Indiana Dunes and South Haven

Because I am adding this information after our trip, the dates of the blog post and actual dates will be off by a bit. I will add the relevant dates to the posts. I am breaking trip into several posts.

Friday, June 28, 2019

We decided to leave a day early mainly to ensure we got settled in South Haven early enough to give us time to pick up Megan at the Grand Rapids airport. She was landing Saturday afternoon, so we wanted to get closer to Michigan on Friday. We left Friday AM and headed to Michigan City, IN. to visit the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. We were told it is now a National Park although the workers at the visitor center preferred the old name of "Lakeshore".

After setting up at the campsite we drove around to get the lay of the land.  The park is quite long and separated by private lands, businesses, a power plant and other things.

The dunes were created by the glaciers that formed the lakes and created lots of sand plus the winds from the Northwest that tended to pile it up on the Indiana coast of Lake Michigan.  Most of the dunes are covered with grass and trees. There are also a series of them away from the shoreline that were formed over time as the lake rose and fell. There are also some "walking" dunes that do not have much grass and actually build up and move inland.  One such dune is called Mt. Baldy.  It is starting to encroach on the parking lot.

Lake Michigan and some dunes

The front of a large walking dune

The dune taking over the parking lot

The top two are typical dunes. Katie is walking down the front of Mt. Baldy which rise to her right. The last picture is from the parking lot and shows how the sand has moved inland by the winds and is enveloping trees and things.

Original trading post

Farm house in the dunes area

The area within the dunes was a area for trading with the Indians. They would bring hides and things.  European settlers build houses to farm and work the trading business.  These building are next to a small river that allowed transportation.

Saturday, June 29

We spent the morning at the visitor center and touring various areas of interest. The dunes create a unique ecosystem with swamps and savannas interspersed between the dunes.

We then left for South Haven, MI., which is only a couple of hours north.   The campground was very nice with lots of room between sites. It also had a large number of trees. The only negative is that the soil was very sandy and we tracked a lot sand into the trailer.  Since we planned to stay here for 6 nights, we set up the whole nine yards. The brown thing is called a "Clam" and is a screened-in shelter to keep bugs out.  I folds up into a 6' long tube about as big around as a golf bag.

After setting up we drove to Grand Rapids to pick up Megan.  We had a great dinner on the patio of a Mexican restaurant in South Haven. Megan and Lucy spent the night with us in our trailer because Megan's rental house was not available until Sunday afternoon.

This is kind of view we had from the restaurant.  South Haven is on the Black river with tons of boats all up and down the river.


Sunday - Friday.

We helped Megan move into her rental house and spent the week doing various touristy things.   We also had several nice cook-outs with Megan and her friends.
- We took a harbor and lake cruise.
- We visited the Maritime museum and took a cruise wooden tall ship.
- We visited Grand Haven and Sagatuck up the coast.
- We watched the South Haven (also referred to as SoHa) fireworks.

The South Haven Light House.. 

Megan and friends on our lake cruise

The ship "Friends Good Will" that we cruised and crewed on

Ahoy matey, some loafing deckhands

The Saugatuck chain ferry. It is cranked by hand across the river. You can see the chain coming up the side.

Waiting for fireworks in South Haven harbor

 The weather was warm the whole week, but we did not get rained upon, even though it was in the forecast the entire week.  On Friday, we packed up our trailer, and headed to Mackinaw island.  Before we left we stopped by Megan's rental to say good-bye and let everyone tour our trailer.