18-23 July: Except for two short trips to New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest, we haven’t camped in Vagabond since October 2019. Two long trips that we had planned for 2020 were cancelled due to Covid. Although we appreciate being able to video chat with our daughters and granddaughters in Colorado and California, we sorely missed being able to see them in person the whole time that we were isolating at home in N.H. for more than a year. The primary goal of this year’s trip across country and back is to spend a couple of weeks with each family, with only a modest amount of hiking, biking, visiting, and sightseeing as we travel from the Denver area to Monterey and then back home.
The one place we lingered on our way out to Colorado was Indiana Dunes National Park (formerly a National Lakeshore, elevated to NP status in 2019). While the scenery seemed at first to be less impressive than most national parks, the video at the visitor center gave us an appreciation for the significant diversity of wildlife the park holds. This is especially true for birds, due to the wide variety of shore, woodland, meadow, and wetland habitats, and also to the location along the migration routes of many species that key in on the southern tip of Lake Michigan on their long journeys. We had time for a short loop hike that climbed onto a forested dune ridge with nearby views of wetlands and Lake Michigan.
In mid-afternoon of our sixth day of driving, we finally arrived at the home of our Colorado daughter Lowry, son-in-law Kyle, and their two young daughters after not having visited with them since Christmas of 2019. Corwyn, our oldest granddaughter (nearly five), had eagerly anticipated our arrival by following our progress on a map of the states until we arrived. Her younger sister Oakley (20 months old) was reserved at first, but was soon at home playing in and out of our camper while we unloaded it after setting it up in their driveway.
