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With grad school done for the year (one year down, one more to go), I decided to take the afternoon off on Friday. After working in the morning, I headed down to Evanston to have lunch with Abby. We had been talking earlier in the week and had decided on Blind Faith Café, a vegetarian restaurant, for lunch. Those of you who know me might be surprised, but I thought I would give it a try. The short of it: I liked the ratatouille, and the macrobiotic plate didn’t look bad, either. I think I’ll head back down there again and try some more things from the menu, but don’t count on my giving up meat any time soon.

After Abby had to return to work, I drove down to the lakefront by Dempster Street and started what amounted to more than two hours of walking and photography (see map above). I started by the Dempster Street pier/dock and started walking south, taking photos as I went along. When I first walked up to the water, a fog started to roll in from the lake. I took a shot of it with my BlackBerry, and promptly sent it off to twitpic. As I walked along I would climb over the large rocks and get down by the water about every 100 feet or so, and start to take some photos. I went as far south as Lee Street, just to the end of the beach, which was not very busy at all. At this point, I found no reason to keep going south, so I turned around and headed back to where I started. The total round trip was about 4,800 feet, or almost a mile (Leg 1). At this point I was going to return to the car and head to campus, but instead I decided to walk north.

I passed the dock and walked past another beach, this one with more people, but still not very crowded. I went just north of Dawes Park, between Church Street and Davis Street, stopping at the fountain. Even though I was out having a good time myself, I kind of envied the people who were out there that day just enjoying the sunshine like I was. Most of them were probably like me, needing to drive down to the lake, but they just seemed more relaxed than I felt. After a brief break to stop and check messages on my phone, I headed back toward Dempster and my car. The total round trip for Leg 2 was about 3,400 feet, about a kilometer (to change up the units).

I returned to my car and was glad that I had parked it under a tree – the cool interior was a relief from the warm sun, especially because I was kind of stupid and didn’t bring any water with me. My next stop was the Northwestern campus. I parked right next to the lacrosse and soccer field. I didn’t get a ticket or get towed, which was a relief, since I didn’t have even a student parking permit.

I headed down the walkway along the lakefront. It’s a pretty nice walk when you don’t have a bunch of drunk undergrads celebrating Dillo Day, barely able to walk a straight line before 2 pm. I followed the path all the way down past the fire pit, again stopping along the rocks to get down by the water. There were a group of kids, probably in high school, a few of which decided to go for a swim. After a few minutes of hearing them yelling and screaming at each other, I decided I had had enough of that, and I kept going down the path. I went all the way to the parking garage by Norris. At that point, I didn’t feel like going much further because I was only half a mile’s walk away from the fountain where I stopped in Leg 2. I had also decided that I was pretty tired, and I should probably head back home soon. This third leg was about 7,400 feet, or 1.4 miles, long.

Overall, I had a pretty good time in Evanston. I took a bunch of photos, and I had a relaxing time not thinking about much. I’m also pretty sure that I’ll have to do it again at least once this summer, and maybe try out some other things with my camera. You can check out the photos I took on Flickr. Let me know what you think.

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