Happy 4th from Chicago

Usually we had north for the fourth, but this year we traded the calm and quiet of a bay fireworks show and cooler climes for the bustle of the big city and a vast horizon display from the rooftop. We got up early on the holiday to head west and cruised into an actually traffic-free Chicago around noon, passing all the poor jokers stuck in stop and go traffic headed in the other direction. I felt very sorry for them, but there may have been a bit of gloating going on as well.

I was surprised by how quiet the city was. Obviously a lot of people headed north, but still the west loop was almost a ghost town. We met up with family and enjoyed lunch at bustling Wishbone, bustling not only because of the stellar food, but possibly also because not much else was open. The rest of the afternoon we spent playing at the park while listening to the live band at the nearby Jamaican Festival, but the best part of this holiday is of course reserved for the post-dinner hour, when we sing happy birthday to my dad. That and the fireworks, of course.

Curtis and Julie, the resident Chicagoans, had sold us on this holiday trip based on the grand display of fireworks to be enjoyed from the rooftop. I'd prepared myself for the reality to fall short, because it's easy to accidentally over sell an event based on rosy memories but the reality was actually staggering. Being right on the western edge of the city, night falls behind the skyline while the western sprawl remains lit a while longer, and even with the sun still hanging on the show started. Standing on the roof, viewing the entire western horizon, there was almost no small corner that was not alight with colorful explosions. Excepting toward the city itself, everywhere, all around us fireworks were exploding. It was beautiful, but more notable is the fact that so many of us, from all walks of life and in so many different situations, were doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment. It was a powerful, uniting feeling. It was amazing. Second only, possibly, to my dad's birthday, of course.

County park tour—Burns Stokes Nature Preserve

We checked another county park off our list today—a park only five minutes from our house that, strangely, we had never visited before. The preserve is sandwiched between the river and the railroad and has both wooded areas and a meadow. We went all together during the early evening and expected to see song birds, since that is a busy time for our feeders at home, but our biggest score on this trip was in the wildflower area. Calvin collected pictures of around ten different wildflowers, although we have only been able to identify about six of them so far.

Most of the wildflower shots are from Calvin.

Burns Stokes Nature Preserve

Huron River

Motherwort

'shroom

evidence of beavers?

Aphrodite Fritillary

Common Yarrow

Sulfur Cinqefoil

unidentified spider with crazy orb web

Project 365, week 26

June 25 - July 1

Project 365, week 25

June 18 - June 24

Hiking season

Though we will take advantage of local trails and pop into the woods on the occasional winter day, mud is a general deterrent for me, and we reserve most of our hiking for the summer and fall. But during what I call hiking season we do our best to make the most of the cooperative weather and we'll often be out and about multiple days of the week.

This year we are hiking with a couple of goals in mind. First, Calvin has signed up to produce several different projects for our county's 4H fair at the end of July. One is a collection of information pages on at least five different critters he espies while out and about, another is the same but regarding wildflowers, and a third is a collection of leaves from at least 15 native trees he has seen and identified. Plus we have a longer term goal as well, of hiking all the county parks at least once this year.

So far we've been successful on multiple fronts. This week we started our tour of the county parks with a stop at one of our favorites—the Scio Preserved Open Space, with about 2 miles of hiking trail through woods and open meadow, over some small streams, and alongside a pond. We took lunch and ate by the pond, which was pretty, but the best part of the trip was the hike itself, and Calvin found lots of things to add to his wild lists, including three bird species that were new to both of us.

Oxeye Daisy (not technically native, but an "introduced wildflower")

Great Crested Flycatcher

It's a slug race, with a green beetle spectator

snail

Five minutes of quiet often produces an array of creatures that were just waiting for us to be gone...

Indigo Bunting

Song Sparrow (common in wet areas, but not a typical feeder sparrow)