The Dunes have been an influencing place in my early childhood so it was no wonder that I spent the majority of the day there today. My route wasn't planned. It just happened. I've been itching to get to the lakeshore and today's weather turned out near perfectly.
My first and only planned place to explore was Portage's new Riverwalk off US Highway 12. This new site, which opened officially last November, is the western edge of the National Park Services' Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a 20-mile lakeshore interspersed with industry. Built on land that once belonged to the neighboring steel mills, it was sold back to the city of Portage that smarly cleaned it up and turned it into a public access park for beach strollers and fishermen. It's a worthwhile investment for the locals.
But why would anyone want to fish here? The riverwalk is boarded on the east with a powerplant and another one to its western side further away. The infamous BP refinery in Whiting, IN, just 20 miles to the west along the lakeshore, is notorious for spewing increased levels of benzene into the lake water, despite EPA regulations outlawing that highly toxic chemical. Fish can not metabolize toxins from their body, so what they ingest, we eventually eat second-hand.
The chemicals found in the Great Lakes during the 1970s prompted President Nixon to pass the Clean Air and Water Acts. Rumors in my school (I went one year to Morton Senior High School in Hammond) said the chemicals from the refineries and steel mills of Indiana cut ten years off a person's life. It's no wonder that all my old school friends have left for greener (and cleaner) pastures.
I didn't get to the new Riverwalk till 11am and was surprised to see the path to the lakeshore a paved path meandering almost a half-mile from the pier to the parking lot. This path is great for those with disabilities, be it wheelchairs and strollers. A small fishing pier off Burns Creek is to its east, facing a powerplant. A short stroll on a new pier allows strollers to gaze at the Chicago skyline and admire the "beautiful" refineries and steel mills belching white smoke into the air further west.
The short beach was heavily littered with drift wood, but one could follow the flora line from the dune grasses to poplars.
I didn't stay here long as there isn't much to do besides look out from the pier. People were coming toward me with big dogs. I didn't want a confrontation. Dogs are allowed on these beaches but posted signs do state they must be leashed.
US Highway 12 is part of the Great Lakes Tour that travels all the great lakes. My dad and I did that tour early in the 1970s. But here the scenery going east is steel mills and power plants. The lakefront is industrialized or covered with trees. During shift change this road is impassable, with wide tractor-trailors competing with dense trees along the road.
My next goal was to check out Michigan city's pier since I didn't get to explore that with the kids last week. But I got distracted on my way to my destination.
I was pulled to the lakefront at every opportunity. I drove past Kemil beach, drove east along the lakefront on Beverly Shores Avenue and ended up on backroads north of Highway 12 that led me to other beaches. Swamps and prairies dotted these backroads. All the places I visited today were free.
One beach that caught my attention was Central Beach, the last easily-assessible beach on the Lakeshore west of Michigan City. A few cars were in the large parking spot. One man in a white Ford Pick-up excitedlywaved me down and wanted to know where in Arizona I was from. He had lived for 12 years in a boat off Los Angeles and is thinking of going back there soon to get away from Indiana's brutal winters. He seemed determined to talk to me.
Chris was his name, a grey-haired adventurist with a gapped-tooth smile from Beverly Shores "with a house just across from the Blackhawk Motel!" he said. His black pitbull had his eyes set on Sadie and pulled himself literally out of Chris' truck to check Sadie out more. The dog did not look friendly and made me uneasy. My, what a big head he had. His head looked too big for his short frame. Even Sadie was acting frightened and got behind me. The other dog persisted.
"He's just looking to get some!" Chris bragged. And indeed the dog was well-hung. Something that ugly would not stand a chance of mating with my dog. Although Chris himself seemed like a nice enough guy, the fact that he practically lunged into my van's open passenger window to talk to me set me off, and his dog had even less decorum. Did he not know that I had a dog in my van, too, who was potentially willing to rip him a new one if provoked? (Or at least willing to brag that she could if she wanted to?) As long as he was outside my van with Sadie watching him intently, I felt safe. And he did stay his distance as we talked.
Chris did give me a great tip though: from Central Beach I could walk a half-mile to Mount Baldy, run up that singing sand dune and walk back and make it a nice three-mile walk along the beach. With nothing else planned, why not try that out? There weren't too many people on the beach and the weather was finally becoming agreeable. I bit.
What a nice walk it was, despite "Mount" Baldy being more of a steep, 120-foot tall sand mound than a mount. But who's going to argue with the locals? Sadie pranced in the wet sand, drank some lake water, and stayed near me. The beach here was neither wide nor spectacular, but it was a route to get us to Mount Baldy via a more isolated path. The sand was coarse and at times streaked with oil. The tree line seemed closer to the water's edge than elsewhere along the lakefront.
We forded a small creek colored with pine tannin (the creek water reminded me of the Jersey Pine Baren bogs) and soon made it to Mount Baldy, a wandering dune that travels 60 feet a year and engulfs anything that grows on it. From the top one can enjoy the lake view, as the water here is especially emerald blue.
This is where people lingered on the beach, and a few even ventured into the cool water. Courageous kids even attempted a run up Mount Baldy from the beach, the most steepest climb. Sadie and I went up via the more gradual eastern slope.
The Mount Baldy summit is a short hike to the top. Poplars shade parts of the "peak," and dune grasses provide more cover-up. The sky was dark blue, the lake water various shades of blue and there was nothing grey about today at all. It turned out to be a nice day afterall.
I walked back with Sadie the way we came. A few more dogs were romping on the beach this time, all of them off leashes. Sadie stayed on her leash and I'm glad I didn't cave in to her pulling, as two powerful German Shepherd Dogs came after her with two even more exhausted owners holding them back. A short bark-out followed. A few hundred feet further another off-leash dog came toward us, a retriever mutt who got the same bark-out from Sadie.
She enjoyed her beachwalk but we weren't done yet. I finished off my Lakeshore adventure today on the eastern boundary of the National Lakeshore just outside Michigan City. We strolled on the Catwalk at Michigan City's Marina, out to the lighthouse and back. This catwalk was built in 1904. Fishermen like to catch their fish off these piers. Lovers come here to watch the sunset over the lake. I just came to walk out and back and enjoy the sights. This marina was nicely restored in the last ten years.
An older lighthouse built in 1858 off the inlet is now a museum. Sadie barked at a bronze statue of a firefighter until she realized the black gestalt was not a real human. This is another area that has seen massive remodeling since I left the area in 1984.
This was enough adventure for Sadie for the day. I enjoyed my tour of the Lakeshore, learned new sites and appreciated the little parcel of dunes left for us nature lovers in this part of the Great Lakes. Without the State Park and National Lakeshore Indiana's 90 miles of Lake Michigan would look like Alabama's oceanfront: industrialized and heavily polluted. It's nice to see more people over the last 20 years fighting hard to preserve what is left of the natural shoreline.
I'll always love my Dunes.
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