The Sleeping Bear

One of the questions people ask when they hear that I walked all the way around Lake Michigan is:

What was your favorite part?

While it's difficult to choose only one, I did fall in love with one stretch of Lake Michigan all over again: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.




This park preserves 35 miles of lakeshore and the two large islands just offshore.

This is a place I return to in my mind...and I'll get back there soon to explore this national treasure.

The North and South Manitou Islands are just offshore.

The barns below are also part of the park.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, Part 2

Lucas had the day off of school when I drove over to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, so I took him along for the ride. The shelf ice goes out pretty far now, but we could still hear the icy open water lapping at the far edge.


Ice is good for the lake because it slows down evaporation in the early spring.




Snow on the dunes can take interesting forms as the blowing sand covers, shapes, then moves off to reveal miniature snow sculptures.












I mentioned in my previous post that this area has incredible biodiversity and some habitats not found anywhere else on the planet. There are arctic and desert plants growing side by side here, trees normally found in the south grow on one dune, and trees normally found further north on the next. There are endangered plants and insects here.

A preserved specimen of the endangered Karner blue butterfly sits on wild lupine flowers in the photo to the left. The numbers of Karner blues are dwindling due to loss of habitat. The wild lupine flourishes in areas post-burn, and as parks have tried to suppress the natural cycle of fires, they have reduced the available area for the lupine to thrive.

Rangers are trying to reverse this by doing controlled burns in the park.

The next time you're driving around the bottom of Lake Michigan, take some time to explore the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. It's your park.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

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.

Segment 1, Day 5 Michigan City, IN>Union Pier, MI 17 miles

High of 41 degrees.

Janet Smith, owner of the Feallock House Bed & Breakfast in the historic section of Michigan City not only makes a fabulous upside down pineapple french toast, she also invited community leaders to meet me over breakfast. In the group shot are Pat and Roger Potratz (he's the President of the Main Street Association), then Naomi and Neil Kienitz (he's a wonderful local artist and she works as a medical




transcriptionist), then Janet Smith is on the right (and again in
the shot with her cinnamon bread).

While I was having breakfast with these wonderful people, Janet was on the phone to the Mayor's office and then to the local paper. The Mayor had a meeting that morning, so she called Richard Murphy, a City Councilman. He and Deborah Sederberg, reporter from the News-Dispatch, met us at the beach to send me off on the last day of this segment of the Lake Trek.

Heaven help us if Janet Smith ever decides to use her powers for evil instead of good! Michigan City should be proud to have her and her wonderful B&B (where I got the best night's sleep of the trek so far) in their town.

The beach between Michigan City to New Buffalo is gorgeous. Part of
the reason it is so pristine is that Mary (in photo with black bag) always takes a trash bag along with her when she walks the stretch of beach by her home there. She loves the lake, too, and we talked about the Lake Trek a bit. She asked me if I ever got lonely on the trek and I said, "No, I have the lake." She smiled and nodded.

I met some wonderful people along the way and look forward to many more experiences along the Lake Trek. The next segment is next week, from Union Pier to South Haven and I'll walk it with my son, Ben.

Segment 1, Day 3 East Chicago, IN>Portage, IN 15 miles

High of 57 degrees.

Since I knew I'd have to catch a ride to get onto the other side of the highways from my hotel, I walked the beach as far as I could before catching a taxi. This first photo is Jeorse Park which butted up against the hotel/casino property and stretched to the distant steel mill and railroad yard.

After walking the beach and back, I caught a taxi into the center of nearby Gary.







The best thing about Gary is this massive sculptural tribute to the steel industry there.

After hustling through the center of the town, I trekked out US 12/20 for about six tough miles to get to a road that would finally shoot me back out to the lake.

It was all steel land I had to skirt here. And even from a mile or two away, I could hear the thrumming of that industry. I cannot imagine working within the walls of those steel mills. When the mill was built in Gary, it was the largest steel mill in the world.

It was torturous to visit so many bookstores along the way and not be able to buy any books (since I'd have to carry them on my back the rest of the way). I did give in, though, at 57th Street Books and purchased a collection of short stories by Stuart Dybek. He writes stories
set in Chicago, so it was good reading them while I was passing through that region. By the time I got to Gary, I had finished the book and it was extra weight on my back. Thankfully, I came across a 'Books for Charity' drop box along US12 (of all places) and could donate this book so it had a life after me. I hope Mr. Dybek approves.

Shortly after heading north again toward the lake, I entered the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore area. I made my way up to Marquette Beach. I could not stop smiling when I saw the first stretch of sand.

This wide stretch of beach is bookended by steel mills. It is odd to look out at the miles of lake stretching from the shore, then to glance left or right to see the billowing smoke from the mills.


It is an area with a strange mixture of nature's beauty and man's attempt to conquer, control, tame and use that very nature for his own purposes.