We are at Indiana Dunes National Park today.
Is this what you expected when we said Indiana Dunes? I thought dunes, warm weather, beach,
sunny, not at all what we're experiencing today. And what do you do when you're at a national park
or some other place that you've taken time out to visit and the weather is awful? I
guess you just gotta find some way to see it, some way to get yourself out, and we figure
if this guy out here can be in a wetsuit on a surfboard in these conditions then we can at least
throw on some rain gear and come see this amazing place. The next few days are supposed to be much
nicer. So this afternoon we came out to Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk, and despite the weather
we're gonna go out and see what it's like out there with the wind and the waves. Wish us luck!
And my sister is here with us as well, and she is just as crazy as we are I guess to come out
here in this kind of weather. So glad she's here with us. And we are all going to show you
hopefully more on a nicer day. Now we're going. It's cold! Let's go! All right so I
don't know if you can tell from the water all over the camera lens or all over my glasses,
same here, that was a little bit exciting. And now we're gonna switch to better weather. What
a difference a day makes. Wow! So it is bright and sunny, blue skies, so we're really excited
to go do a hike today to see more of Lake Michigan and the dunes. Something that I
found really striking coming back here today is that you can actually see the Chicago skyline
even though it's 35 miles away. It's this really pretty view across the lake. We had no idea that
was there yesterday. No idea. So we came back to this spot today. The weather's beautiful. We sat
out and had a picnic and we're really enjoying ourselves here a lot more than yesterday.
We've made it back to the truck, and we are about to head to our next location. But while we're here
we wanted to mention that one kind of tricky thing about getting to this Riverwalk area and maybe
the entire national park in general is that you're kind of in and among and next to the
Port of Indiana and the steel mills here and just this industrial section. So it's a little
bit strange for a national park in our opinion. It is definitely unlike any other national park we've
ever been to. I think the other one we could compare this to is Cuyahoga National Park in
Ohio because it kind of feels like you're in a residential neighborhood until boom all of a
sudden you're in the national park. So definitely follow the signs and even doing that it was a
little tricky for us. We ended up having to loop around a couple times to find this place. Some
of the signs are right next to signs for the steel mill, and then it says Indiana Dunes Riverwalk and
other areas like really tiny next to it. So don't be alarmed. You are probably in the right place.
Follow the maps and the signs. Yeah if it feels like you're about to go to work at
the steel mill you're in the right place. All right let's go on to the next place.
We have now made it to West Beach. This is where we are along the lakeshore. We were coming from
the Riverwalk so not too far. So there's a lot to see along the lakeshore. We're gonna do a dune
hike. This trail is named after Alice Mabel Gray. She spent some time as a mathematician at the
Naval Observatory in D.C. and decided to leave her busy life here in Chicago at a later point to move
out into the dunes because she took an interest in the ecology and history of the area. She became
known as Diana of the Dunes, and now this trail and one of the hills back here is named after her.
We find her story especially interesting because not unlike RVers that left a conventional life,
she decided to leave her busy city life behind to move out here. By hiking the Dune Succession
Trail you are taking the Diana of the Dunes Challenge. It's a short hike, only about a mile,
but it's steep. Behind me you can see the stairs that we are headed up.
All right we decided we're gonna count the stairs on the way up. Any guesses?
And what's the verdict?
I stopped counting. I think we'll go with 169. 169. It's official.
This is really neat. Neither one of us have ever spent much time in the Great Lakes area. Lake
Michigan itself is the third largest great lake, but interestingly enough it is the largest lake
that is all within one country, mainly because the other great lakes share a border with Canada.
All right so we think this is the selfie station that we read about. You come here
after doing the dunes hike and you've completed the Diana Dunes Dare. And then if you go to the
visitor center or I think one other place in the national park you can get a sticker for
completing the dare. So here we are. Definitely a very nice and very popular trail. We enjoyed it.
And we'd highly recommend it. It's very varied by going up those steps, seeing the dunes from above,
walking down through them, and then ending up the beach. It was really fun. You should definitely
do this one. Now we're going to show you some more of the coastline here at the national park
and then finish with what we hope is a grand finale. We've driven a little bit further down
the lakeshore here. We're right next to Kemil Beach and Dunbar Beach. And there are a row of
five historical homes here called the Century of Progress Homes. They were part of the 1933
Chicago World's Fair. So they were at the fair in Chicago and then had to be
transported here, four of them by barge. And all these houses are very unique. This pink
one behind us is one of them called the Florida Tropical. And all of these homes blended you know
different materials, different modern styles, and still look fairly modern today because they were
so ahead of their time back then. So this one in particular blends indoor / outdoor spaces,
and each one of them has something else unique and we're going to show you those right now.
You can actually take a tour of these houses once a year. They have a tour at the end of September I
believe. Tickets go on sale in August and they sell out within an hour. So if you want to see
inside these homes get those tickets if you can. Good luck. So this house is the House of Tomorrow.
And it looks fairly swanky on this picture. In fact, my sister says this is 007 right here,
and you could imagine him sitting up there
on a home like this. But it is a stark contrast to what it actually looks like right now,
but restoration plans are in progress. One last interesting thing about this is the sign over
there said that next to the garage there was an airplane hangar. I'm not really sure where that is
or was. Maybe it was a little airplane but still that's pretty cool. While the other homes are in
modern construction this one is a rustic log cabin inside and out. It's made out of cypress but with
modern amenities. And what is also different about this one is that while the others were
brought here on a barge this one was disassembled and brought on a truck.
And we can also see the sign here that says this is a private residence. And what they did was
they did this deal where people could restore these properties in exchange for long-term
leases. So I find that really fascinating as well that people helped restore these, bring them back
to what they look like today, and still live there. Now we're gonna head over to the beach.
We are at Lake View Beach. We just stopped to have a picnic here because there's some
really nice picnic grounds. This is just a short walk down from the historical
homes that we just showed you as well as Kemil Beach and Dunbar Beach. There's also
Central Avenue Beach. So there's lots of options to get down to the water
with lots of different parking spaces. Now we're going to head down to the water ourselves.
This was a really nice beach to spend a little time on today. I think it's less windy and in
general calmer than the beach that we were at yesterday, but it's also rockier I'd say. So
take your pick of the beaches here. They're all pretty great. Next we are going to head to this
park's most dynamic sand dune, and this will also be our last hike for this trip. Let's go. This is
Mount Baldy, and it's the most popular place in the whole park. And I think it's actually the most
interesting. It's a 126 foot tall dune and it is moving. And it's actually slowly moving its
way into the parking lot here. Yeah apparently at some point in the future this parking lot
could be covered. In fact I think the dates I read were between 1938 and 2007 it moved 440 feet, and
now they say it moves between 5 and 10 feet per year depending on the winds and wind direction.
So look behind us and you will see that these black oak trees have been covered up by,
swallowed up essentially, by the sands that have been moving in, and the road that was once here,
it looks like it was the continuation of the circular loop of the parking lot,
is covered. So that's really interesting. They don't let you climb up this side. There are signs
that say please keep off the dunes, but I did read that I think there's a ranger-led hike to the
top of this, I don't know from which direction, periodically. And the next one was at the end of
the month so it's not something that we can do, but that sounds really interesting to us. We're
gonna take the trail over there around and see what it looks like from the other side. Let's go.
The beach here on the other side of Mount Baldy is another beautiful place to come and enjoy the lake
front. And I think it would be really beautiful at sunset. The sun is starting to come down a little
lower. We're not going to stick around for that, but we just wanted to tell you that we enjoyed it
very much here at Indiana Dunes National Park. Especially if you have time in the summer,
if you're in Chicago, or coming through the area, you should definitely come check it out.
Tomorrow we are continuing our trip on into Michigan. So we will see you all next time,
and we're going to leave you with us struggling to get back up this hill. Bye.
Right now we are where? I don't remember. My sister is trying to hide from the camera
although she's the most photogenic out of all of us. No, stop it! Absolutely. Come over here,
aah! I didn't know you were behind me. I'm sorry schatzi. You ok? All right, blooper. 23, 24. We're
counting the stairs. We'll see how many there are at the top. I'm at 23. We're already disagreeing.