Indiana Dunes State Park

I’d never seen a Great Lake before. “They’re huge,” people had told me. “You can’t see across them.” But that still didn’t prepare me for visiting one in person.

We drove up to the Indiana Dunes State Park, an expanse of protected shore along Lake Michigan. We were hoping to find a spot to camp, but it was the weekend: the park was full of families from the nearby cities. No campsites were available, and we’d have to keep moving.

Still, it would be absurd to get this close to Lake Michigan without seeing it. The National Lakeshore was free and open to the public; we made our way to the beach, and I finally saw my first Great Lake.

It looked like an ocean, a bright blue calm ocean. But it smelled like a lake: cool and clean, no odor of salty rot or seaweed. The waves were tiny, measurable in inches, and they broke softly on a shore of polished, sparkling, fluffy sand.

The blue water stretched out to the horizon, and here on the beach kids played and swam. But along the shore I could see smokestacks: dim, hazy reminders that we were still in the Rust Belt. Even here on the protected lakeshore, industry was within eyesight; as the sun set, the sky burned brownish-red with pollution.

Still it was a great time at the Great Lake. Crow dog had the most fun, bounding into the waves again and again. Kids started to come around, asking to throw the stick for him to fetch.

But fetching got old (for everyone but Crow, that is), and the sun was going. We all piled back into the car, heading for a hotel. We were leaving countrysides, rivers, lakes and nature behind: time to enter the cities again. Tomorrow we’d be in Chicago.