Today is the DAY for different things outdoors and part of the wide variety for Wild Weekend Wanderings around Chicago outdoors–say local largemouth, bikes, endangered species, smallmouth and wild asparagus.
That’s quite the video to illustrate a point.
BIKING: Today is Bike-to-Work Day. While I ride a bit, I am not much of biker. Unlike when I was younger and lived on the North Side and would sometimes bike to work. That was quite the ride, either along the lakefront or a street route (taking my life into my hands) along Broadway or Clark.
But I digress. While looking around about some stuff on National Bike-to-Work Week, I found a pretty neat IDNR site for biking info. Click here. I have to admit, riding in public state sites is something our family underutilizes. Though we occasionally do the wonderful bike path in the Kankakee River State Park.
LARGEMOUTH ON LOCAL PONDS: The hot bite the past couple weeks has been largemouth bass on local farm ponds, subdivisions ponds and forest preserve lakes. From the photos and stories submitted for Fish of the Week, sounds like quite a variety of lures and baits are working well. And the weekend weather looks conducive for wandering your local lake or pond.
ANOTHER ENDANGERED DAY: I didn’t even know we had this day, but today is Endangered Species Day, the fifth anniversary of it. My thoughts on endangered species are too complicated for one paragraph, but the Endangered Species Coalition has some ways to celebrate Endangered Species Day. Teachers of kids with the end of school jitters might want to check some of this. Click here.
BOAT & TACKLE MARKET: The second annual Boat & Tackle Market is at Soldier Field beginning at 9 a.m. Sunday. It’s $5 (11 and younger, free) for entry with free parking at Soldier Field’s south lot. Click here
MONARCH MANIA: On Saturday, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum opens the U.S. premiere of the exhibit Sanctuary: Flight of the Majestic Monarch. Includes:
Wear 3-D glasses and interact with dozens of virtual Monarchs that simultaneously react to any movement. Study a 12-foot structure comprised of paper Monarchs created by children in Michoacn and watch a video of children creating the project. Watch as Chicago artist Hector Duarte, a native of Michoacn, paints a living mural that will grow over the course of the exhibit. Immerse yourself in the Monarch’s migration through captivating paintings, photography and sound installations that vividly illustrate how intertwined the Monarch is with human culture. Learn about the Butterfly Restoration Project, a conservation initiative led by Nature Museum scientists that bolsters the population of rare and endangered butterflies native to our region.
Looking at this reminded me that it is fun to find out things on the way to other things, such as this: Chicago is home to the largest population of people from Michoacn outside of the city. Well, it fascinates me at least.
ASIAN CARP: The second officially-sanctioned fish kill in the Great Asian Carp Quest goes on this weekend with cleanup efforts on the Little Calumet. Click here for updates.
LAKEFRONT SMALLMOUTH: Thursday is the next full moon. The smallmouth on the lakefront continue to be the hot story of lakefront fishing. I was surprised by the number of people trying it Wednesday. Granted, Wednesday was an awfully nice day to be on the lakefront.
WILD ASPARAGUS: It should be up, visible and findable around Chicago now. Though you couldn’t prove it by me.
PERSONAL PICKS: I will be fishing the Fishing for a Cure event at Braidwood on Saturday with Jeff Humenik. We are not fishing for numbers, but strictly one or two big bites deep. We shall see. . . . Haven’t decided yet how I will handle checking on the fish kill. Probably poke my head up there today. . . . This is just me and my little obsessions, but it is starting to get under my skin that I haven’t found wild asparagus yet.
