Swim Report – January 15, 2012 – Coyotes and Tower Road Beach!

Yet another strange adventure out at the lakefront…

Mike and I rolled into the park by Montrose Beach just before 8:00am, and something just didn’t seem right. A “German Shepherd” out in the park was running around without a leash, and it had a strange looking tail. Turns out it was a coyote! While we stood there gawking, it nonchalantly trotted past the car and down the road (probably in search of the even more elusive Midwest species of road runner).

Here is a pic and video clip:

After this brief encounter, we checked out the MSW swim area. I had to navigate through some treacherous snow on the steps down to the lakefront, but the lake itself looked just prime for swimming. Unfortunately, the rungs of the ladder were completely encased in ice, and I did not have a hammer with me to de-ice them (my bad)!

So since it was just the two of us, we shifted our geographic target farther north and decided to check out Tower Road Beach up in Winnetka. When we arrived there, we were relieved to find the narrow, downhill road mostly bereft of ice and snow. So we parked the car, geared up, and headed out to the lake.

The beach at this location drops off very close to shore, so we didn’t have to wade out a long distance to get into swimmable water. We did a fairly quick north-south swim parallel to the beach – about 1/2 mile total – and the clouds burned off mid-swim giving us a nice, blazing sun right in our eyes during the return leg.

Overall, we were quite comfortable in our winter swim gear – with the exception of our fingertips. They started to get cold as soon as we left the car and got exposed to the 20F air temperature. However, once we got in the 33F lake, they “warmed up” a bit and didn’t really start to squawk until the latter part of the swim.

And once again, we had to make do without a “recovery tent” out in the parking lot!

Lots of snow out at MSW!