Unlike the most recent weekend, the weekend before that was unseasonably warm and pleasant. Naturally that meant we wanted to visit a forest preserve, so I took to Google Maps and picked one I thought we’d never been to before: Crabtree Nature Center.

That sounds like a building you’d visit for the edification of small fry, and there is such a facility on the property (closed for now). But mostly it’s green space — woodlands and prairie and wetlands — on about 112 acres that are part of the Cook County Forest Preserve system.

Not far from the parking lot, which is half blocked off now to prevent crowding, a trail loops around two small lakes. I suspect crowding isn’t usually an issue, but never mind.

A pleasant walk on a warm day. Most of the leaves had already transitioned to the ground, making for a lush underfoot crunch as you walked on. Or the swish of knocking leaves out of the way with your feet. Distinct fall sounds.

Toward the end of the loop, you pass by some large iron-mesh enclosures, about two stories tall, home to a number of large birds that I suspect had been rescued for one reason or another, and who couldn’t survive in the wild.

Then it occurred to me: we had been here before. I remembered these enclosures. How long ago? I couldn’t recall exactly, but I did have a fleeting memory of pushing someone in a stroller. Probably Ann, since she would have been the right age for that right after we moved to the northwest suburbs, and I doubt we would have been up this way before that.

Sometimes forest preserves include more prairie than forest here in the Prairie State, but not so for the Aurora West Forest Preserve in Kane County.
Forest means forest, once you walk a short way along a wide path.
Supposedly it’s a path for unleashed dogs, but we didn’t have our dog, and we didn’t see anyone else’s either. Or anyone else at all.

A good place to imagine you’re far from the works of man.
Mostly.

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.

We’ve just had three warm days in a row, sunny and springlike. That can’t last, of course. Beginning tomorrow, days too cool to eat outside are ahead. We had our dinner on the deck this evening.

Earlier in the afternoon we went to the Raceway Woods Forest Preserve, which is in Carpentersville, Illinois. It sports a structure unique in all metro Chicago forest preserves, I’m certain.
It’s the Meadowdale Silo, and a nearby sign told me that it’s been in place since the 1930s or earlier. After the Meadowdale International Raceway was developed in 1958, the silo acquired a paint job advertising the race course.

If Wiki is right, the race track never established itself as a moneymaking venture, finally petering out in 1969. For whatever reason, nothing else was ever developed there, and second-growth trees returned to the site. These days Raceway Woods is part of the Forest Preserve District of Kane County.The walking trails follow the original path of the raceway. We started at You Are Here (near the silo) and walked around the northernmost loop: up the Uphill Climb, and it was up a fair-sized hill, down Long Straight, around Little Monza and along Greg’s Corkscrew. About a mile.

The Uphill Climb.
I wondered how wide the original raceway was. The current path is fine for walkers and bicyclists and the single skateboarder we saw, but it doesn’t look wide enough to be a raceway. I’d think that anyway, but I don’t know much about raceways, European style or otherwise.

The Long Straight, which passes over a creek bound for the Fox River, not too far to the east.
Nice views from the bridge.
From the bridge I noticed concatenate unpaved trails winding their way through the woods. Auto racing hasn’t been a thing at Meadowdale for more than 50 years, but mountain biking at the forest preserve is alive and well.