Day 11. Sunday
Just a few days left before I have to head back to Arizona.
https://www.nps.gov/indu/planyourvisit/cb16.htm
I was up early to walk the dogs around the "art walk" walking parth and added an extra mile by going around Foundation pond. The entire walk has a sidewalk for walkers. I met only two other walkers at 5:30am. This was 3.4 miles long; I knew that hiking Cowles Bog later with Ethan and the pups would be another 4.3 miles and I was in no hurry to walk more. The wide paths and the many urban trails in Valparaiso make this a very pleasant town to visit.
I told Ethan we were hiking the Cowles Bog trail today. It's one of my favorite dunes trail. I hiked it most every time I visited the area. It's named after Henry Chandler Cowles, who studied ecological succession of the dunes early in the 20th century. His work helped preserve the dunes.
The National Park Service took over the management of the dune trails in February 2019. The Indiana National Lakeshore is now the Indiana Dunes National Park. I have seen some improvement with new boardwalks, wider trails, portapots, re-routed trails and now manned parking areas. While using the trails is still free, parking lots will be closed to new arrivees if there is no room in the parking area.
The first thing I noticed when we got to the parking area at 2pm was a park ranger manning the lot. She told us we were the last car allowed in until another car leaves. What luck! With three anxious dogs wanting out of the car, waiting in a vehicle was not a good option. I don't ever remember this trail being so busy.
I made sure we took the most direct route to the beach. We parked in the lot closest to the beach.
I like the diversity of this trail. This trail travels west before bending to the north. One begins in a black oak savanna, north of an old bog. There are ferns and wetland flowers here, although I've seen more variety in other years. There are two dunes one has to climb before descending toward the beach and the dune grass. The exposed sand can get hot.
There were a lot of people on the trail coming in both directions. We had to keep the dogs onleash. Macks stayed by Ethan but my dogs pulled.
We were still high on the last dune when we could hear loud country music. It sounded like there were people below us on the dune. No, it was music blasting off one of many motorized boats anchored off shore a quarter mile away. That music played the entire time we were on the beach.
I never saw so many people on this beach before. The beach used to be isolated and littered with trash. Burns Harbor and the power plant are at the trail's edge, so it isn't very scenic at the beach. Today there were a lot of boats offshore facing north. Families were on the beach enjoying the water. So much for letting the pups run free!
Ethan did not hesitate to get in. Neither did Macks. My two dogs, however, were busier wrestling with each other, both in the water and in the sand. They also enjoyed digging in the sand right next to me, spraying damp sand on all our stuff.
I stayed on shore with our stuff and watched Ethan and the dogs. My dogs have really warmed up to him. He's also tender with them. Macks doesn't like Ethan giving my dogs any attention but he is not over-protective of him.
We stayed until 3pm. Storm clouds were already forming to our south and I didn't want to be under the trees if it rained. People were still coming to the beach late in the afternoon, but now the parking lot was half full. My tracker recorded us hiking 4.98 miles
We had another sweet stop at Culver's, then spent most of the day in the backyard with the neighbors' kids. The stay-at-home mom doesn't do a very good job watching over her younger kids and lets them wander into Erin's yard unsupervised. They are nice kids, but they can be demanding. As soon as they see Ethan, Owen or Benjamin in the backyard, they run out to play with them. They will also knock on the door and ask if Ethan can come out. Last year the kids used to come right into Erin's home, but apparently they don't do that anymore.
We had some thunder late in the afternoon, but the rain passed us by. Today was our first rain-free day.
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2019/02/15/indiana-dunes-becomes-national-park-after-century-long-effort/2882357002/
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