Fireworks, Midwestern-style

My sister and her family are visiting this week, so we all went to watch the fireworks last night. Instead of going to the main park in Glenview where they are held, we decided to go to the lookout in the park at Lake Glenview. It's not a big hill, but it's in the middle of what used to be a naval air base, so the land around it is especially flat and they aren't any mature trees around it. You can see for miles.

Which is exactly what we did. We watched the fireworks from all the surrounding towns -- we counted at least 20 different shows that we could see pretty well, and at least another half-dozen where it was just a faint blip on the horizon. At first we watched the ones south of us, maybe 10-15 miles away, and they didn't seem like much; I was afraid for about fifteen minutes that I had dragged my sister's family up there only to be disappointed and embarrassed. Then the sun finally went down all the way, and the ones along the North Shore began, bigger and louder. We could see five in a row, boom boom dazzle dazzle boom. Then six, then eight up the shoreline. At one point we thought we could see the Navy Pier show downtown; we used the blinking red light of the Sears Tower as our reference. Then Northbrook, the town immediately north of us, started, and it was huge and close and we were all captivated. We start turning around in every direction, pointing and oohing, as it seemed every town in the Chicago suburbs lit up the sky and we could see them all. Glenview began their show last, to the south of our lookout hill, and then we spun between it and Northbrook's, the two biggest and in opposite directions. It was so cool.

My husband declared it to be, "Fireworks, Midwestern-style." My sister and her husband laughed and agreed; the hills in Connecticut preclude anything like this happening.

Unfortunately for you, I didn't take any pictures, although I had my camera and my tripod with me. The hill actually got very crowded with people (there were none there last year when we drove by and belatedly realized it was the perfect viewing spot) and between all the no-see-um bugs swarming around us (they disappeared as soon as the sun fully set) and the people all along the hill, it was too crowded to set up the tripod, and then by the time the big ones came, it was too late. Besides, to really capture the expanse of the horizon, with three-six-oooh-there's-another displays all at once, I need a wide-angle lens. Maybe next year!

(If you really want to see some fireworks shots, here are the ones I took last year.)

Today we're heading down to Naperville for Ribfest. There's a big kid's carnival section, and of course a ton of ribs. YUM. I'm also considering ordering one of these:


Do you think that will keep me on my Weight Watchers plan? ;-D