Joel D: The "Day-Trip" to Indiana Dunes

Twizzlers FTW!!!

So our plan was to hit two national parks this summer. But after coming back from Mammoth Cave we realized that it would be super-easy to do a weekend day-trip to Indiana Dunes during the month of June before W&C go to their mom's for the last half of the summer. So we did that today! We debated between going Saturday (yesterday) or Sunday (today), but it was cloudy and somewhat dreary yesterday, so we went today instead. We packed up the car before church then hit the road directly afterward.

We needed to get cheese for our picnic sandwiches. I stopped at CVS because I have a monthly discount there. And wouldn't you know? They had picnic blankets on sale, and I bought a couple packs of rainbow Twizzlers that I had never even seen before. Alas, they had no sliced cheese. But time was wasting, so we got on the highway and I thought we'd stop whenever we went by a supermarket.

Well, we drove to Indiana Dunes and never saw a supermarket, so we had to eat our ham sandwiches without cheese. The primary topic of conversation in the car was how we each ranked from best to least our favorite flavors of the Rainbow Twizzlers. In alphabetical order, they were: Blue Raspberry, Grape, Lemonade, Orange, Strawberry, Watermelon. There was much taste-testing (and much debate), but here are the final rankings:

ME -- 1) strawberry; 2) orange; 3) lemonade; 4) watermelon; 5) blue raspberry; 6) grape.

W -- 1) blue raspberry 2) lemonade; 3) strawberry; 4) orange; 5) watermelon; 6) grape.

C -- 1) blue raspberry; 2) grape; 3) watermelon; 4) orange; 5) strawberry; 6) lemonade.

We arrived at Indiana Dunes at about 2pm. We planned to stay about four hours, which is what we did. Nothing fancy, just relaxing on the beach. We did a little bit of a lot of different things: throwing the aerobie, flying a kite, playing in the sand, looking for interesting rocks, reading a book, swimming and wading in the water, etc. Typical "beach stuff."

Anyone who knows me well understands that the beach is NOT my happy place. There's pretty much nothing about the beach that I find particularly enjoyable. I don't like swimming. I don't like the hot sun. I don't like crowds. I don't like the sand. I was thankful that we made it a "beach afternoon" and not a full "beach day." But it was a wonderful time. A memorable highlights of the day for me was being able to see the Chicago skyline from across the water. Also, there were a couple times where the beach was in the shadow of a cloud but the sun was sparkling on the water out on the lake. It was magnificantly beautiful, and it looked much different than if the sun was shining directly on the shore. As you looked out on the lake, it was like the top of the water was tinged with yellow-golden light. Dazzling.