Friday May 18, 2007 was a beautiful
spring day so I took the afternoon off from work as a half day vacation.
Diane and I wanted to go to lunch and I felt like doing a walk and Diane
was too busy to walk this afternoon, so I called Bob to see if he wanted
to join us for lunch at the Sage Brush Cantina in Lake Orion. Plan was
Diane would drive us and stay and have lunch with us and then she would
drive home and Bob and I would walk home. Bob thought this was a good
idea, so we swung by and picked him up on the way.
The weather was perfect, sunny with
the temperature in the mid 60s, what more could you ask for weather wise.
I ordered a chicken super burrito knowing I would only eat a small portion
at this sitting. Diane also ordered something that she only ate half, so
she also had leftovers. For some reason Bob and the waitress had trouble
communicating, the waitress also had a bit of an attitude which didn’t
help matters. Bob ordered a vegetarian meal and tried to get it with
certain vegetables. When Bob’s meal came it wasn’t how he ordered it and
the communication problem between Bob and the waitress continued. Bob
finally just gave up and ate what he was given, never really getting what
he wanted. My meal was great and Diane took my leftovers home for three
more meals later that weekend.
It was nice hanging out with Diane
for lunch, a lot of times when I take a day off Diane seems to have plans
playing tennis or having lunch with other friends. It almost seems too
ironic how she always seems busy when I am home. Lucky I am not a
paranoid person otherwise I might think Diane tries to avoid me on my days
off.
After Diane left Bob and I headed
out for our long walk home. After walking through downtown Lake Orion we
walked the short distance down Lapeer Road to the Paint Creek Trail
(PCT). We hopped on the trail and walked along heading south. We stopped
at the small pond on the east side of the trail to look in the water. The
pond water was extremely clear, we could see all the fish swimming in the
pond. We even saw a few decent size large fish, some approaching a foot
long and a couple even in the 14 to 16 inch range. I never expect to see
fish so big in this little shallow pond. As we started to walk the trail
again we saw movement in the weeds right next to the water. It was a
black snake about 3 ½ to four feet long. It kind of had a very muted
yellow pattern on its skin, but primarily black, you had to look very
closely to see the muted yellow pattern. We followed the snake for a
couple minutes until it finally slithered into some weeks taking it out of
our sight.
We got off the trail at the
Clarkston Road crossing. We got on Kern Road at this point which is a
dirt road without to much car traffic. We stayed on Kern all the way to
Gunn Road where we turned east. At this point the paved bike paths start
again and we walked on the path all the way to Adams Road. Delta Kelly
elementary school is located on the northwest corner of Adams and Gunn.
School must have been in session as we passed by, but I don’t recall
seeing kids out on the playgrounds. Maybe lunches and recesses were all
over for the day by the time we passed by.
Once we got to Adams we just walked
straight south down Adams to home. I went on the gmap-pedometer.com
website to see how far we went on this walk, it turned out to be 7.6 miles
total. Again, a really nice day for a very enjoyable walk.
David Lindquist
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