A perfect day for a hike, so we went to the Forest Glen Preserve, where we not only got our hike, we got it with extra wildlife.

We scoped out several trails, with an eye toward bring Jackie’s mom with us later in the spring. We thought the trail we hiked on last year, the Big Woods trail, would be too rugged, so we wanted to evaluate some of the other trails as possible alternatives.

The first trail we tried was the Beach Grove trail, which is short (about a third of a mile) and paved. It’s marked as being handicapped accessible, although seemed a bit rugged for someone in a wheelchair or scooter. It’s the trail where we saw these deer!

After that, we moved on to the Willow Creek trail. It’s probably closer to what we want for Barbara. It’s not paved, it’s longer (about a mile), and it’s got some change in elevation (without being as rugged as the Big Woods trail). It also had some wildlife! We saw a red-bellied woodpecker before we even got on the trail. Then, just past the trail head, I saw what I assumed would be a hawk—except once he landed right in front of us, I was able to see that it was a barred owl. He sat there for a while, turning his head to look at us, and then off to the side to give us a profile view, and flew off silently the way owls do. We also saw a whole big flock of wild turkeys. They were too coy for me to get a photo of, but near the trail head, we’d seen this guy in a big pen.

Back on one of the park roads, we saw a big male ring-necked pheasant.

The Big Woods trail leads to an observation tower that we hadn’t climbed on our previous hike, but there’s an easier way to get there, hiking up an “official vehicles only” access road. We hiked up there and climbed to the top of the observation tower, which gave us a great view of the surroundings, and also a particularly good view of the turkey vultures that were soaring all around at just about the same height as the observation platform, often coming close enough that we could see the red of their heads. (Despite the great view we had, I didn’t manage to get a worthwhile picture of the vultures.)

All in all, a great outing, and I think we have a plan for when we bring Barbara—the Willow Creek trail, followed by the Beach Grove trail if we’re all up for more hiking after.