Chicago February 2013

This trip to Chicago was a cold one, and the lake was frozen with a pretty bluish ice. All of the boats had been put away for the winter. In the collage above, the center picture shows the ice and a large ship that serves as the headquarters for the Columbia Yacht Club. In the upper left, you can see the reconstruction of the Northeast part of Grant Park, where the new Maggie Daley Park is supposed to be completed in 2015. We'll see - it's moving pretty slowly at the moment.

On the top right is the auditorium at Millennium Park, and at the bottom right are the cannons on the grounds of the Chicago Yacht Club. On the left is the skyline scene above Grant and Millennium Parks - the deep blue of the sky was beautiful.

Grant Park reconstruction

We were shocked a few months ago to wake up and see what had been a beautiful scene of grass and trees (and tennis courts, a skating rink, and a playground) turned into dirt and heavy equipment! I wondered how this was even possible. A bit of research informed me that the parking garage under the Northeast part of Grant Park needed repairs to the membrane between its ceiling and the park soil.

The plan is to scrape the park off the top(!), make the repairs, and rebuild it as the new Maggie Daley Park. It would be even better than the original, and include such interesting features as a skating ribbon (an ice-covered winding pathway through the park) and a series of climbing walls. However, it was going to be three years of dirt until it was done. That's if it is on schedule, which I tend to doubt.

Lake Ice

I think I said it all in the summary above, so here are a few more pictures of this pretty ice for you to enjoy.