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.
Early in the hike we commented about how easy the trail was and what good time we were making. (We had to keep moving to beat the mosquitoes.)
And then we started hitting these steep uphill climbs with deep, loose sand.
As we were walking we could see the diverse plant life and appreciate the beautiful remote landscape …
… until we turned around and looked the other way.
We made our hike a little longer by walking along the beach for a while.
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.
Our second hike of the day was much easier and more interesting.
How Mt Baldy has changed over the years
Mt. Baldy is expected to cover much of the base of these oak trees by next year. Several roads and buildings have already been buried.
These dead oak trees will decay from the inside and form dangerous voids in the dune. The NPS now prohibits climbing the dune for safety reasons.
Ranger Penny is hopeful that the new grass growing on Mt. Baldy will slow its movement.
Some of our hiking companions on the ranger led hike. We spent a good bit of time waiting.
This national park is unusual for allowing RVs to stay overnight in the Visitor Center parking lot, but we really appreciated it since we wore ourselves out hiking.
We safely arrived back in Middlebury after the wonderful experience at the Blueberry Patch. There was visiting, hiking the trails, etc. On Thursday, 7/25, we were pleased to take a tour of the Brinkley RV factory. We love factory tours. We will do a factory tour of just about anything. For the non-RVers, Brinkley is one of the newest RV manufacturers and has built four huge factory buildings in Goshen, IN. and are building what most consider a higher quality RV, using some of the newest manufacturing processes. Brian was our tour guide and he answered all our questions, allowed us inside some of the RVs and walked us through the construction process from beginning to the RV going out the factory door. One of the first impressive things we noticed was that all their factory buildings are air conditioned. Everything was clean and comfortable. Brinkley feels that their employees can do better work and produce a better product when working in a temperature-controlled environment. Some of the other RV factories actually have to shut down production when the temperature is too high for the employees to safely work. I suspect Brinkley has some happy employees. Brinkley doesn’t do tours during the workday due to safety concerns but since they were not working during our visit, it allowed us to walk around and look at things as we wanted. Many of the Brinkley work force are Amish, so the workday begins at 6:00 am so that employees can get home to their farms, livestock, gardens, etc. early afternoon. It was a great tour. We thank Brinkley for allowing us to tour and take pictures. Now where can we visit next?
Brian explaining how the walls are made
Brian showed us the internal components of the frame.
Looking down the production line
The RVs are built from the inside out
The roofs are built upstairs and placed on the RVs by a crane.
We left Cuyahoga National Park on Monday afternoon (7/22/24) headed back to Middlebury, IN for a visit and decided to stop for the night at The Blueberry Patch, a Harvest Hosts site in Mansfield, OH. This turned out to be one of our favorite Harvest Hosts stays. It is a 130 acre blueberry farm with restaurant, bakery and gift shop, as well as a U-pick farm.
With these delicious looking berries, we can understand why there was a steady stream of people coming in to pick them.
Nicest gift shop we have seen at a Harvest Host site
Some of our purchases
We had a restful night listening to bull frogs and the resident donkey.
As we were preparing to leave the we noticed the Gorman Nature Center was about a mile away and had hiking trails.
Since we were going to be driving most of the day we stopped by there on our way out and hiked for a while in the cool morning air.
After a good night of rest on Saturday night July 7/27 we departed Erie, PA headed to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We were less than two hours away from a National Park we had never visited, so of course that’s where we headed Sunday morning. CVNP began as a national recreation area in 1974. It became a national park in 2000. The park includes 33,000 acres between the cities of Cleveland and Akron Ohio. The park also lies within the Ohio and Erie Canalway. The Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail is the path where, from 1827 to 1913, mules pulled canal boats up and down the historic Ohio & Erie Canal. Today’s trail follows the historic towpath as closely as possible. The trail is 101 miles. Lots of interesting things to explore. We drove to the main visitor center, Boston Mill, and immediately noticed a big difference from most national parks we have visited. CVNP is very much an urban park. There are many businesses and communities scattered throughout the national park area. The area around the Boston Mill center was very crowded on Sunday. The parking lots were full. When we were able to get to the center for maps and information, we were told the parking lot at the Brandywine Falls (one of the most popular features in the park) trailhead was full and closed. We also learned that the train tour of the valley (Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad) was cancelled due to some mechanical issues. Oh well, we are flexible, and we love hiking. We decided to hike the Ledges trail which reminded us of the trail at Palisades Park in Oneonta, AL. You hike down to the base of the rock walls and follow the rock walls around the loop and then hike back up. It was a pretty easy 2.25 mile hike that was very nice.
Hiking the Ledges Trail
Why it’s called The Ledges
The Ice Box Cave is one of the popular features on the trail. It is closed to protect the bats.
The Ledges Hike summary. We didn’t hurry.
We also hiked out to Beaver Marsh, which is a wet land area. There were some huge snapping turtles in the lake and lots of birds to observe. There was also an old lock there that was part of the Ohio and Erie Canal system. Before calling it a day we took the short walk out to the Everett Covered Bridge. For those that may not know, we have some great, old, covered bridges in our home county in Alabama so when given the opportunity when we’re traveling, we always stop at covered bridges. Thanks to iOverlander we found a nice place to park for the night just outside the national park. Monday morning, we headed to the Canal Exploration Center at the north end of the National Park. Nice drive. Unfortunately, the center was closed but outside we found what we really went there to see – an old manually operated lock (boat elevator). While we were in the parking lot setting our next route, a piece of foam padding from a bicycle carrier rolled across the parking lot towards us from a car a few feet away. When we grabbed it and took it back to the owner, we found out the man was interested in seeing our van. He retires in a year and wants to start traveling. (His wife had just told him good-naturedly “Don’t go over there and bother them!”) This led to a wonderful conversation about purposeful retirement and NOMADS Mission Volunteers. We left them with a brochure and our contact information. Another “God Wink” and another seed planted.
Hiking the Tow Path Trail
Everett Covered Bridge
Lock 38 is one of the locks or “boat elevators” that had been restored to show how they worked.
How they worked
All in all, we enjoyed the CVNP. It’s different and can be crowded – especially on weekends. There is lots to see and do and we certainly didn’t have time to do it all. We will need to visit again.
RVing With a Purpose 