Final Leg

2022-07-22
IN, OH, PA

In the morning we packed the tent for the final time and made one last bowl of oatmeal to start our day. We then headed off to do the Cowles Bog trail, which is 4.5 miles and includes (unsurprisingly) a bog as well as going over the dunes and out to the beach on Lake Michigan. It was a fun hike which included about 200 feet of dune climbing in loose sand (about half to get to the lake and half to get back). The deer flies and mosquitoes encouraged us to keep our pace up, but still it was a pretty hike.

After our exercise we headed over to the visitors center to pick up maps and such. It's a small visitors center. One thing that has improved is that now they have an actual sign with stone and everything a few hundred yards down the road from the visitors center. Last time I visited the sign was just on sawhorses outside the visitors center. It was a National Lakeshore until 2019 when it became a National Park and it has taken a while to change brochures, signs, and so forth.

We took the interstate to Cuyahoga National Park which happens to be roughly midway between Indiana Dunes and home. The Ledges Trail is about five minutes off the interstate, and is the perfect three-mile break to stretch our legs. I've done this trail a few times and it's always pretty and shady. Pictures are better when it's overcast; however, it was a sunny afternoon so we did what we could . We also lost an hour to the time zone change during this stretch.

They have quite a good harvest of orange barrels in Ohio this year. The construction zones were frequent and long. A lot of the work is at either end where they are building new toll stations. Ohio and Indiana use gates on the turnpike tolls, and due to dead transponders or people trying to get past without paying there were substantial backups at the westbound tolls. Pennsylvania does this better; go through at speed and they charge your EZPass or your license plate; either way there is no stopping. I'm not sure how well the license plate camera works on the cars with four bikes on the rear rack, but then those people have other challenges too.

We made it home at roughly midnight, and did enough unpacking to have some clothes for the morning before hitting the showers and getting some sleep. It may only be 10:00 PM to our jet-lagged internal Mountain Time clocks, but even that is late compared to when we would typically go to bed.

Driving Distance: 312 miles

Hiking Distance: 7.5 miles