Indiana - Day 11 - the Dunes

Indiana State Park Campground
Tuesday, 11 June 2019

today's route

I decided to get an early start at the Dunes, in hopes I'd have a better chance of walking with the dogs on the trails without company.  And I was right.

Indiana State Dunes

... buttonbush

The state park says the dunes area includes not only the beach and dunes, but also "black oak forest, wooded wetlands and a button-bush marsh," and that these areas comprise "some of the most diverse flora and fauna in the Midwest."

internet photos of ...

The area is especially known, though, for the areas where huge dunes, described as "living" or "moving," are gradually blowing inland and burying forests.  Naturalists have found what they call "tree graveyards," areas where the buried forests are being reexposed by the wind off Lake Michigan.  The area is also known for being a prime birdwatching area, though I'm not sure why unless it has to do with this being the southernmost point of the southernmost Great Lake.

internet photo of Mt. Baldy

The tallest of the "living" dunes, Mt. Baldy, is 126' high and, because it is continually moving, it's called a "living dune."

The state park has 7 or 8 trails that hikers can follow, each showing a different facet of the dunes.  I chose the shortest one, partly because of it being the shortest but mostly because it's supposed to show the progression of the dunes.  And even I could see, over the course of the mile-long walk, that there's a difference.

upstairs from the parking lot

birdwatching tower upstairs

this year's list of birds seen

Lake Michigan from upstairs

trail begins at the left

setting off, note all the sand

note sand and vegetation

the trail continues

sandy path but more soil for plants

much more vegetation

nearing end of trail

note much healthier plant life

these flowers are more complex than they appear

I'm guessing webbed feet?

The beach was empty because it's closed: there are warning signs not just for rip currents but, more significantly, for E. coli - enough to scare anybody out of the water.

Although both my dogs behaved beautifully the whole walk, I'm certain it's only because they saw no other dogs or wildlife.  I'd like to come back sometime with calmer dogs to take some of the other trails that show more about the dune movements.

Chores
Next, we drove into town to deal with being low on groceries and with me having no clean clothes.  The laundromat was clean, staffed with pleasant people, and had efficient machines - can't ask for anything more.

We spent several hours in the large and nearly empty parking lot next door to the laundromat because, with the campground so jam packed, I knew I wouldn't be able to walk the dogs there for any distance at all.  Of course, parking lots are limited in their walking areas, too, but at least the limit's not from other dogs.

Waste products
Over the course of the afternoon and evening I gradually found myself invaded by ticks, which I'm sure I acquired on the trail this morning.  Fortunately, none of them had attached themselves yet - they were all scurrying around on my body - which made dealing with them easier, but a lot creepier.  I've taken to flushing them down the bathroom sink, but these ticks turned out to be zombie ticks: they kept coming back from what should have been death.  I'd flush one down the drain and put the stopper down to keep them from coming back up.  And then the next one, and then the next one.  And by then, when I'd take the stopper out, one or two ticks would climb back out and I'd have to flush them down again.  It was really ghastly.  By the end of the day I'd found 5 ticks on me.  I might have expected one or two, but 5 seemed really excessive and pretty rude.  Fortunately I keep the dogs on tick medicine all year round so am not worried about them.  But finding so many ticks has made my skin crawl and every itch or creeping feeling I have I instantly interpret as being another tick.   Very unsettling.

Indiana's not as bad about recycling as Ohio or West Virginia, but there aren't many provisions for recycling other than home pickup.  By the time I'd checked into this campground I felt half buried under bags of paper, cardboard, glass, and plastic.  But I got lucky.  When I first got to the campground yesterday, I turned in the wrong drive and had to go all the way behind the administration buildings to find enough room to turn around in.  And back in the back I saw a recycling bin.  So today, when we got back to the campground, I stopped off and emptied all my bags of goods.  What a relief.

But on the minus side, when I left the campground this morning, I left a couple of bags of dog poop on my picnic table and, just so folks would know I wasn't being a slob and driving off and leaving them, I also left a folding chair with them to show that campsite was taken.  But when we got back I found both the chair and the dog poop gone.  Which meant to me that a park employee had taken them because why would another camper, who might want to steal the chair, also take the bags of poop?  But none of the employees said they knew anything about it so I'm now out my folding chair, which I'm really upset about.

One of the rangers suggested I check the nearest dumpster, in which I didn't find my chair but I did find another chair, and the ranger said she'd ask Security to try to fish it out for me.  By the time Security finally came around to the dumpster, I told him not to bother because why should he have to play around with a dumpster because I lost a lawn chair, but he said he was curious because it looked like a good chair.  He pulled out a long metal rod he said he used for opening locked car doors and it was strong enough to pull this chair up.  Which turned out to have nothing at all wrong with it so I took it.  I wouldn't have expected a swap meet at a state campground, but I guess that's what I got.