Sunday 14th May – Lake Michigan

The plan today was very straight forward.  Check-out time was 11am but the Formula 1 highlights weren’t on until 1245pm.  We would simply move the RV into the hotel car park and we could both utilise the Wi-Fi for our own needs – Si watching telly, me doing some blogging.

But, having moved, the Wi-Fi was not conforming and we couldn’t get connected from three different parking positions in the car park.  We would have to go searching for a hot-spot!  We plumbed in our next target in Indiana and headed that way whilst keeping our beady eyes scanning for internet opportunities.  We kerb-crawled our way around some retail parks and visited a few car parks containing fast-food outlets with prior good form for providing outside Wi-Fi - but it just didn’t want to come together, a sad state of affairs! 

Simon conceded defeat in the end and we drove onwards to the Indiana Dunes Lakeshore at Lake Michigan. Despite it being a sunny day the breeze coming off the second largest Great Lake (by surface area) made it feel cool but there were still a number of people braving it on the beach. We moved on to Indiana Dunes State Park.  Having already completely blown the budget this week it was a little painful to pay $37 for the pleasure of park entry and camping for the night (and no breakfast this time).  But we have a late check-out tomorrow and it is nice to be staying almost on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.   

Yes, we are aiming to get the complete ‘Great Lakes’ set of five – two down, three to go!

Lovely beach on the shore-line of Lake Michigan

The distant shadow of Chicago

Note - holes in deck!

Simon managed to catch up on the Formula 1 result whilst I went for some park exploration, first on the bike and then when I discovered how difficult it was to cycle on sand, I chose to walk.  We are around the corner of the lake from Chicago, so you can just about make out the skyline through the smog (above). I had noticed that there was a bird observation deck over-looking a marsh area so thought that would be a good target to walk to for a geek like me.  So, imagine my disappointment when I reached the deck to find it was shut due to having partially collapsed.

Canada geese and goslings

No dramas, I will walk on to the next boardwalk that passes over the marsh instead…. Which was also closed due to collapse (above) but that didn’t seem to affect this family of geese.  Disappointing that they hadn’t managed to put signs up informing me that I was wasting my time.  

I gave up trying to be healthy and walked back to the RV for a beer and some dinner.