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Let it Snow, Chicago: First good snowstorm of 2012

Greetings, readers.  Sorry for the long silence; I’ve been busy with other projects.

But there’s nothing like the first big snowfall of the season to get me out there with the camera again.

Here are a bunch of photos I took around sunset in Harold Washington Park, just south of Hyde Park Blvd.

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Photographer’s note: I made these pictures around sunset, with the ISO set at 800 and the aperture open pretty wide (mostly 3+ to 5+).  In most cases, I overexposed by about a stop to deal with all the whiteness. The colors you see are very much what the sensor registers, rather than what the human eye observes.  I left the white balance on auto, but adjusted it to “Cloudy” afterwards in a few cases to bring in just a little more color.  Also bumped up the blackness just a hair on several of these.  

Next item on the photography gear list to get my hands on:  A lens hood–in the hopes of keeping some of that snow off my filter.  I’ve got one for my zoomier lens, but not for the standard lens I use most of time.)

Best new bit of gear:  My winter Tilly hat, complete with ear flaps AND forehead warmer!  

Wyalusing 4: Decamping in the sunshine

On the Sentinel Ridge Trail

On day 4 of our trip–Memorial Day itself–the sun finally came out in earnest, and, sadly. it was time to go home.

Since it was our first real opportunity, we wanted to take a real hike nonetheless, so after decamping and reading about several appealing options, we checked in with the ranger to get a recommendation.

Sentinel Ridge Trail, she said without hesitation, was the most important trail in Wyalusing.  Running 1.6 miles (one way) from Point Lookout to the boat landing, it turns the corner from the Wisconsin to the Mississippi River, passes a monument to the Passenger Pigeon and a number of  Indian mounds before heading downhill to the boat landing.

“You don’t want to take it past the Indian mounds,” she warned.  ”It’s steep.”

It was a very pretty hike. We considered the fate of the passenger pigeons (originally ubiquitous, they were hunted and eaten into extinction), found Indian mounds of various shapes, and went down the hill to the boat landing despite the warning.  As we were climbing up, I kind of wished we had heeded the ranger’s advice, but cs10 was fine.

I was too tired to want to stop back at the ranger station to ask what this interesting dark headed plant was:

What are these dark headed plants?

It was a bit after 4, I think, when we finally pulled out of camp, which meant that, with a lengthy stop for a good barbecue dinner around Madison, it was 10ish when we pulled into Woodstock, and midnight before I had gotten my gear up to the Hyde Park homestead. We had encountered a little traffic jam in Madison as we were first getting on I94, so we abandoned the Wisconsin interstate entirely and took quiet state roads all the way back to Woodstock.  It was fun.

(Planning note: For reasons I won’t get into, the two of us ended up camping in group site B.  After the glories of the group sites at Potawatomi State Park a few months earlier, it was quite a disappointment.  The area was made up of a road with long, narrow group sites on either side.  There was a thick row of trees behind each row, but nothing to separate the sites adjacent to each other. In the daytime, you could see all your neighbors quite clearly.  Very uncharming. Nonetheless, the park itself is so beautiful, i would be willing to stay in a group site here to have access to the rest of the park in the daytime.  And, of course, all campsites look good in the dark.  cs10 speculates that group site A would have been better than group site B, since it was a little higher and flatter and potentially drier after rain.)

Wyalusing 3: Where there’s dryer lint, there’s fire

On day 3 of the trip we found another local product at the park’s camp store:  fire starters made of a mixture of dryer lint and candle wax poured into paper egg cartons.

How cool is that?

I’d say that two egg cups provided at least as much fire as one long, thin chemical fire stick. They charged us 25 cents per cup. If I’m recalling correctly, there was no wick, and we lit them by setting the paper cup on fire and then dropping the match onto the wax/lint mixture.

And the results:

(Fun with the new iPhone4 video camera.)

Wyalusing 2: A scenic emergency

I had a hellacious time trying to get our campfire lit and going after the rain ended on Night 2 at Wyalusing. I seem to remember introducing more and more chemical assistance over the course of the evening: fire starter sticks (quickly exhausted), charcoal, and more charcoal. But I had to nurse it all night.

In contrast, Night 3, following our canoe trip, cs10 got the fire going almost immediately. Then she drove to the camp store to pick up more firewood, and then back to the campsite saying, “Get in the car.”

“Why?” I asked, delighted by the now healthy fire.

“It’s a scenic emergency,” she declared.

And so it was.

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Blue River to Boscobel

On day 3 of our trip to Wyalusing (Sunday, Sept. 4), the rain finally stopped—just in time for our canoe trip on the Wisconsin River.  Wisconsin River Outings outfitted us with a canoe, paddles, and some very nice kayaker’s life jackets, and dropped us off at Blue River/Port Andrew, so we could paddle the 8 miles back to their Boscobel Headquarters.

It was a perfect day for canoeing—overcast but not rainy.  Pleasant temperature. And, though it was Labor Day weekend, there weren’t enough people around to be bothersome.  The water was flat and shallow, as we were told it usually is, but not so shallow that we ever got grounded and had to resort to a canoe drag.

And the scene was peaceful and gorgeous.  There were green trees all around us, with just the slightest hint of yellow leaves coming in, and there was practically always a sand bar in sight, so we could pull off anytime we wanted for a lunch break, a nap, or some yoga–which I did for about a half hour after lunch while cs rested on the sand.  I faced away from the river, but I don’t think anyone passed me in all that time.

Our outfitter has a terrific website with links to a great map of the Wisconsin River with all of their pick-up and drop off points and and plenty of other information. The owner, Scott, tried to talk me into coming back in the future to do an overnight trip complete with camping on a sandbar.  I can see why people would find this appealing, but our experience with the thunderstorm and potential high winds earlier that weekend reinforced my general feeling that canoe camping is probably not for me.

What I really want to do is to come back for a slightly longer trip next year — preferably when the fall color is out.  They do trips out of Sauk City–a little closer to home–as well.  It has got to be gorgeous.

Wyalusing 1: Water, water, and goat’s milk

I saw cs10 on Thursday, and she asked for photos of our two-woman camping trip to Wyalusing State Park over Labor Day weekend.

One should, as the axiom goes, be careful what one wishes for.

I'm quite fond of this photo, actually, but I'll take it down if the subject requests it.

This trip was the first time I had ever been to Wyalusing and the  “driftless” region of Wisconsin, and I have to say that:

1. It is the prettiest area I’ve ever seen within 250 miles of Chicago, and
2. I had a remarkably good time despite facing the worst weather I’ve ever encountered while camping.

     I left late Friday morning, picked up cs10 in Woodstock (after a lunch break at her current beautiful home), and we took state highways (rather than the Interstate) most of the way there, avoiding any sort of bad holiday weekend traffic. We arrived around dinner time, and it promptly began raining – forcing us to eat in a restaurant and cancel plans for a campfire that evening.

     The rain continued as we went to sleep in our separate tents and, around 1 am, as the lightning was starting to freak me out, I checked the weather on my phone, and saw a warning that 60 mph winds were on the way.  Campers were specifically warned to get out of their tents and seek shelter. After yelling something incoherent through the thunderstorm toward cs10′s tent and getting “I can’t hear you” in response, I finally yelled “Get in the car!!!!!“–where we took refuge until 3 am.  I don’t believe we got the predicted high winds (our tents remained right where we left them), though the rain certainly came inside them enough to dampen our sleeping pads for the remainder of the trip.

     The next day it rained on and off.  We took a little walk to Lookout Point and got a beautiful view of the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers, close to the spot where Marquette and Joliet became the first white dudes to enter the Mississippi River from the Wisconsin River.

     Then we took a little walk down a trail, down some stairs, and into some little caves . . .

. . . until more rain sent us back to have lunch under one of the covered picnic areas. After lunch, we took a drive around the countryside — first up the banks of the Mississippi River and then east into the rolling hills, past picturesque little red farm houses,and other little country businesses.

     Sadly, we arrived just after closing time at the goat cheese store, but we were able to buy some of their goat mozzarella up the road in Gays Mills at the Kickapoo Exchange Natural Food Co-op, which also provided us with fresh raspberries for the most fabulous raspberry pancakes later in the trip.  It was there that we got an explanation of why the area is called ”driftless”: the glaciers never made it to this part of Wisconsin:  hence the beautiful and atypical topography for our part of the Midwest.

     We stopped at a farm stand to get local fruit (apples), vegetables (corn, tomatoes, peppers), and honey. Also, maple syrup  was big out there, and I bought 1 bottle of maple syrup flavored root beer (ick). Generally, I thought it was the nicest possible day in the face of all the wetness.

     At night, the rain came down hard again.  We ate at a restaurant in the neighboring town of Prairie du Chien and took in a movie to get out of the storm (The Help — about which, see the response from the Association of Black Women Historians.)

     We were fortunate, though, in that the rain stopped the next day in time for our canoeing reservation on the Wisconsin River. More on that to come.

     (Photographer’s note:  I didn’t bring my real camera.  All of these were taken with my iPhone 4 and then significantly improved using some of the Photoshop editing techniques I learned in class in August.  Lots of adjusting of the curves, exposure and levels in layers.)

Boston Harbor

When I asked friends for favorite Boston tourist destinations via FB, one of the many suggestions I received was the Boston Harbor Islands, which became a unit of the National Park Service in 1996.  Surprised by their existence and ever interested in finding ways to spend vacation time outside, they sounded like a good idea to me.

But I’ll confess, I wasn’t that excited about the Island I managed to see.

The best part was the ferry ride out and back, which cost us less than a standard Boston Harbor cruise or duck tour would have:

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The Beehive

Picking up the Boston narrative where I left off, BAP and I spent our first night in Boston at the Beehive, a jazz club  in the Boston Center for the Arts. The guide-book in our hotel room said it was the new hip and elegant place to be.  We weren’t dressed for either, but we went anyway and didn’t regret it.

In fact, I was delighted. Monday night was their regular singer’s night. The combo played straight ahead jazz like you’d expect to hear at Andy’s, and the young vocalist was good. The really large room was 30-50% full, and as BAP noted, we were neither the youngest nor the oldest people there.

Folks were friendly.  We chatted with an out-of-towner and his in-town friend at the bar, and later with one of the managers, who seemed happy to shoot the breeze.

The eclectic, arty decor on the dimly lit white walls helped make the room a great place to be.

I would definitely go back if I were in town again.

Nerkygrrl on the Millennium Park fountain in 11 easy layers

Thanks to everyone who participated in AIP 7.0, including Nerkygrrl, who made her debut on the Millennium Park fountain in 11 easy layers.

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