Today I went out to Illinois Beach State Park a fairly large nature preserve along the edge of lake Michigan. Here you can see the tallest buildings of Chicago with Willis Tower on the far right. I've come to this beach many times and this is the first time it was clear enough to get a hazy glimpse of the skyline from such a far distance.
This beach is nice because it has sand as well as many rocks and it is not over crowded like many of the beaches closer to the city.
If you like to collect interesting rocks this is the place to do it. You can find all sorts of different colors of stones including some swirly agates if you are lucky.
This time I found some sparkly linear stones. Sadly my camera wasn't able to capture their glittery flecks. I'll probably bring these home for the fish tank.
Along side the beach are some swampy rivers where you can observe wildlife and go hiking on different trails. This time the lotus flowers were blooming nicely. I was hoping to see a frog on one of the lily pads but they all leaped away when they saw me.
The seagulls are better posers. They are constantly flying by the edge of the shoreline looking for riff raff to eat. So you can just sit and use your zoom lens to try and capture them in flight.
I even saw a few common terns flying by but I wasn't able to catch them on my camera. Just the large seagulls.
Boaters were out in force today. The sailboats look really nice on the minimal skyline.
You could see quite a few out way out along the horizon. Some of them can tilt quite low to the water if they catch the extreme winds wrong.
Speed boats were out as well, they can stir up the water nicely to create waves along the beach.
Wave riders were out having fun driving back and forth non-stop. If it were me I would get bored after a while lol.
Off in the other direction the clouds were building up heavily. I wonder if tomorrow there will be thunder storms again. Hopefully it won't ruin too many bbq party plans for people on the 4th of July.
That's all for now happy #sublimesunday now I gotta tend to some sunburns lol.
!PGM 🚤
It was a perfect day for boating.
Wow, the pictures are really cool.
You are very good at composing your photo object with the right object precision.
Are you a pro?
I'm just a hobbyist but I did read the camera manual thoroughly to get the focus region correct with the zoom lens.
Happy 4th. Looks like a nice beach. I like the variety of rocks. Nice photos very crisp with zoom. Birds and boats both.
Lake Superior and Michigan have pretty nice pebbly beaches I vaguely remember Erie being kind of green and swampy with sand. Happy 4th to you too, I'll be trapped in my condo by parades and swarms of people, might make for a good timelapse test.
We stopped at Erie on the cross country move trip last year. In fact it was almost exactly one year ago 🙂 And I think you are right about the beaches. At least the one we visited. We used to visit the shore of Lake Superior when we lived in Minneapolis and it was very nice.
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My kind of colours and rocks!! Wanna have those pebbles!
We always come back with pounds worth of them whenever we go there.
So, you could get a small bucket for me next time!
Very pretty pebbles
They look amazing while in the water once they dry out they start losing their color, so its best to keep them wet in a fish aquarium or a pond.
I haven't seen these yet, very cool pebbles)