Starved Rock

This past weekend our class had an outing to Starved Rock State Park.

Two weeks in a row we have a class outing, two weeks in a row, we have crappy weather! Truthfully, it wasn't all that bad. When we started out, it was raining. But, within the first hour, it had stopped. So, everything was wet, it was cloudy, and a bit on the cool side, but, it really wasn't bad. In this case, not having the bright sunlight was a good thing. It is much harder to work with the bright sun and heavy shadows than the soft filtered light from the cloud cover.

So, we met at 6:30am at Starved Rock, with a bit of delay from late-comers and worked on our specific game plan. After looking at a map of the park and some discussion, we decided on a starting point. By the time we got going, it was 7:30...great!! I could have slept another hour!!!

Anyway, we started off on St. Louis Canyon. This is an easy to get to location with an 80 foot waterfall being the highlight! After spending about an hour and a half or so here, we changed location and started on the trail to Wildcat Canyon. Wildcat Canyon also contains a main 80 foot waterfall, and a side fall that is probably about 50-60 foot. I didn't make it to the bottom (we walked the upper trail, not the river trail), but tried to get a couple of shots from the trail lookouts that have been built.

After spending some time there, everyone was pretty much done. Between the early start, dead batteries, and full memory cards (as well as other obligations), we headed back to the parking lot. By this time, it was somewhere around noon anyway.

I hope to make it back very soon...as the wildflowers and trees were just starting to wake up from the long Winter, and I'm sure there will be a huge transformation over the next several weeks.

In the mean time, here are a couple of pictures from the outing. These are from St Louis Canyon. I'll post up some other pictures later this week.

Panoramic shot consisting of 4 vertical frames stitched together: