GrexWalk

Every week, outdoors-minded users of an Ann Arbor area Computer Conferencing System called Grex get together at Gallup Park for a walk through the Arboretum. This activity takes place rain or shine all year long, and is open to the public.

Enter Gallup Park from Fuller Road, and stop at the first parking lot (before you go over the bridge). The walks are scheduled to begin every Saturday at 10 AM, but usually start 15 minutes later. In this map of Gallup Park, the blue dot is the starting point, and the blue arrows indicates the path of the walk and the return path from the Arboretum.

When you get there, just look for a group of people who are standing around like they don't know who they are looking for. Those will be the Grexers. Introduce yourself. They are very friendly.

Once the walk begins, you walk west along the paved path that runs between the Conrail Tracks and the Huron River. These next two pictures show what this portion of the walk looks like.

If there are enough people walking, the Grex walkers often break up into smaller groups. These pictures were taken on Sept. 16. 1995, and on that day the group broke into two groups, an adult group and a teen group. In the adult group from left to right are Mark Conger, Jan Wolter, David Dorney and Scott Helmke. Steve Weiss is not shown as he was taking the pictures. Behind them, as captured in the second picture are Greg Fleming, Dan Gryniewicz, Meg Heberlein, Jeremy Weiss and Peter Drew. Greg Fry was present but is not shown.

The walk proceeds upriver, and the the river becomes progressively narrower. the river is a popular canoeing route, and is often busy with these craft. A gap in the brush between the path and the river farther upstream reveals this view of the river, but at the time no canoes happened to be passing.

After about a mile, there is a gap in the fence on the left separating the pathway from the railroad right-of-way. The Grexers walk through this gap and cross the railroad tracks. The path on the other side enters the Nichols Arboretum at its Northwest corner. Actually, on the day these pictures were taken, the group left the path too early, and had to walk along the railroad right-of-way until they came to the right crossing point. This is not recommended.

The University of Michigan's Nichols Arboretum is a marvelous place. It is full of trees, of course, but it also has meadows. Once in the Arb, the walkers pass through the meadow shown below on the left, and then some of them take a tree-climbing break at a tree labeled "57", as seen at right.

When the path through the arb finally comes to the area known as "The Beach", the river reappears and is partially dammed by a rock wall below the surface (left). At this point the walkers turn left, leave the river, and begin the long uphill trek to the top of the arb. The view of the arboretum from above is quite beautiful (right). When the group nears the top of the arboretum, there is a place to rest from all of the climbing. The Grex walkers take advantage of this natural rest area. This is about two miles into the walk.

Finally the Grexers leave the Arboretum through the upper gate onto Geddes Avenue. Then they proceed East along Geddes Avenue, following it all the way back to the starting place at Gallup Park.

The total distance is about three miles, and the walk is usually over by about 11:30 AM. When the walk is finished, the Grexers will usually head to a local restaurant to "debrief", where sometimes they may be met by other Grexers who chose not to walk. The location of the debriefing is agreed to by consensus on-line on Grex. A schedule of upcoming debriefing sites can be viewed on the Grex system.

It costs nothing to use Grex. All you need is a terminal or a computer with a modem. Dial 761-3000 and log in as "newuser" to get a free account for yourself. Then you can discuss matters both great and small with others, and also find out which restaurant will be the one chosen each week.

The text, drawing, and photos for this site were all made by Steven R. Weiss and are all copyright 1995, Steven R. Weiss. The web site was made available by the Huron Valley Community Network. Please direct any comments or suggestions to Steven R Weiss at srw@cyberspace.org.