Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was full of surprises for us. The most obvious surprise was the dunes, which are huge and, at least near the lake, composed of white sand that looks like it should be in the Caribbean. Lake Michigan is also very blue, so if you looked from the dunes out towards the lake, you would never guess you were in Indiana. We were also surprised by the biodiversity. We talked to a ranger who said you can walk through five ecosystems in a mile, and while I can’t name the five ecosystems off the top of my head, we walked a loop trail of just a couple of miles and went along the lakeshore, through a hardwood forest, past a bog with a beaver dam and lodge, through some grasslands, and then through a pine forest. We saw turkeys and deer, and one of the trails we wanted to walk on was closed because a coyote den with pups was very close to the trail and they were waiting for the pups to grow before reopening the trail.
One of the other things we didn’t expect was the historical aspect of the park. The area was settled by Swedish and German farmers, who created and maintained very productive farms. Being right on the lake, the community also had a role in trading in the area, moving goods using the lake and the rivers. A number of these homes are being preserved in the park.
The biggest surprise for us was how the National Park Service has managed to squeeze a park site with such diversity into an area that is primarily industrial. The park is composed of sites dotted along the lakeshore, interspersed with ports and steel mills. The westernmost sites are less than 45 minutes by car from the Pullman park in Chicago. If you drive on the surface roads rather than taking the expressways, Chicago runs right to the Illinois/Indiana border, and, when you cross into Indiana, becomes Little Chicago and then Gary, which are industrial towns. In the park, you can’t avoid hearing planes, trains, and cars, yet you can walk along a beach that seems to go forever or through forests filled with birdsong and animals in the underbrush. The park has also allowed a few small beach towns to remain quaint hideaways for families who have had cottages there for decades. One of these towns even has five of the “future homes” from the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. After the World’s Fair, they were transported by boat from Chicago to the Indiana lakeshore, where they have remained in private possession although they are on display with informational signage as you drive through the village.
Because the visitor center is shared by the National Park and a state park which is embedded in the middle of the National Park, they allow RVs to boondock in their parking lot. That’s what we had done when we drove there from Chicago, and we considered a second night since there was more to see, but after walking miles of trails and seeing so much during our full day in the park, we opted to press on towards Lansing, MI.
Because the visitor center is shared by the National Park and a state park which is embedded in the middle of the National Park, they allow RVs to boondock in their parking lot. That’s what we had done when we drove there from Chicago, and we considered a second night since there was more to see, but after walking miles of trails and seeing so much during our full day in the park, we opted to press on towards Lansing, MI.