 |
| Great views of Lake Michigan await atop the Mount Baldy sand dune at Indiana Dunes National Park. NPS photo. |
Towering dunes
Day hikers can clamber to the top of a 12-story living sand dune on the 0.8-miles Mount Baldy Summit Trail. The trail only can be accessed on a ranger-led hike but is well worth the wait at the nation’s newest national park. The 126-foot-tall sand dune on Lake Michigan’s southern shore is “living,” as it shifts about four feet every year. Whenever the prevailing northwest wind tops 7 mph, the beach sand moves. Times for the hour-long daytime and sunset treks on summer weekends are listed in the park's newspaper (The Singing Sands), the park’s website calendar, and its Facebook page.
Lake Michigan beaches
Ah, the beach – sunbathing and swimming, flying kites and building sand castles, enjoying a summer sunset or taking in the dramatic approach of a storm. All of that and more is possible for those visiting the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk at Indiana Dunes National Park. A 0.9-mile loop allows hikers to explore West Beach, dunes and a waterfront. A nearby fishing pier and 900-foot breakwater leading to a lighthouse can be added to the walk.
Diverse flora
Boasting more than 1400 native plants, Indiana Dunes is among the National Park Service’s most diverse sites for flora. A great way to see many of those plants – including some of the more exotic ones – is the The 2.1-mile round trip Pinhook Upland Trail. The subtle changes in elevation so near Lake Michigan result in a variety of ecosystems across the park, which in turn lead to a diversity of plant species. Beaches and dunes, wetlands such as marshes and fens, oak savannas and wetland prairies, and hardwood forests, all can be found at Indiana Dunes. The trail heads through a beech and maple forest and a bog.
Mysterious marshes
Day hikers can explore one of the park’s many mysterious marshes on the Cowles Bog Trail. The 2.85-miles round trip hike is a segment of two stacked loops created by the Cowles Bog and the Greenbelt trails. Cowles Bog actually is a fen, long known in literature as a dismal, frightening place. At Cowles, the mineral-rich groundwater feeds the wetlands, where partially decomposed plants settle into a mire and form peat. Unlike the nearby Pinhook Bog, Cowles’ water isn’t acidic but quite alkaline, resulting in an almost entirely different group of flora.
Migrating birds
Day hikers can see a number of the famous birds attracted to the park by hiking the Great Marsh Trail. The 1.26-miles trail, with a spur to an observation deck, traverses a marsh alongside Lake Michigan. Thanks to a recent restoration of the wetlands, migratory birds – including sandhill cranes and great blue herons – rest and feed there every spring and autumn. The Great Marsh is an interdunal wetland, a water-filled depression between two sand dunes. It’s the largest wetlands complex in the Lake Michigan watershed, stretching for several miles between Burns Harbor, Ind., and Michigan City, Ind.
• Locate these trails in Indiana Dunes National Park
