A typical walk

Come along with Scrappy Booogle and I for a typical walk. There are two ways to get to the IPFW woods. One is through the neighboring addition. The other is across what we call the Plex Meadow.

This takes you to the north entrance but one.

This is where the trail turns from mud to stone. If you'd come through the addition entrance, you'd be 1/3 of the way to the end now.

Aright about here, we ran into Grace, a dog we'd met before, along with her owner. Owner was amazed when I told her the story of the previous meeting; Grace, all alone, came up behind us. I told her she ought to go home, and she did. Owner couldn't believe she was out here with nobody with her. It's 6 pm. Do you know where your dog is? At any rate, they sniffed each other over calmly and friendly. Although Scrappy didn't care for his p-p getting sniffed, and wanted to climb on her head. Did I tell you Scrappy's dyslexic? We all parted on good terms and moved on.

This is a very pretty area.

Then you come to the middle entrance, or the barn entrance. This is where it switches over to paved trail.

Soon you come upon the famous bridge in the woods. It takes a little doing, but this is Scrappy's favorite part of the trip.

Getting back on the main trail, you don't go far before you hit a side trail that winds along the rim of the creek's canyon.

This is the only time you can get Scrappy to stop.

The trail has a basically hidden exit that comes out on California road, by the new hotel across from the Colisseum.

Then we go back in the entrance to the Plex. The Plex grounds are split in two by the old feeder channel for the Wabash and Erie canal. There are 5 good bridges across the feeder, and one not-so-good:

On the other side is the greenway trail that runs all the way to Washington Center. The edge is guarded by plastic sheet to prevent erosion since I&M had all the vegetation ripped out of the feeder. A large Ground hog, easily bigger and much heavier than Scrappy, noticed us here and smashed into the plastic about 3 times before he managed to get underneath and into the feeder. He needn't have panicked; as usual, Scrappy was oblivious.

Where we crossed is IPFW's soccer field. It's a nice field, fenced off from the Plex's plebian pitches. beyond it is our famous duck pond, which we didn't get too close to due to the high weeds.

Yesterday we found a trail that leads to a good view of what google earth for whatever reason calls Stevie's Island. A duck was also enjoying the view.

By this point it was thundering pretty good, but I think it was all hot air, as no storm clouds presented themselves. Still, it was terribly humid near the river, so we headed back. A cat came across our path; but he apparently had heard from other cats that Scrappy wouldn't notice a cat if it sat on his head. So he just laid down and watched us go by.

















And with that, we returned to Scrappy's house. Total time: just over an hour. Total distance: a hair over 2 miles, give or take.