My husband and I took a walk in Ann Arbor’s Gallup Park in the respite after the Polar Vortex’s aftermath today, and made some good tracks – and time! We finished our roughly 3.8 mile walk in about 70 minutes (which accounts for time I took taking some pics and us taking a short rest after the first “leg” our walk. The paths were completely clear of snow and ice, so it was a relatively easy walk. It was sunny overhead for most of our walk, then the clouds started to remind us “Yes, it’s still really winter – and you’re not going to get away with taking that coat off for more than a couple of minutes – so there.”

Quite a lot of people came out to walk, cycle or run in Gallup Park today. I even saw a dude using inline skates (reminded me that I want to go to an indoor roller rink and rent some “quad” skates, but really…how likely is THAT to happen?) Temps hit about 40 degrees, about 32 degrees accounting for wind chill.

As always, I kept a watchful eye for critters – which is why I always bring a “good” camera on such walks. And I managed to get some shots of two different squirrels, one of whom seemed a bit too eager to strike a pose for me. I had to zoom quite a bit to get these shots:

OMG! Those paws! Look how he (or she) has it curled up! I guess I’ll always think these little bastards are cute AF – despite the problems we had with a squirrel last fall with my husband’s garden…

Someone took the time to build a snow creature of some sort – in the middle of the Huron River.

And just to give a photo credit…