expert will fetch the migrating bird from the safety of a net, then take it indoors at the Indiana Dunes to measure and band the bird and then release it. This research project, now running for more than 10 years, will stay outside to mind COVID-19 safety as it runs on select nights from Oct. 15 through Nov. 15 at the Indiana Dunes Visitor Center near Chesterton. Organizers at Indiana Audubon say that, if you book a time, you’ll need to bring your own lawn chairs, warm clothing and face masks. Pre-registration for a $5 donation at indianaaudubon.org/events is required to limit the number of participants to a maximum of 10. It fills up fast. Each demonstration will begin at 7 p.m. Central in October and at 6 p.m. Central in November and run late into the night. Some of the sessions will be livestreamed. All of the banding nights depend on the weather — high winds and storms don’t work well for the owls. Even in good weather, though, there’s no guarantee of seeing an owl.
• Brown County hues: Brown County State Park in southern Indiana is posting a photo on Facebook from the same spot each day of October to track fall colors. You can vote on which day you consider “peak color.”
• Fire tower reopens: A good place to peek at southern Indiana’s fall colors is from the top of the fire tower that reopened in August after decades of closure at McCormick’s Creek State Park, 250 McCormick’s Creek Park Road, Spencer. The tower had been closed in the 1980s because of vandalism and safety reasons, the state Department of Natural Resources reports. Last year, the park’s friends group financed the tower’s restoration. The fire tower is now open to the public from 9 a.m. to sunset through November. It will open only for interpretive programs from December through February, then reopen to the general public in March. Similar fire towers in Indiana are also found at Tippecanoe River State Park in Winamac and Ouabache State Park south of Fort Wayne.
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A cyclist rides while others walk Sept. 30 after a ceremony to name the mountain bike trails at Chikaming Township Park and Preserve after Kirk Schrader, who’d conceived them.
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This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Chikaming mountain bike trails honor their founder. Plus fall colors and jellyfish.
