June 2022, Porter, Indiana

This felt like “old home week” for Joan, who visited the Indiana Dunes State Park often when living in Crown Point, IN. The state park is now surrounded by this National Park (est. 2019), the 61st and second smallest of the national parks.

Overlooking the southern shore of Lake Michigan, the park hosts meandering rivers, oak savannas, windswept prairies, and wetlands. All of that, even though its surroundings look very different from most National Parks. It is surrounded by remnants of an industrial corridor, only 49 miles from a central urban area (Chicago), and has a non-contiguous footprint along 15 miles of the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Unfortunately, we visited the park on the jam-packed Memorial Day weekend….. and found no parking places to park and walk the dunes. Luckily, we could still enjoy a drive through the park along the Lake Michigan shoreline. So….we must come back again for some dune time!!!