Indiana Dunes

From Wikipedia – Previously designated a national lakeshore, the dunes run for nearly 25 miles (40 km) along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. The sandy beach adjoins a grassy prairie, bog, and wetlands home to over 2,000 species.

• Established: 2/15/2019
• Annual Visitors: 1,756,079
• Size: 15,348 acres

Badlands National Park to Indiana Dunes National Park – Travel Days 10/6-10/8, 2020

Travel trivia… or bartender useless fun facts!

• Billboards in this region are, well, excessive in my humble opinion. Literally about 5 per 1/4 mile at times on I90 through SD to MN.

• We stopped in Sioux Falls. Very dog friendly town. We had lunch, with Rangeley, at the only place we have been able to eat indoors since we left over a month ago. Walked to a new artificial grass dog park with automatic sprinklers for cleaning, very clean and there were a couple of pups there to play with Rangeley, all three dogs were 5 mos. old!  We walked by the river. Great way to stretch our legs and experience yet another fun town.

• We drove from SD to MN then into WI, IL finally arriving in IN!

• Our views from the road: hundreds of acres of sunflowers, corn fields being harvested, huge herds of beef cattle, random natural ponds, rivers and lakes and a lot of wind mills!

• We got a cache in Minnesota at a Humane Society near our hotel. It was a tribute to a dog that had been adopted at that shelter.

• The wind power generated in MN ranks 7th in nation. 18% of MN’s electric power is from their own windmills. We saw many of the turbines twirling away! MN farmers were paid millions in 2019 by power companies for the lease of their land.

• A gas station we stopped at had a barn out back labeled ‘Amish Barn’…unfortunately it was a weekend farmers market and it’s Wednesday. But I was able to buy local cheddar cheese curds in the gas station’s market for our afternoon snack.

• We crossed the Missouri River in SD

• The fall leaves are beautiful through this region

• There are 24,000 corn farmers in MN. 96% of all farms in MN are family owned. MN is the 4^th largest producers of corn in the nation. MN is the 4^th largest ethanol producer in the nation. 33% of the corn grown in the state is for livestock…(MNcorn.org)

• We went over the Mississippi River from MN into Wisconsin 

• We went through Sparta, WI. Did you know that it is considered the Bicycling Capitol of America? The 1st American rails to trails was built there, from Elroy to Sparta.

• Going around Chicago on the I290, Gary and I saw thousands of large trucks, literally for miles! We’ve never seen that many shipping containers in one location at one time before on a road. Must be a good sign that people are buying!

• Really clever rest area idea … the cars/trucks exited from either direction off the freeway and all the stores, info center, coffee shop, restaurant and rest rooms were on a huge bridge over the middle of the large freeway, so you only need one of everything, not two separate rest areas for the south and north bound traffic.

• Got our IL cache at a brand-new LOVE’s Truck stop off the I90

Indiana Dunes National Park – Day 1    10/08/20

This park is awesome! They are very dog friendly so we are able to go on most hiking trails and on most of the beaches after Labor Day… with Rangeley!  The only trails he is not allowed on are ones that are for horseback riders only. Upon arriving at the visitor center, we noticed dog stations in the parking lot. There were pick up bags (which we always have with us but it was nice to see), a trash can and a trifold Pet Guide with places to go with your dog in the area and local restaurants where dogs can be on the patio with you. IDNP is a BARK Ranger Program park, meaning that they recognize owners that agree to the simple and basic rules of owning a dog and having one in the park…B- bag your own waste, A – always wear a 6ft leash, R – respect wildlife and K – know where it’s OK to go.

We drove Lake Front Drive from the visitor center, along the shore of Lake Michigan, towards the far east end of the park to Mount Baldy. Along the way are what are now private residences but used to be the 1933 Century of Progress Homes exhibit in the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. The houses were moved to their current location, from Chicago, by barge and are in a neighborhood called Beverly Shores. An area not inside the park but completely surrounded by what used to be called Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and is now Indiana Dunes National Park.

Mount Baldy has parking and restrooms. There’s a great wooded trail, about .3 miles one way, to a huge mound of sand that you need to navigate down to Mount Baldy Beach on the shores of Lake Michigan. We all had a wonderful time on the very quiet beach. Rangeley experienced his first waves! We even met a family that has a 5-year-old Silver Lab, like Rangeley, that was with them. See pics of Rangeley and Gary at the beach.

On the way back from the east side of the park we stopped to view the beautiful birds in the Great Marsh. The Canada Geese, Mallards, Great Blue Heron, a Green Heron and an Egret entertained Gary and I as our very tired-out pup snored in the back of the van. See slide show in this journal.

We are staying Portage, IN just southwest of the majority of the park. Tomorrow we will investigate Indiana Dunes State Park, have lunch at one of the many suggested pet friendly restaurants near by and enjoy another day by Lake Michigan on the west side of the national park. Stay tuned below for Day 2!

Indiana Dunes – Day 2 – 10/08/20

Today was another Rangeley, dog friendly parks, hike, swim, play day!

We went to Indiana Dunes State Park which is very dog friendly and located within the middle to eastern portion of Indiana Dunes National Park. The National Park has a 3 Dune Challenge which you do inside the state park, which we gladly took on.  We walked through lovely wooded campgrounds to get to the start of the self-guided (well-marked), honor system challenge hike. It was only 1.5 miles and a total of 500+ in elevation up, over and back down several dunes but the Lake Michigan views, wooded and sandy trails and the exercise were needed and we all loved it. After we completed the hike which starts and finishes at the expansive, sandy and small rocks beach, we returned to the National Park’s visitor center and received our reward! A sticker of accomplishment for Rangeley’s Yeti food bowl and one for my water bottle! Rangeley was exhausted after jumping into the lake after sticks, time and time again!  See pictures in the slide show below.

We then proceeded to take the visitor center woman’s suggestion to dine in Chesterton just a few miles south of the visitor center. We had a fabulous meal at Ivy’s Bohemian House. All three of us (dog friendly!) sat on the backyard patio in the 76-degree sunny day, at what once was a residence and is now, an eclectic cuisine restaurant, inside and out. It was an experience, relaxing, home cooked from scratch lovely time in the middle of our adventurous day.

 The last stop of the day, again, another great suggestion from the visitor center, was the Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education located in the western part of the IDNP. We checked in at the visitor center to get Rangeley’s BARK Park dog tag and took a wonderful short hike around the Miller Woods trail system. We saw a beaver dam, muskrat huts, a Ranger lead school group learning about the flora and fauna of the area and we learned that Miller Wood is one of the only forests that still has a healthy amount, but becoming very scarce in the Midwest, Black Oak trees. The fall colors and dog friendly hike was a great end to a very “Rangeley” day.

IDNP is quite an eclectic park in itself. With the state park, 1933 Century of Progress Homes we spoke about in Day 1 here, The City of Gary, IN having land in the western part of the park, a huge shipping port, Port of Indiana, two steel mills and a power plant right smack in the middle of what was the National Lakeshore, now the National Park. We loved the Lake front access (for miles and miles!), marches, woods, sand dunes and vast trail systems. I think it was Rangeley’s favorite park and certainly was a pleasure for Gary and I, now living in Phoenix, to have walked on beaches, hiked up sand dunes and strolled through forests!

We are off to Millersburg, Ohio next for a visit to our Amish friends and Rangeley’s breeders. We will not post until after we leave there next Wednesday (Oct. 14^th, 2020). I will take pictures of us in the horse drawn buddy, eating Frogmore Stew, and enjoying the sites in that area to learn more about Mennonites and the Amish but am pretty sure I will not have pics of our friends out of respect for their religion. If you miss our posts, go back in our blog and catch up on the National Parks we did last winter like Rocky Mountain,  Florida’s three NP’s, Virgin Island NP, the two Hawaiian NP’s and our trip to American Samoa!