Heavy downpours lately. Chunk-floaters if you’re in a PG mood, but better known as turd-floaters. Rain late Thursday and into Friday morning, followed by two dry days, and then a very wet Sunday.

One of the dry days was Saturday. On that day we took a walk in the West Branch Forest Preserve, which is in Du Page County. We wanted do the circuit around Deep Quarry Lake.

The terrain is pretty much in the full flush of spring.
The rains had pushed the lake level up. Here’s a walkway, probably useful for fishing in drier times, that had been flooded.
A wide path (as seen above) leads around the west side of the lake about half way, then it narrows, with evidence — a lot of small tree and bush stumps — of fair recent path-clearing activity. We walked on.
To the west of the path is the West Branch of the Du Page River, which gives the forest preserve its name. It too was swollen. When we got to the southern edge of the lake, the path was impassible without a willingness to get your shoes, socks and pants soaking wet.
The river had spilled over into the flatlands near the lake. At least we had a view of the land south of the lake, which continues quite a distance, maybe looking something like pre-modern Illinois. We returned the way that we came. All together, about a mile and a half walk.

Last weekend had both warm sun and cold rain, but this time around the warmth came first, on Saturday, so that day we went to the Carl R. Hansen Woods, which seem to be part of the larger Shoe Factory Road Prairie Nature Preserve. If you can’t go far, go near.

The greening continues.

I checked on the map, but the body of water in the area doesn’t seem to have a name.

Seems to be an artificial pond, or at least a natural pond extensively modified by people, since it doesn’t connect to Poplar Creek, and manmade embankments run along part of it. We walked roughly from Picnic Grove 1, where there’s parking, to the west side of the pond and then back, maybe a mile and a half.

Elsewhere in the woods, we walked along a creeklet, little more than a damp ditch, but I was pretty sure it flows into Poplar after rain. A small bit of the Mississippi Watershed, one of countless minor waters that combine into something very large, was right under our feet.