It was a hot and muggy day. It was one of those days when staying home is best until the sun gets low. That's what I did today, staying home and doing small errands around the house. I didn't go out until 5:30pm with the intent of hiking West Beach's three-mile loop in Gary. The Dunes Succession trail, one of three trails at West Beach that add up to three miles, climbs up a dune via a quarter-mile boardwalk and is one of my favorite short hikes in the Dunes. The gate guard was still open taking fees when I got there at 6:40pm, so I diverted to nearby Marquette Park, where as a kid in the 1960s we often went bathing.
The old Gary Bathing Beach House, built in 1921, still stands. That's where we had to change our clothes before entering the water. It was closed in 1971 and remained boarded up until the late 1990s when it was restored and became home to the Aquatorium, a flight museum in honor of Octave Chanute and the Tuskegee Airmen. Chanute's glider experiments off the Indiana Dunes in 1896 preceded the Wright Brothers' flights over Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.
Back when the building was a bathing house, there was nothing much else here along the lake front besides a parking lot and picnic fields. The area known as Marquette Park has been upgraded with landscaped bench areas, native flowers, statues, historical markers, a short bike path, and foot bridges over the ponds. The area is a pleasant area to walk around now. During the summer months there is a $7 parking fee. I've walked here many times on my visit back to NWI. Marquette Park, West Beach, Miller Woods, the Great Marsh, Cowles Bog, are all connected by swaths of land that combined make up the Indiana Dunes National Park.
There were still quite a few people on the beach despite dark clouds over Chicago. There was also a lot of trash on the beach, including beer cans and bottles which are banned on the beach. Chicago was forecasted to get rain between 6:30pm and 7pm, and NWI was expected to get that rain two hours later. I got to the beach at 7pm to dramatic clouds over the water.
A little walk on the beach turned into a four-mile walk around the park, using a variety of passages: the beach, the Chanute bike trail, dune trails, a walking path, and residential streets. The Miller Woods trail that I did two weeks ago is visible from the bridge over the lagoon on North Lake Street. It was getting windy, but I risked leaving my rain coat in the car. The cool wind felt so refreshing after a long day of muggy heat. Even Zeke seemed to enjoy the early evening walk.
After the Chanute bike trail I walked residential streets adjacent to Marquette Park, then returned to the Park and walked around the pond by the Pavilion (popular with weddings) before returning to beach area. There were Gary Police cars flashing their lights the entire time I walked in this park, as part of a beefed-up holiday week presence.
The native prairie-marsh flowers planted along the walkway were very fragrant today, perhaps because of the moisture in the air. I managed to complete the four miles before it got too dark. What a pretty walk it was today, with the storm clouds approaching and the wind kicking it. It drizzled briefly, but rain didn't hit NWI until I got home a few hours later. The 10pm news reported flashflooding across Chicagoland, but the rain was gentle over Indiana.
We never did get the overnight storms, though. The rain was gentle rain without all the drama that normally comes out of Illinois.
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2019/07/02/severe-thunderstorm-warning-issued-for-cook-kane-lake-and-dupage-counties/
https://wgntv.com/2019/07/02/thunderstorms-developing-in-chicagoland-warnings-issued/
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