What’s our idea of a good way to spend a few hours on a long weekend at home? A long walk between a small creek and a large electric substation.

After a fairly inert Saturday, on Sunday we walked a section of the Salt Creek Greenway, which runs 25 miles or so from Busse Woods in Elk Grove Village to the Brookfield Zoo. The part we walked was in Wood Dale, Illinois.

We started at an empty parking lot. Signs call it a bike trail, but the entire time we were there — on a pleasant, cloudy weekend afternoon — we saw exactly one bicyclist, along with a handful of walkers, including one other family with a dog.

The trail is decidedly obscure, at least to judge by its emptiness on Sunday, and we liked it that way. No dodging bicycles, for one thing. We walked a total of two miles or so, one there and one back, since the trail doesn’t loop.

Early September is still a lush season along the trail.

Salt Creek. The trail crosses it at one point, but mostly runs at some distance from the creek along this section.

Maybe people are put off by the ComEd substation on one side of the trail. It’s impressively large. I get a kick out of getting a good look at important infrastructure, but that’s just me.

Part of Illinois 390 is also visible from a short section of the trail.

Note the birds. For a moment, especially when they took flight, you could imagine you were in a Hitchcock movie.