Wind Farm

Kevin's Aunt, Uncle and Cousin are farmers in northwestern Illinois on what I believe is the highest point of elevation in the state. There is a wind farm being assembled on their farmland, and on a few surrounding farms. Over Thanksgiving, we went out to see it, and it is really amazing. The windmills are enormous, and there are ~70 of them spread over the landscape. There were workers assembling a windmill during our visit, so we were able to see the huge crane and watch them work for a while. We were also able to get up close to a windmill not yet completed. This first photo is John and Lucy standing near one of the enormous blades of a windmill being assembled.

This next photo is the two kids standing by the center part of the windmill (I don't know what it's called - the rotor, maybe?).

Here is the windmill being assembled during our visit. You can see that the spinning blade part is hanging from the crane, about to be attached to the base. Apparently, there are only a handful of cranes this large and powerful in the whole country. The photo does not do justice to how enormous these things are. Kevin's dad told us that the people putting together these windmills go through a series of height tests before being hired, to make sure they aren't going to freak out up at the top during the assembly process.