Spring in Chicago does not always arrive promptly but this year the absence of a real winter has meant that it has.  With nice weather comes the possibility of boating and that means the annual migration of the boats from their winter storage to the marinas for the summer.  For anyone with some height to their boat, i.e. sailing boats, this requires you to make use of the bi-weekly bridge opening schedule.

A look online told me that the first opening of the season was coming up on Saturday so I decided to take a look.  The weather was great and so some good shooting opportunities should have been available.  I wandered along the river inland since no bridges along the main stretch were open yet so I had time to get to Wolf Point where the river splits.  Along the way I grabbed a few shots of things that appealed to me.

At Wolf Point, I had two disappointments.  First, the water birds were very active right in front of me but I only had a wide angle and a fish-eye with me so no good opportunity to get any shots.  Second, looking all the way down the south branch, I couldn’t see any sign of activity.  Since I had a limited amount of time before Nancy and I were planning on heading out, this looked like it was going to be a bust.

So it turned out, I wandered back towards home and we went out.  When we returned in the middle of the afternoon, the bridges by us were just going down.  That many hours would have been a disappointingly long time to wait.  Maybe next week.