More stuff

10-23-12 Giant purple spider seen down the street. May be alien in origin. It seems to be trying to eat a house.

10-26-12 The ramp is finally gone. I sort of got used to it after a year and a half of it being there.

2012_10_28 Hononegah Forest Preserve

Wilma and I have been here a number of times. It is an older FP and seems to get a lot of use. We saw a number of other walkers and a couple dogs. Wilma got some creek and river time in.

The trail system here is pretty short so we added in some road walking on the eastern side of the park.

I got a nice picture of some interesting fungus.

A nice picture of the river.

Some ducks on the river.

A short video.

Kishwaukee River Front Path 10-27-12

ETA 11-20-12
I submitted this path to TRAILLINK. They put it in, so I added a review and a photo.

Wilma and I have not walked much of this path before, although we did walk short segments of it on a previous expedition to hike the trails inside Spencer Conservation Area. It is a paved bike bike path in good shape and well maintained.

The south east end starts at Doty Park in Belvidere at South State Street along the Kishwaukee River. It follows the river south west through Doty Park, the Burgess Street Boat Launch site, and than along River Road up to Belvidere Park.

It has a number of options to continue along the river in Belvidere Park before continuing on inside Spencer Conservation Area. There is a good sized loop inside Spencer as well as a spur that goes out to Appleton Road at the NE corner of Spencer.

The path continues along Appleton Road to Beloit Road and follows Beloit Road all the way up to Belvidere North High School. There are a lot of spurs and pieces of the path that we did not walk on. We did not walk the section along Appleton and Beloit Roads at all. Not much in the way of scenery there.

Base Camp said the total length we walked was 5.3 miles.

It looks to me like the Spencer trail map does not accurately reflect all of the paved sections of path we wlked on. It seems to show part of it as unpaved but it was definitely paved as we walked above the ponds. Spencer has a bit of a park versus a forest preserve feel to me - not too surprising as it is in the middle of town. I don't remember seeing any drinking water in Spencer but there were toilets, picnic areas, benches, and a lot of other typical park and FP facilities present.

This map of the path as it passes thru Belvidere Park and Doty park is drawn with north to the right. There were plenty of typical park type facilities along these segments - benches, trash cans, picnic facilities, water fountains, toilets. There are places to fish, and playground equipment as well as other park facilities. We saw a lot of geeese and ducks, along with a number of squirrels. There is also a disk golf course inside the park.

We probably won't walk this path again as I prefer the woods over a paved bike path, but it is a nice walk, and you never know. I think it is plowed in the winter so if we get a lot of snow it might be worth another walk.

Towards the end of the video we walked back through what the Spencer map calls the festival grounds. There is some neat stuff there. A couple of log cabins, an old school house, some gardens, and a black smith shop.

Rain video

10-22-12
Rain as I was driving home.

Rock Cut State Park 10-20-12 Coyote on multipurpose trail

Wilma and I went for a short hike this afternoon. It was a little shorter than intended because we ran into a coyote who was on the path ahead of us and just sat down there blocking the trail when he saw us. So we went back. We have not seen a coyote in the park for quite some time. I actually got a pretty good picture and some shaky video.

Mr. Coyote!

Coyote video starts at 34 seconds.

Pedals gets accessorized

10-20-12 Fran has added some accessories to Pedals. A mirror, a light, a bell, and some tassels.

Stuff

10-15-12 Pictures Fran took. Fran's new tricycle. She has named it Pedals.

Lots of squirrels out today eating the peanuts and corn Fran puts out for them.

I took these pictures of the Halloween decorations Fran put up.

10-16-12 Seen at IBEW training center.

Seen on way home today. On Ridgeland Avenue. Not sure what village it was in. Well north of Alsip but south of 95th St.

bad driving

10-12-12
Someone clipped a corner and ran over a Great Clips sign at Logli and disturbed their landscaping.

more stuff

10-9-12 The Great Clips balloon is back at Logli.

10-10-12 Bathroom signs at Hawk's View Restaurant.

10-7-12 Rock Cut State Park

A nice hike. Only 3.2 miles according to Base Camp. Some fairly rugged trails, along with some goat trails and some bush whacking made for slow progress.

We ran across joggers, bikers, walkers, and a few dogs who were nice enough to bring their humans out for a walk. Even a 4 wheel ATV. As far as I know, ATVs are not allowed on the park trails, but we did see one.

Willow Creek is dried up complete at the west end of the park, but there is some water in it closer to the spillway. I wonder where the water goes.

We stayed in the SW quadrant of the park where there is a lot of grade change.

On the way in we saw a great blue heron on the spillway and nine turkeys by where we parked.

10-6-12 bumper sticker

Saw this at Perryville and State St.

10-6-12 Oak Ridge Forest Preserve 7.3 mile hike

It was a nice day for a hike. 44F with a pretty stiff breeze. I wore my winter hat because I was afraid my cowboy hat would have blown off. Good decision. Also wore my warm jacket instead of a wind breaker. Also a good decision. We saw no other hikers but we did run into a group of 8-10 girls out horse back riding. We hiked most of the trails. Base Camp said 7.3 miles.

I have added some notes to the park map as it does not show the new river crossing, and it appears like there is a trail segment shown on the map that no longer exists. Based on the GPS plot, it appears like the section of trail between marker 2 and 1 has been straightened out. A lot of the park trail maps are not perfect.

The preserves are pretty this time of year as the leaves change.

A few pictures I took there.

Someone got et!

two turkeys observed down the street

10-1-12
On my way home from work I saw these two guys in a yard a few blocks from home, so I stopped for a little video. Never seen turkeys here before. Buzzards a couple of times, but no turkeys.

9-30-12 Atwood Homestead Forest Preserve

Continuing our search for leaves, we came upon Atwood Homestead FP. I always thought it was just a golf course but it has a part along the Rock River that is also kind of traditional park with boat launch, fishing, picnic areas. Wilma and I have not been here before as the hiking opportunities are limited.

As you can see from the park map, most of the preserve is the golf course but there is a small park like area to the east of the RR tracks along the Rock River.

We did see some turkeys.

9-30-12 Riverside Park

We continued our drive looking for leaves and came upon Riverside Park - a village of Roscoe Park. Wilma and I walked around the gravel road once last winter. There is a football and baseball field here, along with playground equipment and picnic areas. Lots of Rock River frontage for fishing.

Not a lot to see there. the trees are turning but not real brilliant here yet.

9-30-12 Hononegah Forest Preserve Visit

Fran wanted to go look at leaves turning color so we drove out in the afternoon to visit some leaves.

We went to this FP first. Wilma and I have hiked here several times. It is not a huge place, but it is relatively close by and has some nice trails. Of course Wilma wanted to go in the water. This is the Rock River. Note the large mussel in the water.

I took a short video of Wilma in the river.

Nice picture of the river here.

The stone bridge in the park.

9-29-12 Lowden Miller State Forest Scouting Trip

After we left Castle Rock we made our way (somewhat circuitously) over to Lowden-Miller State Forest. Mostly I wanted to make sure I could find it. The road sign for the forest was missing so I drove past the turnoff the first time. Not much to see except some small gravel parking lots.

The local boy scout camp is adjacent to and mostly surrounded by the state forest.

We only visited the 4 parking lots on the north side of the forest.

Castle Rock State Park Scouting Trip

9-29-12 After we left Lowden State Park, we went back across the Rock River and south along route 2 to Castle Rock SP. I like to scout out a place before I hike there, and I have been wanting to come here and hike for a while so since we were in the area, it seemd like a good idea to pass through.

We drove through the NE end of the park just to look around, and then drove past the rest of the park as we went south on route 2.

Smokey was on duty. I saw him at Lowden as well.

The trees were in full fall brilliance.