April 15, 2016
"Yet once you've come to be part of this particular patch, you'll never love another." ~ Nelson Algren
The weekend before last, JT and I made the short trip up to the Chicago suburbs. We arrived in St. Charles, and headed straight to one of the numerous parks in the area. Skies were bright blue, the birds were singing, leaves were sprouting, and temperatures had finally risen into the 70s. We immediately headed out on our bikes to explore the area. JT lived there while going to school, so I was excited to see all of the places he had told me about a few years ago.
As we started off on our bikes, we noticed the sun shining beautifully on the Fox River near downtown St. Charles, Illinois. We decided to take a few moments and stop our ride to admire the beauty of the flowing river and the wildlife around us. After taking in the scenery, we made our way back along the path to another park.
The next stop on our bike ride was Island Park. Island Park is exactly what it sounds like- a park on an island (really a peninsula) in the middle of the river. Here's a glimpse of the beauty of the river we were admiring! Also, most of the pictures in this blog were taken using a detachable smartphone fish eye lens so you can see more of the surroundings.
After spending a couple hours biking to Geneva and back, we came across this little creek that flows into the Fox River. As we started to pass it, I noticed a little deer about 20 feet away. We got off of our bikes to watch it, and we noticed there were two larger deer, as well as another baby on the other side of the creek! We sat and watched them for a few minutes. The baby deer kept coming closer to us and the mom would "call" them back to her. They were so adorable!
After that, we headed back toward downtown St. Charles for some fro yo and to walk around the area. The view just from the parking lot was amazing! Also, just before this picture was taken, my phone fell off of the selfie stick and bounced about 10 feet, almost falling into the river. We nicknamed it the "St. Charles Near Catastrophe 2016".
On our way into town, we walked down to the Fox River to feel the rush of the water. The water level was really high from rain the previous week, so it was gushing past us. There is a little "waterfall" sort of thing (pictured behind us) that was very pretty to watch, especially as the sun was setting.
We walked back up to the main pier as the sun went down, and attempted to get a picture in front of the sunset. It didn't show up well in the picture, but it was very pretty in person!
Before we headed out to get some of JT's favorite pizza from up there, White Cottage Pizza, we walked down the main road in downtown St. Charles. The lights on all of the architecture and different businesses lit up the town, and people were still bustling everywhere.
St. Charles is the type of town that you visit once and fall in love with it. The atmosphere of the town is very relaxing, and people are out and about everywhere exploring the neat town and all of the parks and attractions it has to offer. We will definitely be visiting again!
The next morning, we got up and left St. Charles to head to the College of Dupage where JT went to college for a year. He showed me around campus and all of his favorite things about it. The main attraction on campus that day was the weather balloon launch. Since he's a meteorologist and I'll graduate with my meteorology and climatology degree in a year and a half, were both weather nerds, so we found it very exciting to be part of a weather balloon launch!
When we got to campus, about 75-100 people were gathered for a presentation on severe weather and forecasting. At the end of the presentation, we got to see the professors get the weather balloon ready for launch. Once inflated, the balloon was about 5 feet in diameter, and the instruments to record weather data and a GPS to track the balloon were attached.
We then made our way out into the adjacent parking lot to where the weather balloon was going to be launched. The professors explained what was going to happen once the balloon launched, and we watched the balloon travel up the first few thousand feet before it was too small to see. The atmosphere was perfect for a balloon launch. We went back into the garage and watched data come in live from the weather balloon. It built a skew-t diagram as the balloon went higher and higher into the atmosphere, climbing to a new record f over 68,000 feet! Due to the high pressure over the regions, the air was calm, so the balloon rose nearly straight up into the air, and eventually popped, and came back down only two miles from the launch area. The balloon was even recovered right after the data was complete, and it was the first time they've been able to retrieve the balloon! It was a really neat experience to get to see the balloon launch and live data feeding into the computer (because we're nerds like that).
After the balloon launch came the event we had been waiting for for a few weeks- we were meeting with Victor about a tornado forecasting parameter JT and I have devised and tested. We got great feedback from the meeting and are excited to finish testing and eventually publish the research! Victor recently put our parameter on a private weather model so we could observe model forecasts of it as part of our research. We're very excited to see where this takes us!
Location: The Chicago Suburbs
Service: Biking, movies, boating, fishing, and more!
Price: Dependent on where you stay and what you do, but the parks are free!
Website: N/A