Indiana Dunes

July 15, 2011









Indiana Dunes

This week, Kathy & I are headed to Grand Haven, Michigan to attend the wedding of two of our dear friends, Nadene & Trevor. We made the decision to extend the trip a little to take a few days to enjoy some time exploring the area and enjoying the wonderful northern summer where the evenings actually are noticeably cooler than the daylight hours.







We booked a round trip from Chicago and were on our way. The drive from Chicago to Grand Haven is only about three and a half hours around the dip of Lake Michigan through Indiana, but we opted to stop halfway through and check out the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, a place that despite having been born and raised a Hoosier, I had never experienced.







It was my loss not having been here before as the Dunes are beautiful. We booked a night at a beautiful new small inn located in Chesterton, Indiana in the heart of the Dunes area. The Dunes Walk in is a new boutique hotel created from the historic Furness Mansion and is a beautiful place in a perfect location to explore the area. We checked in and then headed out to the Indiana Dunes State Park to check out the Dunes.

Dunes Walk Inn



The Dunes stretch about 25 miles along the Southern Shore of Lake Michigan from Gary, Indiana around to Michigan City. The State Park is located in the midst of the designated National Lakeshore and was created in 1925 to help preserve the natural wonder that is the Dunes. The miles of incredible soft sandy shoreline are amazing and the shifting Dunes can be literally a couple of hundred feet high. We hiked through the lush green woods, following a rolling trail to the beach, which had surprising high surf and even riptide warnings. It was a beautiful day and well worth the brief stopover on our way to Michigan.







It is really an amazing place full of beauty, history and the Dunes themselves that have formed over thousands of years of blowing and shifting sands. Some of them really tower over you, covering entire trees so that just the tops stick out. You just can’t get the feel or capture the immensity or beauty in a photo.







In the evening, we headed over to the charming small town of Chesterton to have dinner. The town was like the set for some movie about small town America yet seemed to have a fairly wide range of good restaurants lining Main Street. We selected Popolano’s and had a great Italian meal and some great local microbrews from nearby Three Floyds Brewery.







After dinner we happened upon a quintessential slice of Americana as the band of the 38th Division Indiana National Guard was performing a concert in the park in the center of the town. The park was crowded with local folk enjoying the show on blankets and lawn chairs under a perfect Hoosier summer sky. As dusk set in under the strains of “God Bless America” with the lightning bugs beginning to fill the sky and the distant sound of train whistles, it really did take me back to my Hoosier youth- a wonderful day all around.





Dunes Walk Inn

Indiana Dunes

Indiana Dunes State Park

Popolanos