Indiana National Seashore

What a wonderful day we had today… I can’t tell you how exciting it is to be in new territory again and seeing things that we have only read about before…

We chose our journey to Michigan City Indiana because it is a great place to visit the Indiana National Seashore and all the awesome things that are in LaPorte County. Today was my favorite day.. It is the day that we just head out and stop where ever we want…. We had a leisure morning and did not get started until about 10:30.. It was so nice to just sit in the sun and drink our coffee in the morning… We have a nice cement patio at our site at the Michigan City Campground and it was fun to watch all the early arrivals that are here for the holiday weekend….. Good thing we had reservations.. We have an excellent site and from what I can see tonight, things are all full.

The campground is on a main highway that just continuing on the road we go through the area that has everything we will need while we are here… We found a really nice car wash that is right next to a gas station that has some of the cheapest diesel we have seen in the area… We found a Walmart, Lowes, Menards, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Ruby Tuesdays, a nice shopping mall and a very big outlet mall… We also found three large grocery stores so I’m sure we have everything we need for the next week… About three miles south of us is Perdue University and the landscaping is beautiful… We will go there and get some pictures before we leave… I really love the Universities… It is really busy right now.. I don’t know if classes have started yet but there sure are a lot of students around… More on that later.

We continued up Hwy 421 until we came to Lake Michigan… Not far from that is the end (or beginning depending on which way you are driving) of the National Seashore… Our first stop was at Mt Baldy… This area is a huge sand dune that has been pushed south so fast that they do not allow you to climb to the top of the dunes any more…. They have replanted grasses hoping to stop the receding as it is almost back to the parking lot… We took another trail that led to the beach. It was hard walking because it was uphill a lot of the way in very soft sand… You could take one step up and slide back three….By the time we got to the beach I was dripping wet… I would be a lot more concerned about my condition except that I got a call from my Doctors office yesterday and after our blood tests on Monday they found out that my blood is way down again and I am back to being anemic….. That is the same thing that happened to me a couple of years ago and we never did find out why so I am just going to go back to taking iron pills again… It worked before .but until I can build the blood count up again, I will be struggling on our hikes… I got some nice pictures of that area…. We met a group of people that asked me to take their pictures… They were from The Republic of Czech. and visiting friends in Michigan… Their little girl was having such a good time trying to skip rocks…

The water was just like Lake Superior… Nice and warm. HA.. If you have ever waded in Lake Superior on the Duluth side you will know that it is so cold you can’t even put a toe in without freezing….

Our next stop was at the Central Beach… What a beautiful beach.. It was just starting to get busy when we left… The walk to the beach wore me out but I found and easier way back where I didn’t have to climb the dunes… Gee I love the dunes… The flowers struggle in the sand but they are extra beautiful when they survive.

By the time we had hiked the dunes and walked the beaches in these two areas we were starved so we plugged restaurants into Summa and they came up with a neat Irish Pub a couple miles back where we came from…. It was called McGinnis Pub and they had outside seating… It was such a nice day that we chose out… I ordered a Rueben and Bill had Fish and Chips which we shared with each other… We had several choices sides but we just had to try the Trek a bouts. They were sliced red potatoes that were breaded and deep fired…. No calories at all. LOL. We were glad we tried them but couldn’t eat nearly as many as they wanted us to.

The area that the restaurant was in was very interesting and required a walk after to use up some of the calories we had eaten… I’ll let some pictures show you what we say before we wound up across the road at the Outlet Mall… We didn’t need a thing but that didn’t stop me from looking… Bill was patient and just sat outside in the warm sunshine.

We have lots more of the Indiana National Shoreline to visit and much more to do in this area but we also have some time so we will take it slow… I really want to get the iron pumped up in me again so I don’t get so tired…

We think that tomorrow we might take the train into downtown Chicago and give it a look see… We know that we will be going there more than once so we thought maybe a Saturday the first time and then again after the holidays… I know we want to be there when people are back to work… AS LONG AS WE DON’T HAVE TO DRIVE!

Our first day was so much fun…. I hope we caught some of it on camera so you can enjoy it too… Later…………

Sep 4, 2009

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