Not much to look at...

We have been waiting for it all summer, but we finally reached that period of time where the weather has entered the "goldilocks" phase. If you are familiar with the old story, this means that things are just about perfect, not too cold, not too hot. In face, we have been blessed with days in the high 70 degree range and nights in the upper 40 to lower 50 range. This means it's been close to a month now that I haven't had to run the heating or air conditioning in the house.

It also means that on the weekends @mrsbozz and I have been going out and doing some walking at some of our local areas. We have only been back to the park we used to visit with our dog Jovi once since she passed. It's still hard to walk there, and somehow it just didn't seem the same the one time we went without her. Instead, I have been looking for other areas for us to take our walks.

Most recently, we took a drive over to Redtail Nature Preserve which isn't too far from where we live. I already posted about another area like this, but this is one of those spots where the local global chemical company was required to create a greenspace to make up for all of the dioxins that they dumped into the local waterways over the years. In my opinion, this hardly makes up for all of the damage they have caused, but it doesn't mean I am not going to take advantage of it.

As the title suggests, there isn't much to look at in this space. It's basically an old farm field that they let grow wild and then they paved a portion of it. That paved portion is what we love about this space though. It's flat, less than a year old, and a dream to walk on.

As you can see from the earlier photo, the paved area is a nice loop that covers just about a mile exactly. There is another portion of the trail that is not paved that stretches out another 2.8 miles, but we likely won't check that out until things are a bit drier and the ticks aren't quite so bad. You also might notice from the sign that no dogs are allowed in this area, which means it would have been off limits for us before since my wife and I are rule followers unlike a lot of people these days.

At various spots along the trail they have these informational signs that give you some information about the area and the wildlife that lives here. It's interesting that they avoid any mention of being forced to create these areas in the signs, but I guess I am not surprised.

We've actually been back to this place at least one more time since I took these photos. It's just a really nice trail to walk on, there hasn't been anyone else there the couple of times we have visited, and as I said it is relatively close to home.

As I said before, there isn't much to see here. There is also zero shade on the trail so if you were to come in the middle of the day on a hot summer day, it would be brutal. Some people like that sort of thing though I guess. This is actually a place I could see myself coming to do a quick mile run if I wanted to get away from the treadmill as I have been talking about with @gooddream lately. I'm still not quite at the point where I would be able to make it all the way around without doing a bit of walking, but maybe one day....

Off in the distance of the upper photo, you can see some buildings. Those used to be the home of Dow Corning before they merged with Dupont and Dow Chemical. Now those buildings house a company called HL Mechatronics which I have honestly never heard of before. It looks like they are a research and development company, so I wouldn't be surprised if they have some government money flowing in.

As you can see, the views aren't entirely bad, but not as spectacular as some of the other places I have wandered in Michigan. I am going to include this as a #wednesdaywalk post sponsored by @tattoodjay since we have now visited the preserve twice and I would not be surprised if we visited there again this weekend (weather willing).

In fact, I have a feeling this will become one of our regular destinations when we are looking for a spot to take a quick walk in the morning.

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