I was out on a bike ride recently with Steve and my mom on the White Pine Trail State Park in Cadillac, Mi. This is a beautiful, partially paved trail extending from Cadillac to Grand Rapids. On this day’s ride we rode from Cadillac to Tustin, about 20 miles round trip.
When my mom and I are riding, our rides tend to be a bit of a scenic tour and we stop a lot to check out things we see. Today, we spent a while looking at a pond with a lot of recent beaver activity. From the looks of it, they have really have been busy beavers!
You’d have thought loggers had been in this area and in a way they were. The beavers take down these trees to use them for food and building dams and lodges. Beavers have been been reported to be second only to humans on their ability to alter their environment for their own needs.
Some fresh activity. Hopefully it doesn’t fall across the trail.
There is a beaver lodge on the pond that was visible earlier in the season before everything leafed out. On a nearby pond, there was a lodge that looked a bit abandoned. Maybe they’ve moved down the trail to this pond?
Since I am writing about beavers, I wanted to relay another story from the same bike ride. Fellow geocachers out there will enjoy this.
We were looking for a cache that had been reported as missing. When we arrived at the spot where it should have been, there seemed to be something wrong. The area looked different, and the pine tree that the cache was supposed to be attached to just wasn’t there. Maybe we were in the wrong spot? Or remembering the location wrong? Nope! A beaver had visited the spot, cut down the tree and stripped the branches bare. The oddest part was that he had taken down a pine tree. Why would a beaver want to chop down a pine tree? That would be quite unusual. We left puzzled and laughing at what we had discovered.
He took this down and shredded all the branches off. The cache was gone.
Want to learn more?
Beavers: Pictures and Facts
Beavers, Wetlands and Wildlife
The Beaver Solution
I love Northern Michigan. Looks like you are in a beautiful area. Have you seen any beavers or other wildlife?
We saw lots of interesting birds– Sandhill cranes, bald eagle, belted kingfisher, red-headed woodpecker among others.