Starved Rock

I tagged along on a field trip yesterday with the school's Environmental Club to Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. I put in a ten hour day - five of which were spent riding in a school bus - helping to chaperon a baker's dozen high schoolers. The park itself is a rugged sort of place located along the Illinois River just south of Utica. The park was hosting their bald eagle weekend and I was surprised at the number of people who came out for the event. I was even more surprised to run into someone I knew from the boxing club. He and his family were stopping at the park and then heading west to Iowa to see more eagles. I never really thought about bald eagles as a tourism industry or as having "groupies". I did manage to see a couple of eagles. One was perched in a tree on Plum Island located in the middle of the river. If you look closely in the bottom photo you can see the white of his head. I'm afraid the new digital camera's not the thing for long range photography on misty days. It looks like one of those UFO photos. Fortunately, an eagle groupie had a spotting scope set up and was kind enough to let people look through it. They truly are majestic birds. I saw one flying while standing outback one fall afternoon a couple of years ago. I was shocked, first of all to see it, and secondly, how big and graceful it was.

The park has some nice hiking trails that go up and down through some pretty rough terrain. The steepest spots have stairs but you need to be in pretty good shape for a day of hiking at Starved Rock. There were quite a few old guys out yesterday. Obviously they were regulars because they had ice cleats on their boots and walking sticks. The trails weren't real busy compared to the crowd inside but it was really slick with ice in a lot of places and pretty sloppy in others. As the day wore on and the temperature climbed, the trails became a little easier to walk as the ice turned to slush. I hiked around for about two hours and had a gay old time, as they used to say.

The I & M Canal is real close to the park. I'm thinking a guy who likes camping and cycling could have a nice long weekend over that way. Camp at the park and then hop on the Canal trail and put in some miles. You can go pretty much all the way into Chicago on the trail if you were so inclined. It would be a nice way to get in shape for my bike trip I'm planning this summer.