Indiana Dunes - Mt. Baldy on Lake Michigan

July 1, 2012

After Ryan and Nicole's reception, we spent the night at a hotel in Indiana.  Then we woke the next morning and took a hike through the Indiana Dunes to spend some time at the Lake Michigan beach!!  You can see the cooling tower in Michigan City in the distance.

We chose Mt Baldy, since it is one of the largest sand dunes in Indiana.  Elsie and Papa Pete actually made it to the top of the sandy dune several times...and had a great time running down it!

The first few steps into the lake were very rocky and hard to maneuver.

It was a little cold, and Duncan was hard to read.

So hard to walk in the pebbles at the edge of the water!

Duncan wasn't so sure about the pebbly sand!

Not sure who was helping who here!

The water was actually quite nice, and once we made it past the rocks, the sand was nice and soft further in the lake.  J-Ma and Papa Pete enjoyed that this "ocean" was made up of fresh water, not the salty waters found off the shore!  We spent a long time just hanging out in the water, throwing some balls around.  Elsie was able to use the floaties and loved the waves when the big boats drove by!

We spent some time making a sand castle.  

Elsie was a good helper, bringing the water from the lake up to the sand castle.

Duncan tried his best to rake down the sand castle!

In the end, Duncan realized that it was much easier to just stomp all over the sand castle!  Elsie was not pleased.

We had a beautiful morning on the lake.  After lunch, it got way too hot for the Bullards and Phippses, so we made the long hike back to the car as all of the other families started arriving.  We all managed to get changed...just before a huge thunderstorm hit!  We would find out later that evening that the thunderstorm took out the power at our house!  The storm was so bad that the power outage lasted for three days and we had to sleep in the basement to keep cool!