3 Dune Challege

I picked up Zeke from the vet center at 7am.  He had been freshly bathed, just in time to get sandy from the dunes!

Iris came over at 10:20am; by 11am we took off for Indiana Dunes State Park for the 3Dune Challenge, a 1.5-mile hike up the three highest dunes in the region.  Participation is free and one must register at the National Park's Visitor's center off IN49.  One can select a vinyl car sticker or a t-shirt.  This is my second time doing this challenge.  For an Arizonan, the challenge is easy as the highest peak is a mere 187 feet above sea level.  I live at 4600' in Arizona.  The secret is to due it barefoot to get a better grip in the sliding sand, and to do it quickly so that the feet don't burn from the hot sand.  Wearing shoes only weighs you down.

I drove Carol's massive 2001 Mercury Cougar.  It's in excellent condition. She's been wanting me to drive it to help circulate the oil and gasoline, but I'm not comfortable driving her car all the time.  Now I wish I had, to get it running well.  The seats are huge and are comfortable, but the lack of regular driving has made the engine sputter.  I noticed the sputtering when I reached highway speeds driving on I-80/90 toward the dunes.

We got to the park entrance by 1pm.  It took us almost an hour to get through the gate.  With Carol's car's Indiana plates, we were able to pay for instate admission, so $6 instead of $12.  Everyone was wanting to get to the beach.  Few people want to hike in this heat and humidity.  Overflow parking was already getting crowded.  Luckily we were going a  mile away, to start at the park's visitor's center from where we start the trail.

Iris wore an attractive outfit, wearing a wrap-around skirt.  I wore my usual more practical clothes of nylon hiking pants, baggy shirt and old lady's hat.  She took the challenge in stride, posing humorously for "before" and "after' pictures.  She's not as strong a hiker as I am since she works 60 hour weeks, but she does enjoy the exercise.  Most women our age are not in good shape like we are.  We can both be proud of that. We had a pleasant time talking about our childhood in this area.  She was only four years old when our parents divorced, so her perception is different than mine.  To me the dunes were my playground.  To her, it was more the beach where she could wade in the shallow waves.

Iris was also willing to extend the hike another two miles.  I wanted to show her the boardwalk on Trail #2 which starts at the Wilson Shelter.  I like to start the perimeter hike from this vantage point, to walk past the marsh flora. Signs stating that the trail was closed did not deter us.  We went out to see why the trail was closed.  Was it from the heavy rains in May?  No.  It turned out that the park is upgrading the boardwalk from old wood to recycled materials, and raising the boardwalk two feet.  The boardwalk is still under construction.  We turned around when we ran out of boardwalk.  No one ever caught us or reprimanded us for trespassing.

We heard the South Shore train rumble past every 20 minutes.  The tracks are just south of the park boundary, taking passengers to and from South Bend and Chicago.  Iris finds the sounds of trains depressing.  I find them mystical, as the trains clackity-clack slowly fades as the trains disappear into the horizon to sites unseen.  We both rode a lot of trains while living in Berlin back in the 1960s.

Even Zeke took the challenge in stride, but the hot sand and the exposed sun in parts was tiring him out. There was plenty of shade for him to rest under, but it was hot nonetheless.  I had water for him, and back at the visitor's center two hours later, drank more water.  He took it like a champ.

I enjoyed this hike with Iris.  We don't spend much time together, and when we do, it's normally inside somewhere.  I'm more comfortable outside in nature.  That's when the best part of me, the confident side, comes out.

We finished the hike at 3:30pm, went back to the National Park Visitor's Center to reclaim our "3D Challenge"  The Visitor's Center is also a nature center, with the history of the dunes and its wildlife all told.  I like coming to this center.   We took off to visit Erin briefly in Westville, where Iris got to meet Erin's mother-in-law Annette.  We ended up staying for almost two hours, not leaving until 7pm.  And here's where our adventure began.

We were on IN2 driving through Valparaiso when we realized that the headlights on the car weren't working.  We had 20 minutes of daylight left and it was disappearing fast because of the clouds coming up from Tropical storm Barry.  Iris was beginning to panic when I got us to US30 heading west toward Merrillville when she wanted me to pull over so she can call for a ride back to Carol's.

"I am not pulling over.  I'm driving this car back to Crown Point."  Iris didn't argue with me and just kept her panic to a dull roar.

It did get dangerous not driving with headlights on at dusk in heavy traffic.  When it began to rain hard I pulled over for 20 minutes at a gas station.  The last ten minutes of the drive back consisted of me driving 30 miles an hour with our emergency lights on.  At least this allowed others to see us and provided for some light for ourselves.

We made it back to Carol's at 9:30pm.  We had already called her to let her know we were late due to the lack of headlights.  That only caused her to stay up worried about us.  When we finally arrived, we all celebrated with a bottle of raspberry wine that had been in the back of the refrigerator for a while.  We needed to celebrate.  Never again will I drive someone else's car without checking out the headlights!

We sat in the kitchen talking, just like in years past.  I'm seldom together with both Carol and Iris, and Carol truly is like a mother to us.  She is the heart and ears when we need  to talk about our worries.  She is non judgmental.  But when Iris started talking about her feelings about feminism and how women should always let the man make decisions,  Carol left the table to go back to watching TV.  She knew that Iris was getting ready to give me a lecture.

And a lecture it was.  This is the side of my sister I do not like.  She is proud of her income and talks about it all the time, but she is a woman who is not comfortable with herself without a man around.  She's not even divorced from her second husband and she's already dating three men she met on Match.com  All of them are at least ten years older than her.  One is 71 years old. Why is she dating such an old man?  Can't she find someone her own age -- 56-- to be comfortable with?  When you date an older man at that stage in your life, you are basically dating a man who wants you to be his caregiver.  All three men live in different parts of southeastern Pennsylvania.  If they want to spend time with her, they must call her.  "I never call them" explained Iris, because the men must see her as their investment.

Iris did most of the talking, gaining confidence the longer we sat at the kitchen table.  This wasn't Iris asking me for my opinion.  This was Iris telling me what my opinions should be, and they contrast with hers.  I tried to not say anything, but my facial expressions revealed enough of my disagreements with her ideas of how a woman should be around a man.  Men need to feel admired and loved and a woman's job is to boost his ego, Iris went on to say.  Women must preserve themselves as a man's investment.  (I'm thinking trophy wife here) "Feminists have it all wrong!" she continued.  Well, if that is true, then Iris's way of thinking hasn't helped her keep a man. I see her on the rebound with her last marriage to Ed, so hopefully in a few years she can look back and ask "Did I really say that?"  Not once in the two hours we sat at that table did she mention the words "love" or "commitment."   To her a marriage is not about love and devotion, but about business deals and image.

How did such a lovely start to the day end up with me feeling emotionally exhausted?  Iris and I clearly have different opinions about most things, and she's always the one who insists on talking about her opinions.  My thoughts don't matter as I'm in the wrong.  I'm the feminist.  I must change.

Well, at least we didn't spend the evening talking about Trump and all the great things he has done for this country.