Hiking in January's Snow

Our group of retirees hiked over 50 miles in the snows of January, both on trails and bushwacking cross country in 10 or so different forest preserves in Lake, Cook, and McHenry counties.

We rarely saw other people -- occasionally some other hikers, a few dog walkers, a couple snowshoers, and a few skiers -- but we did see many dozens of deer including a number of the more reclusive bucks, and twice we had the joy of seeing coyotes out in the open and a bit curious about us, as seen below...

Here we are crossing a field back to our vehicles.  Kind of reminded me of a Beatles album cover!

Hiking the narrow secondary and tertiary trails gives us a more intimate encounter with Nature...

For once, I managed to get into the photo, surrounded by my two buddies Len and Dave...

As I write this post, what the weathermen are already calling "The Great Chicago Blizzard of 2011" is a mere hour away.  It has left foot and a half depths across the states to our west and south and is bearing down directly at Chicago.  The prognosticators claim this storm will rank in the top 5 of our all-time record storms, perhaps even topping the records of 1967 which I wrote about here.   So check back in a few days and I'll reports of the storm and of our snowshoeing in its remains.