Scary (and) pretty

Since so much of our entertainment this year is walking around outdoors, we’ve had the chance to see a lot of the fall season. It’s actually one of those silver linings – some years fall can go by really quickly, without near enough close watching of the seasons changing. Here are some photos from about a week ago of the larger West Town area and Humboldt Park.

And in the scary category, people may have heard we have an election coming up. The Violet Hour mural in Wicker Park has been updated with this:

Also scary, Halloween decorations this year! Very small sample below.

Also continuing to be a theme is octopuses in the neighborhood. I found another octopus in a mural just south of Augusta and California, and noticed that there’s an Octopus parking service at our favorite restaurant Elske.

Today, with cooler temperatures, we thought it would be a good day to try the Indiana State Park 3-Dune Challenge. Readers may remember we made it up one last summer but it was so hot, humid and exposed (the trifecta of a summer day that leans over into unpleasant!) so we decided to postpone the full challenge until Fall. The temp was about 45F / 8C, not much wind except right by the lake, and it was a bit overcast but pretty bright.

Starting with a map of Indiana Dunes State Park, hands down our new favorite part of the dunes lakeshore. We started off at the parking lot near the Devil’s Slide, on the left, and walked along the lake then inland up Mt. Tom. We then wound through the campground area (lovely campfires going there!) and then up to Mt Jackson and Mt Holden. The climbs weren’t bad at all and gave my hamstrings and calves the stretch they’ve really been needing! Warning – color capture correction on some of these pics isn’t great. Trust me, it was all really gorgeous. Just not as pink / green as some pics look.

After the 3 Dune Challenge, we decided to take in an easy flat walk around the marsh. We’d never been to that part of the park before and found it really stunning. The super rich colors of the leaves really added to the scenery, but I think it would be really nice in all seasons. Also, we saw a really colorful woodpecker and a blue jay along the way. The photo of a tree below is meant to show the holes in a tree formed by a woodpecker. Lots of holes! In the marsh area shown below, there is a band of trees that lost all their leaves already and look gray – and it gives a surreal mist-like look to the landscape.

Not sure how many Wes Anderson fans there are out there, but his movies have a very distinctive visual style. There’s a phenomenon (and book!) called Accidentally Wes Anderson, where locations are found in the real world that look like they should be in a Wes Anderson movie. We found one today that I totally think could be added to the list! Note that this building needs to be re-photographed on a very sunny day with no cars in the parking lot. Will be a good excuse to go back!