On top of Mt. Baldy in January! I drove to the lake yesterday and explored the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore a bit in its cloak of winter white. The photo above is of me on Mt. Baldy, over 100 feet above the frozen and foggy lake.
The shelf ice goes out quite a ways now, which is good for the lake. Good ice cover helps the lake to retain its water in the spring. The wind was quite mild, so I could hear the open water moving at the edge of the ice in the distance.
Mt. Baldy is threatening to swallow the parking lot and bathrooms on its south side, so there are efforts underway to stabilize the back side of the dune with native grasses. This dune is a living dune; it migrates up to 5 feet a year with the wind.
When I was on the Lake Trek, I missed going to the visitor center for this area because it was a ways off the lake. This time, I stopped in and had a look around. There are some wonderful exhibits about the park, the biodiversity there, and the history. I'll post more about this park soon.
You're having a wonderful time filling in the gaps, aren't you, Loreen! Did you know there are hundreds of Mt. Baldys (Baldies?!?) in the Great Lakes basin? Anywhere there is a moving dune, a glacial moraine, a drumlin, there is a Mt. Baldy. And all of them are, of course, authentic. Don't you just love this part of the world?
ReplyDelete(Don't you just wish it could be as warm as it was last summer when you were walking around the lake? Don't you wish you could see the Cowboy and Miss Sadie again? If wishes were horses writers would've finished their books. Get back to work!)
Ha!
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear from you, Gerry. YES, I miss the Cowboy and Miss Sadie (and you, of course).
I have heard of several more Mt. Baldy's on the lake. And I wish that the massive dunes called Hoosier Slide and Pigeon Hill were still around for us to see. The first was located in Michigan City where the power plant is, the second in Muskegon where a large condo complex is just inside the harbor. These dunes were carted away long ago for canning jars and castings.
The book is coming along! Hope you and the gang are doing well!