I started out with a nice lunch at No Thai! (http://nothai.com/) at 226 N. Fourth Street. No Thai! is a mini chain with very good food. I had curry pad thai, extra spicy. I'm sure my digestive system will inform me of its displeasure later, but I love hot food.
I headed eastbound on Catherine Street, and found a very cute little house front practically abutting the sidewalk. I love old masonry work and I particularly liked the bit above the doors and windows:
Ann Arbor is a college town, and not everything is architecturally significant or even pretty. There are lots of rental properties, homes that once may have looked very nice, but have suffered the neglect of busy, hard-studying and hard-partying students. Just a few doors down, I saw this:
One could almost see Bluto passed out on the porch. As I continued east on Catherine, I came across one of the many fine churches that Ann Arbor has to offer. I love beautiful churches, and I hope as this blog progresses to add more fine examples, including links to the various congregations in case you not only love the pic, but would like to attend and see the inside. I'm still working on being a good photographer, so sorry about the SUV in the foreground:
The day got progressively cloudier and muggier. But to this point I was doing very well. I am able to appreciate distinctive things about homes, especially paint colors. There are some colors that look like something a dog vomited after eating the big Crayola Box of 64, and if I see some of those, I'll make sure to document them as well. This house? It's either one of those dog vomit things or brilliant. I'm not sure which, but I think if I lived across the street and had to look at it every morning, I may lean toward the former opinion:
Ann Arbor is full of strange little details, if you have the right perception. I don't know why someone would paint an astronaut on the sidewalk, but there it is, at the southeast corner of Catherine and Thayer:
I have a thing for roof lines. They are the crown of the house. This house is a dentist's office now, but for some reason the top is a different color than the rest of the house. Does the dentist think everyone coming in to his "painless" emporium will be approaching with downcast eyes? And what is that chain on the end of the board for, anyway? Nosey minds want to know...
I'm a wanderer. A more ordered person would approach this project by mapping out the city in grids and attacking the streets in an ordered fashion. But I'd walked Catherine for too many blocks, five, to be precise, and so I turned south on N. Ingalls, walked a block, and then turned back eastbound on Ann. Camera in hand, I had a prime opportunity to take a pic of a very lovely, but pale, young lady, fervently texting in a bikini. I resisted because I fancy myself a gentleman. Sorry guys! Back when towns like Ann Arbor were set up, zoning laws were yet to be developed, as were lot sizes and other things like that. Oftentimes, if you're not looking, you'll miss the house sitting on the back of the lot, behind a house on the street...or behind a Jimmy John's sandwich shoppe:
I like looking at houses with dormers and wondering if the dormered room is as cozy on the inside as it appears on the outside. From experience, I know it isn't true, they mostly just feel rather cramped, but I like to imagine cozy versus cramped any day. Turning back north on Glen, and crossing Catherine, I saw the top of a house whose bottom looked like it got swallowed by an Italian restaurant. Angelo's (http://www.angelosa2.com/home.htm) seemed to be rather popular considering there didn't seem to be much parking around it, but I wonder who lives up top and if they can not eat themselves into an early grave with the smell of tomatoes and oregano constantly wafting up:
Yes, the blocky looking part in the foreground is part of the same structure as the house above it! I was approaching the monstrous medical complex that is the University of Michigan Hospital. I continued down Glen, which morphed into Fuller. I walked across a bridge and looked down to see one of the other great features of Ann Arbor, its Amtrak line (http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=am/am2Station/Station_Page&code=ARB)
As I turned the corner onto Medical Center Dr., I crossed that bridge in the picture five minutes later. The worst thing about Nichols Arboretum (http://www.lsa.umich.edu/mbg/) is getting there. Parking sucks, so if you choose to walk from really far away like I did, you have to pretty much approach it from near the UM Hospital, as sterile on the outside as one hopes its operating rooms are on the inside. The only redeeming quality are some of the glass walkways that connect some of the upper floors of the towers. I turned down Nichols Dr., walking past the two medevac helicopters parked up the hill, and finally got into the arboretum. This entrance follows the Huron River, which today was very high and the current was obviously swift. This early in the season, the water is rather cold as well. I know because I waded in and promptly jumped back out. That didn't stop these intrepid suckers errr souls from braving the river for a little Sunday fun:
I don't have years of experience observing this river, but I'm pretty sure the tree in the foreground is normally sitting on dry land:
The great thing about Nichols is that it tries to have something for all ages and interests. No kids, there are no video games or inflatable bounce houses, but there is a Fairy Garden and Troll Hollow. Some particularly inventive kids made a fairy tree house, escape vine included!
Nearby is a peony garden where close to a thousand peony bushes are arrayed. It is early for them to be blooming, but there were four early bloomers. They must think they're rhododendrons or something:
I had rhododendrons at my home in New Hampshire, but I could never get them to bloom like these!
There is this tree in the middle of this meadow at Nichols. It is my favorite tree here. Soon, it will be blooming a blazing white while surrounded by the greenery of the other trees and plants. I caught it a bit early in the season. I plan on returning and posting a week-by-week photo series of it on my FaceBook page (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2018541431555.122711.1484472655):
Wafting on the breeze was a beautiful sound. As I crossed the meadow, I thought I was intruding on a wedding rehearsal, but I was wrong. On a log sat a violinist, a squeeze-box player and some woman playing some sort of piccolo or flute-type thing:
No, they were rehearsing for the annual Shakespeare performance that takes place in the arboretum every year (http://www.lsa.umich.edu/mbg/happening/shakespeare_spring2011.asp). I stuck around and listened for a little while, but the director was less interested in entertaining me than she was in getting the actors to proceed down a path in time to the music, as well as adjusting the pace of the music to match the actors. I love to sit in the arboretum and write. I'd been thinking of something and needed to write, so I spent a half-hour writing. I could've written longer, but the bugs, mugginess and the general feeling of an approaching storm goaded me to get moving. I exited on the south side on Geddes and turned westward in the general direction of my car. I took a side trip down the dead-end street of Geddes Heights, located between the arboretum and Forest Hill Cemetery. Very pricey houses and also very distinctive. I liked the roofing material and the slightly bowed second-floor window on this house:
Up and across the street was a house with skylights, which always intrigue me, but I also liked the front yard garden:
I could've taken a picture of just about every house on this street, but it is a rather distinctive district and I didn't want to arouse suspicion that I might be casing the place, so I moved along. I continued a little way down Geddes, but got tired of walking straight again and jogged down Linden to S. University and turned westward again. I realized if I kept on S. University, I'd pass one of my favorite weird shops from my college years, Middle Earth (http://www.middleearthgifts.com/) They used to sell these great candles that dripped wax like crazy. You'd jam one in a wine bottle and had instant romance lighting. I don't drink, and so I was wondering how I was ever going to acquire an empty wine bottle. But you know those crazy college students. As I was thinking about the bottle, sure enough, there on the front yard of a house was an empty bottle! I must've looked like some crazy street person stuffing the bottle into my backpack. I continued onward to Middle Earth, fully intending to buy a couple candles in anticipation of using them with someone special someday. Unfortunately, Middle Earth doesn't seem to sell them anymore. I asked an employee and she said something about they come in some times, so I should stop back. Ah the mood was ruined! I was rather embarrassed pulling an empty wine bottle out of my backpack and throwing it away in a street garbage can! Folly!
At this point, the day was running long, and I wanted to get home and put this all down while it was fresh in my head. So I turned right on Church, turned and walked amongst some of the university buildings, came out on N. University, turned right on Fletcher, then west on E. Washington, right on State. At E. Huron, I came upon another church I liked, if for no other reason than the ivy:
I knew I was near my starting point, but when I turned and strolled down Division, I saw another obsolete, but wonderful architectural feature, the cupola! Why don't they put cupolas on houses anymore? Our society's loss, I say!
And on a three-story house to boot! I'd take a smaller footprint of a house for a three-story home!
Google maps states that from my starting point into the heart of Nichols, it was 2.1 miles. The return trip I dallied further south and had to backtrack. I'll someday figure out how to post my route and the exact distance, but for today, it was about 5 miles. I took my time, but the heat and humidity made it a workout anyway. Hope you like this my first walking post. I look forward to hearing your comments about it!
No comments:
Post a Comment