Friday, May 27
58 degrees this morning, so it was a comfortable night’s sleep. We have breakfast at a nearby McDonalds and gas up at $4.19. The nearby Scovil Gardens and Sculpture Park make for a nice start to the day. There is a zoo and a Children’s Museum in the same complex - very nice for Decatur!
The day began overcast, and a half hour into the drive to Indiana Dunes National Park, the rain begins. Very heavy rain at times and traffic is heavy as well as we skirt the southern suburbs of Chicago. We do a detour around some of the worst traffic on I-80, I-90 per our GPS. But when we get back on I-90 traffic is still very slow for quite a while.
We arrive at the Dunes Visitor Center and a nice ranger named Cookie Furguson shows us the key places to visit on the map. We ask and are given permission to spend the night in the Visitor’s Center Parking (thank you to someone on FB who mentioned this possibility!). The flag is at half mast for the school shooting in Uvalde, TX. In the meantime we head to the WestChester Library in nearby Chesterton and spend a few hours on the computer and reading while the rain continues. Really pleasant folks there.
We go back to the Visitor’s Center and watch a film about the park. It was first proposed way back in 1916, but then came WWI, the Depression, WWII....and industry began to develop the area. Finally in 1966 it was made a National Lakeshore, effectively stopping industrial development, and then in 2019 a National Park. It is unusual in that it is segmented, with two steel mills, Indiana Harbor and a State Park all mixed in among the National Park area! We learn a lot about the dunes and their movement and re-building. Many of the dunes are becoming forested or are overtaking forested areas.
After dinner, the rains have stopped and we decide to go have a look at the dunes. We wander a bit and catch a sunset at Porter Beach.
Quiet and cool night and when we wake up there are four others campers who’ve spent the night.
Love sunset pictures, but those looking across Lake Michigan to Chicago are amazing.
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