Orion's Photos: places - Illinois - uiuc - 2004 - forest_glen_2004_07

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Terry Wilmarth, Eric Bohm, Sayantan Chakravorty and I made the long hike through Forest Glen trail (part of the Kennekuk county parks) in eastern Illinois south of Danville this pleasant Sunday, July 24, 2004.

A storm had passed through a few weeks before, and there were a huge number of downed trees at the trailhead [0050-0051]. A few downed trees actually makes for a more interesting hike. The trail is highly improved, with nice stairs [0052] and bridges [0056-0057] in most places.

Like many river bottoms in this area, coal seams can be found at river banks [0061-0062,0074]. We found a very interesting rock, likely some sort of hardened clay, that resembled a turtle shell [0078].

The insect life was also interesting. We found a beautiful vivid turqouise and black dragonfly [0064-0067]. A huge number of strangely-shaped spiders populated the woods--they have a very small forebody and a huge hind end shaped like a large inverted pyramid. Their pyramidal hindquarters are ringed with spikes on top, and have a small dot at the downward-facing point of the pyramid, which I speculate is their silk spinner. They came in yellow [0072-0073] as well as iridescent silver [0082-0089]. There was also a huge hornet's nest near the end of the trail [0091].

An unknown critter made these large, 4-pronged tracks in quite hard mud on the river bottom [0080-0081]. They're about the size of deer tracks, but they don't look like anything I've seen.

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All images taken by Orion Lawlor and placed completely in the public domain.
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