Early spring sunlight reaches the floor of the woods, warming up the ground, paving the way for the annual green-up.
The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore's Cowles Bog offers plenty of sites, from wetlands, to savanna, woods to beach. Enjoyable whether it's a short walk from the parking area to the wetland, or a six mile round trip to the beach.
The late afternoon sun highlights the water of Lake Michigan, and silhouettes the trees of the nearby dunes. Kintzele Ditch, a small stream, flows into Lake Michigan from the left of the image, then combines with the cold lake water. I'm standing on a small bar of sand between the stream and the lake. Lake Michigan was around 45 degrees, but the stream was a bit warmer - yet still way too cold to swim! After a long winter, it felt great to walk around the beach without a jacket.
The boys get a running start on the Dune Succession Trail of West Beach. This 1 mile trail winds through all of the stages of dune progression - something relatively rare in such a short trail. From beach to grassland, conifer forest to oak forest, and everything in between, one can experience them all in about a mile.
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
Even though most of the snow and ice melted over the past week, deep in the shady canyons of Starved Rock State Park, ice and snow remained. French Canyon in particular, was quite difficult to access, yet, Tom R. and I managed to navigate the glazed canyon floor. Usually, I walk with one foot on each side of the flowing water, and make my way up to the main waterfall. That was impossible on this day, so clinging to a single wall was the only way to keep from slipping and falling.
Stopping to prepare a walking stick, the boys enjoy a winter afternoon on the frozen shore of Lake Michigan.
In the summer, Kintzele Ditch marks the halfway point of many hikes. It's a shallow creek that empties into Lake Michigan, and can be crossed easily in normal weather. In the winter, unless you don't mind immersing your feet in 33 degree water, the creek becomes a destination and turn-around point.
We decided not to proceed across the creek on this day, figuring a mile walk with wet feet in 20 degree temperatures would be uncomfortable.
Just before sunrise, the fog reflected the sunlight, turning the sky a subtle amber. The warmer air temperatures combined with snow in the low-lying field to create some patches of fog in the early morning hours.
We climbed to the very top of the tallest dune in the area, to get a better view of the ice on Lake Michigan. The ice stretches for miles along the shore, but what proved to be more interesting was the view up. A deep blue sky and trees reaching for it, kept me entertained as the kids jumped around the snow on the dune.
It's March, and the days are warming a bit- that means the sap is running! It's Maple Sugar Time. Maple sap begins to run when the daytime temperatures are above freezing, and the night temperatures drop below freezing.
Walking around the Chelberg Farm this time of year, one gets a sense of how things were in the 1930's, when the Chelberg's began gathering sap to make maple syrup to sell in Chicago. The woods were full of maple trees, and with a bit of hard work, the sap could be gathered, refined, and sold for a late winter profit.
Maple syrup is strictly a North American product. More specifically, it's naturally limited to the region east of the Mississippi River, north of the Ohio River, and into Canada.
The process has been modernized, but syrup making began with the native Americans. They placed hot rocks into wooden bowls filled with sap. The water boiled out and what remained was pure maple syrup. Today, in commercial syrup production, plastic pipes and stainless steel evaporators are used to gather and reduce the sap.
The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore's Chelberg Farm demonstrates the maple sugaring process each March during Maple Sugar Days. They explain and demonstrate how the native Americans refined the sap, as well as the more modern, 1930's methods.
Still using galvanized buckets hung from cast spiles, they gather sap from numerous sugar maple trees on the property. The sap is then transferred to the the original "sugar shack" where it is warmed over a wood-fired evaporator. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.
An interesting thing to note is the glass jug hanging over the evaporator. Being March, it's rather cold outside, and in the sugar shack. Pouring hot maple syrup into a cold glass jug will cause the jug to shatter instantly. Heating the jug above the evaporator makes the glass warm enough to prevent it from breaking.
Unfortunately, they can't sell the syrup they produce, but it's certainly worth a trip to the national park to watch the process.
One of the great things about the winter at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore -aside from the ice formations - is the fact that you're almost always alone. Occasionally we see others, but it's rare. And quite often, when I visit by myself, I don't see anyone for miles around.
Summers are usually very busy, but when I arrive before 7am, I'm also alone, watching nature wake up to another day.
Looking a lot more like the Arctic Ocean, Lake Michigan has its share of drift ice this year. While it appears to be quite solid, the drift ice is comprised of small pieces of ice "drifting" along on the surface of the lake. It's difficult to see, but a time-lapse image would show movement in almost every direction.
Apparently, the winds have been blowing from the Northwest, pushing all the ice toward the southeastern shore of the Great Lake.
It may not look like it, but this is the shore of Lake Michigan. The person walking is safe, right on the shore where the waves break in warmer weather. Cold water and waves create these mounds of shelf ice; this year, they extended hundreds of feet into the lake. Tempting hills to climb, but they can be deadly, so it's never a good idea to wander out onto them.
