A trail for all seasons

"We're going to the Kal-Haven! Now load up the bikes, I'll pack the food, and we're outta here!"

That was my wife, Natalie, on an absolutely gorgeous day here in southwestern Michigan insisting that we return to that linear park of absolute loveliness between South Haven and Kalamazoo that we have come to know and adore as the Kal-Haven Trail.

It is, as they say, a trail for all seasons. And in a season of great sorrow for our nation - the one beginning September 11, 2001 - Natalie and I went ahead with our plans to ride the Kal-Haven.

In light of the horrific attack we had just witnessed on our televisions, I wondered if we should go ahead with our plans.

"What else can we do today?" Natalie asked that morning of infamy.

She had a point, and so off we went to the trail's midpoint in Bloomingdale. And then, as the brilliantly soft sun climbed high into a sky eerily free of air traffic, we set out on a 33.5-mile round-trip bike ride that should be first on every psychotherapist's list of restorative cures.

We didn't talk much and we didn't see much in the way of wildlife. But we found peace on that dark, yet brilliantly sunny, afternoon.

And so, when Natalie said in this current season of continuing economic woe and endless war that "we're going to the Kal-Haven," I agreed.

We headed on up the beautiful Blue Star Memorial Highway to Stanley Johnston Park in sunny South Haven where we had a lovely al fresco picnic overlooking the harbor. Then we drove a short way to the trailhead on Wells Street, where we paid $3 a piece for one-day trail passes. On our bikes, we enjoyed a tailwind for the 18-mile ride to a point between Bloomingdale and Gobles.

As always, I said we should ride all the way to the east trailhead near Kalamazoo and thus make it a 67-mile day. But Natalie was watching my big belly shake like jelly, and she wisely suggested my back might not be able to take it.

"All right. Let's go to Gobles and back then. That would give us 21 out and 21 back for a solid 42-mile ride. We've been doing that distance lately, and ..."

"Let's just take it a mile at a time," she wisely interjected.

And so we did. After stopping to admire the more brown than black Black River from the covered bridge just east of Blue Star Memorial Highway, we hit the crushed limestone trail and were really cooking by the time we hit the hamlets of Kibbie and Lacota.

And just when I said, "Hmm, there don't seem to be any deerflies today," swarms of those devilish little creatures appeared to extract blood meals from the both of us.

"Hammer time!" Natalie exhorted, taking off on her steed.

I shifted my own Giant into the appropriate racing gear and we were soon flying along at a pace that would have had Lance Armstrong ... well, laughing. OK, so we barely hit 18 mph. But for us, we were booking.

We had eluded those pesky deerflies by the time we hit Bloomingdale midtrail. We paused to take in the display of oil drilling equipment installed since our last visit. According to a sign noting the site's historic significance, Bloomington was a major destination on the now defunct Kalamazoo & South Haven Railroad, not least of all because it was the center of an oil boom in the 1930s and 1940s.

We also learned, from talking to a Van Buren County official, that the county is doing an excellent job operating the trail. In fact, county crews were out putting the finishing touches on wheelchair-friendly crossings at several Bloomingdale intersections. The trail is paved in town so folks with disabilities can get out and about on what was intended all along to be a multiuse linear park linking Kalamazoo and South Haven.

We certainly enjoyed the paved portion of the trail through Bloomingdale but also didn't mind returning to the crushed stone portion east of town.

I was all for hitting Gobles, but Natalie nattered otherwise. "We'll have a potty break up ahead just beyond the 18-mile mark, and then we'll turn around and into a headwind, which should hopefully keep those deerflies at bay," she said.

But she was wrong.

Deerflies by the hundreds were waiting in that bottomland west of Bloomingdale, and they would have gotten us had we not hit the racing gears again.

We enjoyed the company of a teacher from Grand Rapids for a time. He said he was heading from Kalamazoo to South Haven where his wife was waiting for him on the beach. We all agreed he had the better part of the deal.

For more information about the Kal-Haven Trail, go to www.vbco.org/government0129.asp or call 269/674-8011.