Elevation: 584'-637'
Significance: Rare Oak Savannah; easy hike to Lake Michigan
Free parking
https://www.mapmyhike.com/workout/3621784996
My day began with a visit to the dogwash in Crown Point. I wanted to get the burrs stuck in Zeke's fur out and comb out the mats. The poor dog looked miserable during the endeavor. I will probably never use a public dog wash again. It cost me $5 for ten minutes, but could easily have used another ten minutes to dry him off properly.
I had hiked the Miller Woods trail last Christmas and enjoyed it very much. I went back today to see it in the summer. It's an easy trail that goes around a pond and then travels north to the lakefront. It's the newest trail in the Indiana Dunes National Park and the most western one. It's one I would recommend for beginners, families with children, and dog walkers. Most of the trail is packed sand.
My stepdad had mentioned on Thursday when I was last with him that he may want me back in Culver to help him pack on Saturday. I told him to call me if he needed me, as he didn't have much left to pack. The last two times I was with him, we spent more time talking and eating than actually packing. I didn't want to sit around again and be non-productive. And besides, after the scare I had with Zeke running off that last time, I was not comfortable with going back there a third time. He doesn't need me to help pack as everything is already in boxes. He just wants me around to have company, but that musty basement makes me sneeze.
I sat with Carol late into the morning and afternoon waiting for him to call me. It turns out he did call me in the morning, but I did not hear the phone ring. It may have been while I was outside with Zeke for his pee break, or taking a shower. He called me again at 12:30 and that time I did hear the phone ring and he told me he was feeling too tired and to try again another day. Weather was clear, but clouds were forming again. I took this opportunity to hit another dune trail again while the weather was still cooperative. I chose the Miller Woods trail. It's an easy trail to get to from Crown Point and is on the eastern edge of Gary-Miller, a lakeside community that was a popular beach community in the 1940s.
The Miller Woods trail is a diverse trail that is easy to reach off I-65/I-94 and the US12/20 route. It's listed as a 3.1-mile trail but I always add mileage by walking along the lakeshore looking for holely sandstones. It's a short hike one can easily do in under two hours.
I got a late start at 2:30pm, parking on the same side of Lake Street as the Visitor's Center. (A 40-car parking lot is on the east side of the road and a pedestrian overpass takes one to the Visitor's Center.) A group of school children was finishing their hike to the beach as I was starting out. The trail around the first pond by the Visitor's center was flooded in sections. I diverted to the higher boardwalk to get around the first water barrier.
There were more water barriers as I neared the lake, but nothing was impassable with the high-water diversions around the water. I took my time on today's hike, photographing flowers and enjoying the warm weather, although grey clouds were forming again. These clouds added a nice contrast to my photographs. I chatted with a couple from Chicago who made the Dunes their destination for today. We took each other's photographs before going our separate ways.
Lots of Coneflowers were on this trail, but all the familiar flowers of the dunes were here: lupines, spiderwort. We spooked a beaver farther down the trail. It darted into the wet marsh to get away from us. Later on the beach we spooked two young plover chicks. Lots of red-winged blackbirds, woodpeckers and songbirds were out today.
The Chicago skyline was visible from the shore. We had reached the beach at high tide so there wasn't much beach to walk on today, and there was plenty of plastic trash along what shoreline was visible. Trash always bothers me, as that harms the marine life as well. A lot of that plastic consisted of deflated balloons high school graduates apparently let loose on the beach during their graduation parties. I counted at least eight along the short beach I walked on. I photographed them all just for evidence.
I kept Zeke on the leash until we got to the beach. I wanted him to get used to the crashing waves of the water. He ran in to drink the water, but never got comfortable with the waves. When the nasty horseflies swarmed him, though, he used the water to fend them off. I could tell that he was not enjoying the beach much because of the flies, so we went back the way we came. Those damn flies followed us for a good quarter-mile before returning to the shore for their next victims. Poor Zeke rolled in the sand, bit his hind area, and swatted around his head to get the flies off him. The flies got to me, too.
More people were coming to the shore as we were returning. Clouds continued to get darker. I feared another downpour although none was forecasted for today. The sun even came out for a bit, brightening the lush green around the bogs. People warned me of a pissy snapper on the trail, but the critter was long gone by the time we got through.
The out-and-back trail is well-marked. Smaller trails have been closed off to allow for regrowth along the dunes. At one point the trail goes right along an inlet. That part of the trail was not flooded out. The only time I had to detour and turn around was at the southern edge of the main pond near the Visitor's Center. Water there was at least eight inches deep. I ended up going through water anyway on the northern edge. At least the water was warm and it was at the end of my hike. Still, I would have preferred dry shoes for the drive home!
I could have extended my hike and taken a railtrail east to another section of the Indiana Dunes, or I could have driven around Marquette Park and walked the path there for more mileage, but I was unsure of the clouds overhead. It was hot and very humid out; perfect conditions for yet more rain. I will leave the other trails of the Dunes for another time.
I topped off the hike with a stop at the Miller Pizza Company, just a short drive south of the Dunes. The place is always busy and reviews are good; I had always wanted to eat there. I ordered a medium deep-dish Veggie Pizza to go, then crossed over the railroad tracks to enjoy two varied wheat beers at the 18th Street Brewery while waiting for my pizza. I was told to come back in 35 minutes for the pizza so I had time for a beer, enough time to visit the brewpub again. I was last here five years ago when it first opened. This building was an old dry-cleaning business. 18th Street Brewery is now NWI's second-largest brewery after 3Floyds in Munster. Main production has moved to the larger building in Hammond, but I like the Gary location much better.
Nathan was my beer pourer and told me the history of the brewery. The same beers are served here as are served in Hammond. This smaller place has a more homey feel. I told Nate and Kendall, another employee, that I like this place better than the Hammond place. Here the music isn't loud metal music and the servers are attentive. Clientele seem to be more diverse here as well.
"We get that [comment] a lot!" replied Kendall. He even came to give Zeke a bowl of water as we sat outside at a picnic table on their patio. I promised I would post my Yelp review within a week (when I finally finish the reviews for the places I visited while on my road trip).
Once out of the Dunes and Gary-Miller, it's back to the industrialized lake shore of steel mills and power plants and run-down urban landscapes. It's quite a contrast to that little strip of preserved dunesland I spent a few hours in. Seeing urban decay around me reminded me of why the Dunes were so important while I lived in the Region: the dunes were natural therapy for me from all the noise and pollution, drugs and creepy men.
I drove home via Broadway through Gary. This long street was once the jewel of Gary, but now sees much urban decay. Gary, IN has been rated the country's "Most Miserable City" by Business Insider, based on 2010 Census data of jobs, unemployment, crime, commute, addiction) An impressive mural of the Jackson Five adorns one building, but most of the century-old buildings are abandoned or dotted with graffiti. I remember on a few occasions taking the Gary bus to downtown Gary and then walking nine miles back to our apartment further south. I don't think I'd feel comfortable doing that now. (I lived in Gary for one year, 1974/75 when I was a high-school freshman and living with my father and older brother Tom. I attended Lew Wallace High School in Gary. I was miserable in Gary so we moved to Hammond for my sophomore year of high school where I wasn't any happier. I then joined my mother and stepdad in Germany and finished high school at Kaiserslautern American High School, a school for children of military and government personnel.)
I stopped briefly to talk to a Gary native, 67-year-old David, a retired school bus driver with five kids who apologized for not having any teeth. "I just got them pulled last week!" he explained, and is still waiting on his dentures. He told me about his life. He had lived in Las Vegas with his son for a year but recently returned to his hometown because Vegas is too expensive to live in. He, too, remembers when Gary's Broadway was in its prime. He gave me permission to photograph him.
I would have enjoyed chatting with him longer, but I had a pizza in the car getting cold and Zeke was guarding it. I continued to slow down to photograph the once-stately buildings. I even had to stop for a train and had to chuckle at the billboard by the tracks that advertised for mental health clinics in the area. The trains, although I enjoy hearing the rumbling of the wheels on the tracks, would drive me nuts in daily traffic.
Thus ended a day that turned out pretty good in the end. Looking back at day's end, I'm not sure why I bothered giving Zeke a bath when he went into the lake six hours later. He's been shedding a lot more than usual here in Indiana, so at least I got a lot of the loose fur off him. Tomorrow I'm meeting Erin and the boys again for a "Paw-a-Palooza" fundraiser for service dogs specifically for kids. This event is in Hobart, at Lake George. That's another nice lakeside town. Weather is forecasted to be "partly stormy" all day, so I hope it's not a wash-out.
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