The Lost Adventure (Part 1 of 3)

10/23/11
      This blog post is the tale of the last Indiana Dunes adventure I took before the 2010/2011 academic year ended and the summer of 2011 commenced. Due to a combination of looming finals, piled up school work, and year-end/summer preparations this trip’s account was never written, I hadn’t even taken the time to weed through the photos I took!

Taking place on May 26th, 2011, the original title was to be “A Slice of Paradise.” I’m not completely sure what possessed me now, several months later, to revisit this untold adventure. Like ancient texts which are usually found in fragments that tell partial stories, there isn’t much that I can use to reconstruct the things that I saw that day other than fond memories and a mess of pictures but the point of this blog is to share the beauties I’ve seen. So even if it’s fragmentary and incomplete, it’s still worth sharing.

      It is important to preface the whole thing with the information that it had been raining the past two days and the night of my arrival was the heaviest downpour. I don’t have any pictures or memories of my arrival the night before so it must have been pretty un-noteworthy as is often the case. So the day of exploration begins at the Dunewood campground which is the national park’s camp. At the end of the campground is a trail head that leads to the Lycokiwee trail which is what I would be traversing all the way to the Dune Park train station. The trail itself winds along the back edge of the Indiana dunes farthest from the lake. So while there’s still a sand foundation, the area is completely dominated by late succession woodlands. It also skirts the main high way through the national park but you very rarely see or hear its presence. The morning arrived without much event. The sound of birds was lacking mostly due to the great amount of moisture still filling the atmosphere. Even though sunrise was well past and it was effectively no

longer raining, the cloud cover still shrouded the woods in a perpetual, gentle darkness. Nearly every area was saturated or flooded to some degree. Low areas were constantly draining into lower areas in a gradual progression to near by creeks or marshes. The first segment of trail was fairly solid with multiple underpasses for water so hiking was easy.


To Be Continued