Could it be that spring is finally here to stay?
If Sunday’s mild temperature and cloudless sun-filled sky is any indication of what’s to come, we’re in for some much-needed warmer weather, vitamin D and extended time on northeast Indiana’s trails.
My wife and I traveled to Florida last week to spend six days on the Gulf Coast, where it was in the upper 70s every day with sunny skies minus one day of torrential rain. We were ready to return on Saturday to the Sunshine State after coming home to light snow late Friday night, but Sunday’s spring-like weather changed our minds.
While spring officially arrived last month, my internal spring calendar tells me the season doesn’t begin until you set out the patio furniture, clean the grill and start logging daily miles on the area’s paved trails.
There have been a few years when I misjudged spring’s arrival, but my internal calendar told me Sunday’s weather would be here to stay. I hope my spring instinct this year is more accurate than my ability to pick NCAA’s winning teams during the annual March Madness competition, but I digress.
My wife and I spent most of Sunday afternoon cleaning our patio furniture and putting it back outside after it had been shoved in a corner of the garage since October. Spring was certainly in the air as we opened up the house while getting the patio ready outside.
I had forgotten, however, how much a well-meaning 2-year-old golden retriever can slow down the process and our ability to make progress.
It turns out that wiping down patio furniture is much easier than cleaning a 100-pound dog’s muddy paws not once but twice after he couldn’t resist running into the one patch of our yard where grass hasn’t grown yet. It’s as if Santiago thinks there is a hidden treasure of unlimited peanut butter Kong toys buried just below the surface in the one part of the yard that is all mud.
Planting grass seed in that one patch has now turned into priority No. 1.
We saw a lot more sand and sod, however, than mud during our six-day jaunt to Florida.
We were in Dunedin, Fla., a city in Pinellas County about 12 miles from the St. Pete-Clearwater Airport on the Gulf Coast, which makes getting there from Fort Wayne on a two-hour flight a breeze.
My wife’s parents have a place in Dunedin, and one of the highlights of visiting this city that is home to 36,000 people is being able to walk or bike so easily.
In addition to all of the sidewalks and pedestrian-friendly paths to the downtown, the Pinellas Trail also passes through Dunedin.
The trail covers some 50 miles and extends from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs. It’s accessible to bikers, runners and walkers — and motorized scooters, we learned last week. The trail is always as busy as Bluffton’s Rivergreenway on a nice spring, summer or fall evening.
We love to spend as much time as possible each time we visit using the trials, and this year’s trip was no exception as we biked a few mornings and walked several miles the other days we were there. It seems that we saw more electric bikes than ever before as the riders buzzed by us on our walks.
One of the most appealing parts of any community is the value that town or city puts on making trails accessible to its citizenry. Bluffton’s ongoing efforts to maintain and expand trails in and around the city will continue to pay dividends for years to come as both people and businesses look to locate or relocate to the Parlor City and Wells County. Having a developed and maintained trail system in place is a key metric to improve a community’s quality of life.
I bought my first house in 2012 and sold it in 2021 when my wife and I moved .7 miles to a different house. Both homes were within 1,000 feet of being connected to either a trail system or a sidewalk that eventually connected to a trail.
We spent almost two years trying to find a house when we decided in late 2019 that we needed more room. One of the non-negotiables, we told our real estate agent, was that any house we looked at had to be either near a trail or a sidewalk that connected to a trail.
Having such infrastructure in place matters to us, and I know we’re not alone based off the increased amount of traffic you see on trails these days — those in northeast Indiana and those in Pinellas County, Florida.
The Interurban Trail that connects downtown Bluffton to the city’s north side is one of the best additions to our city this century, and we look forward to seeing even more pathways connected and expanded in the coming years.
Now if only these spring-like temperatures could replace Indiana’s cold winters so we could use the trails more …
Hey, a guy can do a little wishful thinking every now and then.
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
