Walk Ann Arbor, from the Diag to the river

Ann Arbor is a college town where the campus and the downtown run into each other, with a river valley of parks on the edge. FOG starts the map dark and clears only where you walk, so a semester of walking leaves a real picture behind.

Campus and downtown

The University of Michigan Central Campus sits right against downtown. The Diag, the big diagonal crossing of paths in the middle, links the Hatcher Graduate Library, the Michigan Union and the Law Quad, whose Gothic courtyards are worth a detour. South University and State Street are the student strips on its edges.

Main Street, a few blocks west, is the old downtown of restaurants and storefronts, and it closes to cars for festivals in summer. Kerrytown, to the north, has the Farmers Market under its open sheds, open year round on Saturdays, and a cluster of old brick buildings around it.

The river side

The Huron River curves around the north and east of the city. Gallup Park, Argo Park and the Border to Border Trail give long, mostly flat paths along the water, and Nichols Arboretum, the Arb, drops from the medical campus down to the river through meadows and woods with a famous peony garden in late spring.

A good loop: the Diag, State Street, Main Street, up to Kerrytown, down through the Arb to the river, then back up along Washtenaw. It is roughly five miles and covers the core of the city in one go.

Seasons and coverage

Winters are cold and grey, with snow from December into March, and the campus sidewalks are cleared fast. Football Saturdays in autumn fill the streets around the Big House, the stadium south of the centre.

The central grid is tight and walkable, so the first few square miles fill in quickly. The neighbourhoods around Burns Park and the Old West Side are quiet tree lined blocks that are easy to clear one street at a time.

How FOG keeps score here

FOG starts with the whole world under fog. Every place you physically walk clears a circle of roughly 400 feet around you, and that ground stays clear for good. It keeps working with the app closed and the screen off once you allow background location, so the walk to dinner counts as much as the planned loop.

There is no account, no sign-up and no cloud. The trail lives on your phone and nowhere else, and you can export a GPX backup whenever you like. Exploring is free; one purchase of FOG Unlimited adds the higher ranks, all five character paths and history import, with no subscription.

Questions people actually ask

Start with a dark map.

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