Boise

Douwe and I spent a few days in Idaho at the end of May to visit Jeff's sister Kim and her family. Mom Groen was already out there a few days ahead of us so we all flew back together. It was great to hang out with Kim and Bob and Chloe and Charlie, and we always enjoy the great meals they prepare for our visit. Our return trip was delayed for a total of five hours, but Douwe didn't mind at all, more time to enjoy the airport and all the airplanes!

Bike Ride #2

We took our second special biking excursion of 2010 today, this time on a trail we have long wanted to try, but never have yet. The North Branch of the Chicago River has a large forest preserve section following the river and the Skokie bogs, and there is a bike path and bridle path along most of it.

We headed north at noon right after church again, and it took about 90 minutes to get to our destination because of traffic on the north side of Chicago. Douwe napped most of the way, which we were hoping he would do, b/c it is uncomfortable to nod off in the bike trailer. We picnicked with the help of California Pizza Kitchen at the trail head we chose, than biked north along the river to the end of the trail which goes right into the Chicago Botanic Gardens. We entered the CBG free of charge because their only entrance fee is for automobiles and we spent an hour or so strolling the gardens, especially the amazing kitchen gardens. It was a cool day, but beautiful and sunny. There were many spots along the river and bogs where people were fishing and canoeing and kayaking, and also many bikers of course. It was a beautiful afternoon and we biked about 10 miles total.



Although our goal was to be back home by 5 pm, we were way past that mark so we stopped off in Wrigleyville to enjoy a dish of Penny's Noodles. Douwe was thrilled b/c this tiny restaurant is under the el where the brown line and red line meet, so he was craning his neck the whole time to watch for a train. We sat in a chair outside on the corner for 10 minutes after dinner and Douwe was entertained by taxis trains motorcycles city busses and all the other vehicles that show up on a busy city intersection.

Saturday exploring

This time, it was Jeff's turn to pick a spot. His agenda was Marktown and Calumet Fisheries. After a day of chores around the house, we headed north on Calumet Avenue at about 4 pm to find a tiny little subdivision surrounded by steel mills in East Chicago.

This geographical spot has a place in architectural and industrial history, and a lot of people who are interested in the story it has to tell. Here's a site with more information about the planned community of Marktown. We stopped to play at the park for a few minutes, then took the 3 minute driving tour of the area, and decided it was too chilly for the walking tour. Most of the houses were in serious states of dilapidation, but you can tell it was once a very interesting and beautiful place to live.

While we were on the topic of planned industrial communities, we decided to drive through the Historic Pullman neighborhood. But first, it was suppertime! Jeff had noticed that a little smokeshack in southeast Chicago, called Calumet Fisheries recently won a special James Beard award for being an American Classic. It is the tiniest little white building perched on top of the 95th street bridge over the Calumet River.

This bridge has some fame for being the one that was jumped by a car while partially open in the 1980 movie called The Blues Brothers, which I have never seen.
No place to eat inside so we took our deep fried scallops and catfish dinners
a mile or so east to the lakeshore in Calumet Park, which is a huge lakefront greenspace that we have explored in the past. We ate in the car, parked up to the lakefront. This park is an interesting place because it has a view of Hammond and East Chicago shorelines, it has a Coast Guard station, it has a huge area for soccer players and baseball players, and it has its own beach. It is owned by the Chicago Park District, and its fieldhouse building has a very interesting field trip destination in the basement, a huge model train which is set-up and maintained by the LakeShore Model Railroad Association. They have work sessions on Wed and Friday evenings and they welcome visitors to come see this huge layout with several trains operating by live switch operators calling signals to one another, a more exciting and close-up model train experience than the one at the Museum of Science and Industry, in my view. The way we usually take to get to this park is to follow Route 41 along the lakeshore and turn into the park entrance at 99th Street or 95th street.

After dinner, we drove west to the beautiful boulevard of Martin Luther King Drive, past Chicago State University Campus and down south into the Pullman Historic District. We stayed in our cars again because it was nearing evening and too chilly for walking, but it was fun to see these very old housing structures in various states of restoration, rehabilitation, paint colors and landscape designs.

Then we tried driving as near as we could to Lake Calumet, which is bordered on the north by Harborside Golf Course, on the west by the Bishop Ford Freeway and on the southwest by a landfill and on the east by various industrial yards. There is one lonely road that goes along side the east of the lake but you can get only a few glimpses of this strange harbor/lake/swamp area. When we got home I did some internet searches to find out more about this lake, which is Chicago's largest inland lake, but it is a mysterious place. Maybe someday it will be more fully accessible as a public natural space, but someday is far away for this piece of land, I think. We drove through the parking lot of the links style Harborside Golf Course which is a beautiful spot. I was asking Jeff if we were weird to get so interested in exploring these less desirable locations of Calumet Region and he said it might have something to do with being interested in things that are generally labeled worthless, used up, past their prime, or polluted beyond repair. Does resurrection hope have anything to say about the defiled Calumet waters called Lake Calumet, Calumet River, Little Calumet River, Grand Calumet River? I think maybe so.

Thursday exploring

On a couple evenings this week, we explored the Calumet Area some more, this time by car.

I was curious about the Calumet Waterways, and Jeff was curious about some historic planned neighborhoods and a special little restaurant.

After supper on Thursday, we hopped in the car and headed northwest toward Riverdale on Michigan City Road, looking for a forest preserve section next to Blue Island in Calumet Park, where the Little Calumet River meets the Cal Sag Channel. We took a wrong turn and stumbled upon Fay's Point, a new housing/marina development that is trying to make the most of this waterway location. Then we found the Calumet Park Forest Preserve sections across the river, which have a boat launch, a golf course and a picnic grove all along the river there.

The next spot of Cook County Forest Preserve District exploration was on the way back home, near the Bishop Ford Freeway. There is an exit sign called Beaubian Woods which I have driven past a million times and never stopped. We came to this area from the west after a few wrong turns, and went past an abandoned housing complex and a military school set in this remote area of woods, so it felt kind of creepy, especially since it was getting dusky out. There is usually one lonely car parked in these forest preserves, and we always wonder if we are stumbling upon someone that is not glad to see company. But there are other explorers like us. This time it was a man who had a camera tripod set up to get photos of this lonely spot of nature. The roadways in this forest preserve parcel were very potholey and with rain puddles, you couldn't tell how deep they might be. We pulled near the launch pad on the riverfront and had the treat of seeing a heron right at the waterside with a fish in its mouth. The heron knocked the fish around for a while and got a good angle on it, then swallowed it whole. Douwe was thrilled to watch.

Since it was getting dark, we headed back to Hammond by way of 130th Street and Avenue O, passing a state recreation area called William Powers State Recreation Area. The more we explore, the more curious we are getting about this strange area where woodsy and swampy preserves are separated only by a fence from dumps and aging industrial buildings.

The South Shore

We had another special outdoor field trip today, joined by Jeff's parents as we celebrated Mother's Day with an outdoor picnic and an exploration of another piece of land preserve in the Calumet Region. This is a new parcel of wilderness, recently added to the National Park called the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which has bits and pieces of land next to and between and within the steel mills and oil refineries and railroad tracks and dune-side neighborhoods along Indiana's Lake Michigan Shoreline.

It is called the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk, and a little tricky to get to, but worth finding. The day was a bit chilly so hats and extra layers were required, but the sunny, clear conditions meant a beautiful color on the lake and a clear view to Chicago's skyline. The building was locked up, but it was stunning to look at from every angle on the outside. There were surfers and bikers and day explorers like us who were quite happy to be enjoying the outdoors on this little spot of beach.

We had a picnic meal on the ledge overlooking the beach, then explored the beach and dunes and pier for an hour,
and then we found the loop hike that goes halfway along the "river" (Burns Ditch) and then loops back through the dune landscape. It is a beautiful spot, and though you can see a huge factory quite clearly east of the parking lot,
once you get into the dune, it is easier to imagine you are in the original wilderness of the beautiful dune and cottonwoody south shoreline of Lake Michigan.


We explored this part of the region for the next hour or so, and came upon a new harborside resort community that is built upon a marina and across Rte 12 from the Ogden Dunes stop on the South Shore commuter train line. We found the public marina that is relatively new (built in 1996.)
We drove through a tiny town built in the dunes called Ogden Dunes and played in the park for a few minutes. We checked out downtown Portage, then headed back west to our own homes in Lake County.

Jeff and I both got much more curious about the local geography after today and last week's outings, and spent about two hours before bedtime looking at our Calumet Beginnings book by Ken Schoon and a couple state maps, especially to try to make sense of the rivers around here. It is very confusing because just about every river or waterway in this area has been very much impacted, to the point of flow reversal, by the building of new water outlets and ditches, the filling in of wetlands and swamps and moving of dirt and dunes. Many of the towns in this region have their origins as a sand mine or a clay mine or a limestone quarry or a gravel mine, so a lot of land has been moved and "improved." We had a major river flood in our next-door town of Munster two years ago, and so we weren't surprised to read that once upon a time, our own Little Calumet River, which is quite small now and actually flows different directions at different towns, used to be a mile wide in some places, and has a very wide natural flood plain.

I & M Canal Corridor

We knew we wanted to do a bike ride this weekend, and Jeff suggested somewhere along the I & M Canal corridor, which has lots of miles of trails. So I opened my drawer of maps and brochures (which I love to collect) and pulled out two or three about the Canal, and my new Cook County Forest Preserve District master map, and a Chicago Southland tourist guide and our Illinois bikepath book, and roughed out an itinerary for a day of exploration and biking.

We packed up the bikes and a picnic basket before church so we could head out for the great outdoors right at noon.

Our first destination was one of the two nature centers in a huge forest preserve section called Palos Preserve. We took 294 to 127th/Cicero street exit and followed the Cal Sag road into the preserve area. The first nature center we found was the Camp Sagawau Environmental Center. The building for this place used to be a farmhouse, but three weeks ago was the grand opening of a beautiful new interpretive center focusing mainly on the geology and anthropology of the spot, and which also had a cross-country ski rental shop and fireplace warming room. It was a beautiful building, and Douwe liked the elevator. We missed the noon time Canyon hike and Douwe is an awkward age for long hikes so we just browsed indoors for a few minutes then continued on.

Our next plan was to find a place where we could both eat our picnic lunch and park at a trailhead for the biking. Using two or three maps simultaneously, we roamed around near Archer Avenue and Route 83 looking for the best spot. We came across a little picnic grove called Columbia Woods that was near where many cars with bike racks were parked near a trail. Perfect. There was only one person at the picnic shelter and it looked like he was intending to be alone with his case of beer and carton of Marlboro's and his WXRT, but we ate there anyway, and our neighbor thought Douwe was funny with his head bobbing to the music.




We hopped on the trail and biked for several miles, but we were confused because it didn't seem to match the map. Turns out we were not on the I & M Canal trail, but a newer Centennial trail, which runs parallel but is different. There are three waterways which run parallel to each other at this spot: the Du Page River, the Sanitary and Ship Canal, and the much smaller Illinois and Michigan Canal. The two different trails were on either side of the large S & S Canal, but we ended up going west on one and back east on the other and got a nice 12 mile ride in, with Douwe snoozing in his trailer for part of the way.

Then we took a road that follows the waterways west through Lemont to Lockport, where we stopped at the historic Gaylord Building, which has a museum about the I & M Canal History. Ten years ago when I was a teacher, I took a continuing ed course on the canal, because it is of great historic importance to Chicago's history as a transportation thoroughfare before trains and trucks were invented. This spot of geography is a continental divide, so a man-made waterway had to connect the waters flowing east to Lake Michigan and west to Illinois River. This historic site in Lockport is much improved since I was here 5 years ago, with a brand new Lincoln Landings Park on its grounds along the canal.

This was Douwe's favorite spot of the day, because he had a chance to throw rocks in the water for a long time, and run around and climb on the huge rocks.




We ate our supper in the restaurant here called Public Landing, which was a much fancier place than we expected. Douwe stayed relatively contained in his chair or under the table with some cars so he made it through that experience even though the wait for food was very long. We took I-80 back east home as the sun was setting. A great day of history and nature in the Chicago Southland!