Things are waking up quickly around the Indiana Dunes National Park. Taking a quick hike up the short Dune Ridge Trail near Kemil Beach revealed quite a bit of "greening up" along the dune and especially down in the Great Marsh. The Great Marsh is a wetland running parallel to the Lake Michigan shore, on the leeward side of the aft dunes. This 15 mile long by 1/4 mile wide wetland was once all marsh, but since the 1900's, it's been drained in spots for houses, farmland, and industry.
Restoration of this wetland began back in the 1990s, and evidence of this still exists with thousands of tree stumps in the water. The trees were killed either by girdling (cutting around the circumference of the trunk) or by flooding after drains were removed. Either way, more and more of the Great Marsh is being restored every year.
A road once cut through a good portion of this marsh, but flooding ruined it, and the park closed the road about 8 years ago. This road is now part of a new trail system that takes visitors between the aft dune and the edge of the marsh. The road can be seen in the distance in the photo above.
The relatively short and simple trail up the dune is called the Dune Ridge Trail, and at this early time of the year, I was surprised to see lupine blooming. I expected them to bloom a few weeks from now, but with the warmer weather, and the sun heating the sand, they're all ready to go. Soon, the Tolleston Dune Trail will have areas of lupine seemingly acres wide, running along the trails, into the woods, and up the dunes. It's a beautiful thing to see.
Later in the early summer, the prickly pear cacti will bloom as well.
Now is a great time to get out to these trails to see what is blooming this week. It's interesting to see how things change so quickly in the spring, and even more interesting to see how these areas change with each season, with each month, and even with each week.
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