The Gardens at Lake Merritt

Posted on November 7, 2021 by admin

Not far from the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland is Lakeside Park, the lake being Lake Merritt. The afternoon of October 28 was sunny and pleasant in Oakland. Actually a little warm; I should have brought some water.

Nice views of the city from the park.

Paths to follow.

With wildlife to be found. Small examples, at least.

This isn’t a gazebo. No. It’s a bandstand. Quite a bandstand.

A section of the park is given over to the Gardens at Lake Merritt.

“In the late 1950s, a coalition of garden clubs and plant societies developed and built the Oakland-East Bay Garden Center,” says Pacific Horticulture. “Upon completion, the building was donated to the City of Oakland with the understanding that the coalition would be able to use it in perpetuity for meetings and other activities. Later, the various groups took on the task of landscaping the seven-acre site.

“The gardens flourished for many years under the care of 16 city gardeners. However, by the late seventies and eighties, membership in many formal garden groups waned and, little by little, the city’s resources were directed elsewhere. Inevitably, many of the garden plots were neglected, and the appearance and appeal of the Gardens declined.

“With the vision and commitment of Victoria (Tora) Rocha, who was appointed Park Supervisor in 2010, and with renewed interest from garden groups and local residents, the Gardens at Lake Merritt are once again an interesting, enticing, and very attractive group of plantings.”

Sure enough. All sorts of gardens are part of the collection: bonsai, California riparian, Japanese, lily, Mediterranean, pollinator, rhododendron, sensory and urban edible gardens, along with a native bee hotel and native lawn.

The Japanese garden.

I spent the most time in the nearby bonsai garden.

A collection of more species than I would have expected, but that’s just my ignorance of things bonsai.

A Chinese elm.

Ivy, gingko and olive.

Sierra juniper.

Not all the botanic marvels of the park were in the designated gardens. Some striking trees could be found scattered through the park.

Including the impressive whatever-it-is pictured above. A botanist, I’m not.

Technical Errors

Posted on September 23, 2021 by admin

Good news for the day. Our heater woke from its summertime slumber on command this morning, after I found that the house’s interior temp had edged below 68 F. during the night. I could have lived with 67 F., and it would have warmed up anyway, but I wanted to do the test.

Speaking of tech — vastly more complicated than my garden-variety HVAC — not long ago, I watched a couple of interesting videos by an outfit called Mustard, which specializes in aviation subjects and other complex transport. So that’s what happened to the SST. I vaguely remembered hearing about its effective cancellation in 1971, but haven’t thought about it much since, along with much of the nation. A rare example of officialdom deciding not to throw good money after bad, I think.

Even more obscure is the story of the Antarctic Snow Cruiser. For me, the most intriguing part is the fact that the monster machine has vanished beyond the ken of man.

Here’s a Google Maps map to illustrate that Google makes mistakes.

I took a walk not long ago in “Freedom Park.” That is not the name of the park, at least according to the Schaumburg Park District. This is the sign at Cambridge Drive entrance to the park, as documented in 2018.

More recently, the park district has been replacing its signs with a new style, so that sign is gone. But the new sign — which I saw myself this week, no Google tech intermediary needed — still gives the name as Duxbury Park. There is no sign at the S. Salem Drive entrance, and the two green blobs on the map are actually connected by an undeveloped neck of land under which natural gas and water mains run, giving the park an irregular dumbbell sort of shape.

A small error, but worth noting.

Duxbury Park’s pretty nice around the fall equinox. Mostly still green, with hints of yellow.

That’s the “Freedom Park Little Mountain” off in the distance. I’d call it a hillock, to use a word that needs more use.

My daughters sledded there occasionally in previous winters, but it’s been a while. Next to that bald hillock is a wooded hillock, complete with trails that cross it.

Take all of about a minute to climb up one side and down the other, if you don’t stop for anything. Definitely a hillock.

Door County Vistas

Posted on September 9, 2021 by admin

I’ve read that Peninsula State Park in Door County, one of four state parks on the peninsula, is a good one. And as the name says, it’s a peninsula on the peninsula. I have to like that.

“Deeded to the state in 1909, Peninsula is the second-oldest park in the state system, and with no statistical manipulation, the park is numero uno in usage in Wisconsin — with good reason,” Moon Handbooks Wisconsin says. “The peninsula, rising 180 feet above the lake at Eagle Bluff, is a manifestation of the western edge of the Niagara Escarpment, here a steep and variegated series of headlands and reentrants.”

A pretty and popular place, in other words. On the Sunday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, so popular that when we got to one of the entrances, we — and ever other car — were turned away. “The park is full,” a ranger told us. That must have meant the parking lots, but in any case we had to move on.

On to Plan B: a few miles up the coast on Green Bay is Ellison Bluff County Park, hugging a smaller peninsula not far from the town of Ellison Bay. As a mere county park, it has a couple of advantages: no crowds, no fee to get in. But it had the walk and the vista that we were looking for.

First, the walk, an easy path through shady woods on a warm summer day.

The path loops through the property. A separate short boardwalk off the parking lot goes to an overlook, about 100 feet over the water.

A vista straight across Green Bay to the Upper Peninsula on the horizon, about 20 miles distant, with the wind off the water whipping the trees around.

I couldn’t help thinking of the vista from Polychrome Pass in Denali NP only a little more than a month earlier. Different, yet its enormous sweep is compellingly similar, as if a vast valley were flooded to form Green Bay. Which is, of course, exactly what it is. To encounter two such vistas in the same year — well, that makes for a good year.

Not far north of Ellison is Bluff Headlands County Park. For no good reason, I was expected a similar set up, a trail and a short walk to a view. But no: the park includes a longish trail to the view.

Actually, it wasn’t that long. Half a mile, if that. It started easy enough.

The trail followed a heavily forested cliff edge. Soon the trees didn’t just lord over the ground, their roots were everywhere underfoot, with plenty of rocky patches too. The pictures below weren’t along the trail; the trail went through them.

Every step, an opportunity to take an injurious tumble. That was me, thinking more than ever like an old man. The dog didn’t mind the path — she’s near the ground, after all — and so pulled me along, with more energy than you’d expect from an old dog. Still, I believe her pull helped me keep my balance.

Eventually, we got to an opening in the trees, with a view from the cliff. It was about as spectacular as the one from Ellison, just harder to get to.

The fellow sitting at cliffside was reading a book. I didn’t ask what, since I didn’t want to bother him — or risk startling him.

Galien River County Park

Posted on July 20, 2021 by admin

A waxing gibbous moon this evening for Moon Day. Looked light copper, a bit like a lunar eclipse moon, but not quite. The next lunar eclipse visible in these parts won’t be until November 19.

National and state parks are all very well, but there’s something to be said for more local units, such as Galien River County Park just outside of New Buffalo, Michigan. An 86-acre spot overseen by Barrien County, the park is upstream from the town and offers short walks to view the Galien’s meandering course through a marsh.

After lunch on Sunday, we drove the few miles to the park, which opened only in 2014.

That trail soon leads to a boardwalk.

Which takes you to a platform 60 feet above the marsh.

A sign warned visitors not to do certain stupid things, such as dangle over the edge, but also that the platform sways slightly, even when there is no wind. I felt it. That was a little unsettling, but the views were worth it.

The lower boardwalk crosses over the marsh, which we walked after leaving the platform. The boardwalk provides views of the marsh and the river, up close.

A pleasant way to spend an hour or so. Just as nice as a few hours in town or time spent eating a hamburger in Redamak’s, with one essential difference: almost no one else was at the county park.

Park St. Claire Natural Area

Posted on June 28, 2021 by admin

More rain today, alternating with drier periods. The grass has responded, as grass does this time of the year, by greening up and lengthening. As soon as we get a full dry day or so, I will respond as I do, using a machine to shorten the growth to a more acceptable bourgeois appearance.

Not everyone waits. Not half an hour after the enormous rains on Saturday, a fellow on the block was out mowing his soggy grass. Is that good for the lawn? I like to believe it is not.

Sunday was a dryish interlude. About an hour ahead of sunset on Sunday, we spent time at Park St. Claire Natural Area and environs.

A nice bit of suburban planning. At certain places, merely looking around doesn’t tell you that you’re surrounded by a metro area of 9.4 million people or so.

Including water features.

I’ll be sorry to see June go.

Not that the rest of the summer won’t have the potential to be just as pleasant. But June 30, or maybe the July 4 holiday, is the end of the beginning of the season. All of the days between those two, and a few more, ought be holidays.

Campus Martius Park, Detroit

Posted on June 22, 2021 by admin

Just how long ago was it? One of those nagging questions. In this case, I was wondering when the last time I’d been to downtown Detroit. I couldn’t remember until I looked it up.

Right. Seventeen years. This time we arrived on Saturday morning. After visiting St. Joseph Shrine, we repaired to Campus Martius Park, which counts as a green spot in the heart of downtown Detroit, and which was still being developed the last time I was in the area.

When I went looking for information about the history of the park, I was amused that the Downtown Detroit Partnership hadn’t gotten around to writing anything. And yet the dummy Latin evokes the origin of the original Campus Martius, which even dummy students of Latin (as I was) know was the gathering place in the early Roman Republic for legions before they went out to kick barbarian butt, and later was home of the Pantheon.

The Michigan Territory borrowed the name not directly from Rome, it seems, but a place in Ohio. In the 19th century, citizens gathered at the Detroit Campus Martius in war and peace, but the spot was neglected in the 20th century, becoming mostly just a place through which cars passed.

In the 21st century, Campus Martius was reinvented as a park to help bring new life to downtown. It’s a fine bit of urban planning. Why do I think that? Because it features not only things to do and look at, but chairs with actual backs on which it’s actually fairly comfortable to sit during the warm months. How many cities don’t understand how important that is, perhaps worried that the homeless might find someplace to sit? Many.

The park also includes a cafe, a small stage, a bit of green space, a fountain, a sandy “beach” in summer and an ice rink in winter, a view of impressive buildings, and an embedded zero milestone, which is called the Point of Origin.

As I understand it, all of the Detroit area’s mile roads, such as the famed 8 Mile Road, measure from this point.

The Michigan Soldiers and Sailors Monument is also part of Campus Martius Park, which seems reasonable.

“The Soldiers and Sailors Monument is among Detroit’s oldest pieces of public art and was one of the first monuments to honor Civil War veterans in the United States,” Historic Detroit says. “It was announced by Gov. Austin Blair in 1865 that money would be collected to erect a tribute to Michigan’s soldiers killed in battle. Detroit, being the largest city, won the right to the monument.

“The cornerstone for the monument was laid July 4, 1867, but not in Campus Martius, where the monument stands today… a special committee of the [city] council resolved in September 1871 that the best place for the monument was the open square in front of City Hall.

“The bronze and granite sculpture was formally unveiled on April 9, 1872, though some of its statues were not added until July 18, 1881… The Classical Revival monument stands more than 60 feet tall and was sculpted by Randolph Rogers, an Ann Arbor native who studied at the Academy of St. Mark in Florence, Italy, under Lorenzo Bartolini.”

In 2003, the monument was moved about 150 feet to the south as part of the creation of Campus Martius Park. According to carving in the plinth, a time capsule was entombed there as well in 2004, to be opened on July 23, 2104.

The First National Building, just southeast of the park. An Albert Kahn design completed in 1930.

An array of buildings.

In the foreground, the Qube, previously known as the Chase Tower, another Albert Kahn work, but from a later year: 1959. Behind it to the left is the magnificent Guardian Building, more about which later, and the Penobscot Building, another 1920s masterpiece.

One of the more sizable buildings towering over the park is the 985,000-square-foot One Campus Martius, a 2003 development of Bedrock Detroit, the real estate arm of billionaire Dan Gilbert’s empire. Michigander Gilbert has developed, and probably more importantly, redeveloped a lot of properties in Detroit.

Poised at the entrance of One Campus Martius is “Waiting,” a mildly unnerving 17-foot bronze by Brooklyn-based artist Brian Donnelly, also known as Kaws.

“ ‘Waiting’ is another high-profile acquisition by real estate magnate Gilbert and his wife, who purchased the statue for their growing Detroit Art Collection — a wide-ranging portfolio of immersive installations and public art that span Bedrock’s real estate portfolio downtown,” notes the Detroit Free Press.

Campus Martius Park was just the beginning for us that morning. We’d come for a 10 o’clock walking tour of downtown Detroit lead by Preservation Detroit, and that’s where it started; more about that soon.

Abrahamsen Park

Posted on June 16, 2021 by admin

It’s nice, and a little astonishing, to discover a park you didn’t know in your part of the suburbs, especially when it’s pleasant to walk through. I’ve been in the northwest suburbs going on two decades, yet I had no notion of Abrahamsen Park until the other day.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I regularly drive by one part of the park, which fronts a small but important road, and from that vantage you can see the park’s baseball diamond, basketball court, tennis court and playground. All those things are available closer to home — and it’s been years since I’ve needed a playground — so I never gave Abrahamsen much thought.

Turns out there’s a walking path as well. It begins behind those facilities and runs a quarter mile or so along a small creek through a neighborhood. That is, through fenceless back yards facing the creek and walking path. I expect it’s known almost only to people who live nearby, so hidden is it. As I walked, I reveled in the obscurity of it.

This time of the year, even in a dry June, the way along the creek is lush.

At one end are towering trees.

Eastern cottonwoods (Populus deltoides), I think, and I won’t pretend I didn’t have to look that up.

Lilacia Park ’21

Posted on May 11, 2021 by admin

RIP, Helmut Jahn. I never met the man, but I worked in the same building in downtown Chicago as his office, once upon a time. The superb 35 East Wacker, as it happens, where Jahn had his showroom in the top dome. We were on the seventh floor. We could always tell when architects were on the elevator, headed up to Jahn’s office; they were the gentlemen with ponytails.

Lilacia Park, like Cantigny, is in the western suburbs, in Lombard as it happens, only a few miles to the east and a little north. Early May is the time of the lilac blooms there, and it’s been a fair number of years since we went, so we decided to drop by Lilacia on the way home on Saturday.

The park didn’t disappoint, though I think it was a few days past peak for lilacs, to judge by the effusions of flowers I’ve seen in earlier years.

But not for tulips. Definitely peak blooms for many of them.

Lilacia was crowded too. Especially with prom and quinceañera celebrants.

“Lilac bushes are not native to North America,” explains Flower magazine. (Just like most of us.) “The Common Lilac originated in Eastern Europe in the mountains of Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. For centuries, the Turks cultivated the species.

“Then, in the 1500s, lilac bushes arrived in Vienna and Paris. The French developed so many varieties that Common Lilac is often called French hybrid or simply French Lilac. Finally, these European specimens made the journey to the New World, and lilac bushes graced the gardens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.”

And, I have to add, the former garden of Col. William Plum and his wife Helen Maria Williams Plum in Lombard, Illinois.

“Colonel Plum moved to the Chicago area in 1869 and settled in Lombard when it was still a new village. The Plums purchased land and filled it with lilacs, which they fell in love with after traveling to the celebrated gardens of Victor Lemoine in France,” Atlas Obscura says.

“The couple returned from the trip with two lilac cuttings, one of Syringa vulgaris, ‘Mme Casimir Périer,’ a double white, and the other of Syringa vulgaris, ‘Michel Buchner,’ a double purple — the initial cultivars of the collection that stands today.

“The acclaimed landscape architect Jens Jensen — responsible in large part for the design or redesign of Chicago’s Columbia, Humboldt, Garfield, and Douglas Parks — agreed to design the Lombard Community Park, now known as Lilacia Park.”

Cantigny in May

Posted on May 10, 2021 by admin

It looks like Cantigny Park has taken the opportunity posed by the international health crisis to do some work on Col. McCormick’s mansion. This is what the outside of the mansion looked like on Saturday.

We didn’t visit to see the mansion, which we toured some years ago. Instead we wanted to see the grounds in spring. The day was cool — it’s been a cold spring lately — but not bad for a walkabout among the greenery.

And the flowers.

Lots of flowers.

Along with other plants.

We haven’t been to Cantigny in a number of years. More recently than 2010 or 2011, but I don’t remember exactly when. On Saturday we also spent a little time at the McCormicks’ grave, in the shape of an exedra, which isn’t far from their mansion.

Though a little chilly (mid-50s), it was a festive day at Cantigny.

People are gathering in groups once more this spring, or so anecdotal evidence, such as seeing them at Cantigny, tells me.

Riverfront Park, Peoria

Posted on May 4, 2021 by admin

Another recent vaccination destination was Peoria. We spent about 24 hours on the trip, there in the afternoon and a return the next afternoon. Shortly after taking care of the shot at a local pharmacy, we took a walk along the Illinois River near downtown Peoria, including a paved section but also parkland.

Riverfront Park gives you some nice views of the Murray Baker Bridge, which carries I-74 across the river. It’s named for an early executive of Holt Manufacturing Co., later Caterpillar Tractor Co., who oversaw its move to Peoria in 1909.

For what I took to be a fairly old bridge (opened 1958), it looked spanking new, a handsome example of bridgebuilding. Turns out there was a reason for that.

“After a final countdown the lights were flicked on and the Murray Baker Bridge was re-opened to drivers of Central Illinois,” 25 Week reported on October 31 last year. “The bridge, which was shut down back in March, went through $42 million worth of renovations. Workers replaced the bridge deck, repaired the structural steel, repainted, and fixed the LED lights, which was one of the most anticipated changes.”

North of the bridge is a curiosity called Constitution Garden, dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.

Looks a little unkempt, at least this spring, and the plaque is dark. Someone’s comment on the state of our fundamental law?

Not far away, overlooking the river, is the Dan Fogelberg Memorial, which has been there since 2010. A couple was there when we arrived — a man and woman maybe a few years older than me — and they expressed their enthusiasm for the musician to us, and had me take their picture in front of the rocks. Then they offered to take our picture (Yuriko was elsewhere with the dog.)

I hadn’t realized Fogelberg was from Peoria, but he was. The rock to our left features lyrics from “Part of the Plan,” which I told Ann was one of his better-known songs. Behind me the middle rock had lyrics from “Icarus Ascending,” a song I didn’t know, and to our right the rock says:

Dedicated to the legacy of
Dan Fogelberg
Musician, Singer, Songwriter, Artist
Born in Peoria August 13th
1951 – 2007

With some lines from “River of Souls,” another song I didn’t know. I liked Fogelberg well enough when I heard him on the radio, but I didn’t listen to him much beyond that, except for the album Phoenix (1979), which one of my college roommates had and I listened to occasionally. “Face the Fire” on that album has the distinction of being an anti-nuke song — nuclear power, that is, not bombs, clearly inspired by Three Mile Island.

Its lyrics didn’t make it onto a rock, unsurprisingly, since I suppose “The poison is spreading, the demon is free/People are running from what they can’t even see” wouldn’t have the right vibe for his memorial. More surprising is no mention of “Same Old Land Syne,” considering that’s a Christmastime sentimental favorite on the radio even now.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Parks