Saturday, July 27, 2024
When we realized just how close we were to Indiana’s only National Park, Indiana Dunes National Park, we decided to make a road trip. It only took about 1.5 hours to drive to the park that is in the far northwest corner of the state. As usual we first stopped at the visitor center, watched the informational movie, talked to two rangers and picked up a map. This park is another “different” park. The National Park surrounds the Indiana Dunes State Park and the two parks share the one visitors center. The park also surrounds two steel mills and a power plant with a cooling tower that looks like a nuclear cooling tower, but it’s not. From the visitor center, we were off to the recommended Cowles Bog Trail. With the additions we made, it was a strenuous 5-mile hike. It was recommended because the trail was designated as a National Natural Landmark in 1965 due to the outstanding plant diversity. We were pretty tired by the time we completed this hike, so we ate some lunch, took a break in BB – enjoying our air conditioning.
After some rest, we hiked the 5pm ranger led hike to Mt. Baldy. It was interesting to hike because it is a wandering sand dune meaning that it moves or shifts every year and is called a living dune. Last year it moved a little over four feet. It has buried a number of large oak trees in sand over the past few years. The strong northerly winds move the sand. We had an excellent and very knowledgeable ranger, so we really enjoyed this hike. The Visitor Center welcomes people to overnight in the parking lot, so we took them up on the offer, along with 7 other RVs.
RVing With a Purpose 