Sunday, November 13, 2016, Kareen and I visited our two local units, Pullman National Monument and Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Our short one-mile hike on this beautiful late fall day marked our last park visit together during the centennial, and my 358th NPS unit visited during 2016. The Succession Trail is appropriately named as it runs from Lake Michigan’s southern beach through steadily more compact dunes and denser vegetation, revealing how dunes are stabilized over time and farther inland. These dune fields extend for miles south of the lake. The national lakeshore has an excellent collection of hiking trails across diverse terrain, a fact masked to many occasional park visitors since many areas are not contiguous.
The photograph from the book’s interior shows Kareen pausing on the wooden boardwalk and stairs climbing the higher dunes on the trail.
