Beaches and BBQ: Day 3

After a good nights sleep in the T@B, we were off - crossing Ohio into Indiana. A lot of the day was spent doing this:


That’s Juliet driving. Lots and lots of driving. We can definitively say that we like the rest stops in Ohio better than those in Indiana. (We have to stop a lot, since we’re getting less than 300 miles out of a tank of gas in the Odyssey.) One joy of having the trailer: we heated up leftovers rather than eating McDonalds for lunch. (I’m not sad for getting that full order of pork and potatoes Friday night after all.)

Our destination tonight is Indiana Dunes State Park. I had seen pictures of this park years ago in a book, National Geographic Guide to State Parks, that I had bought from a discount rack. The park, which borders a national park, consists of large sand dunes on the shores of Lake Michigan. I pestered Juliet during our trip planning to plan a stop there - and we’re glad we did.

We climbed my namesake (192 feet above sea level):


And we walked on the beach for a while. 70 degrees, sunny, and a nice breeze. Lovely.

Even more lovely was dinner. We had found a barbeque place, Smokey's Southern BBQ, mentioned on line, Located in Chesterton, it’s right down the road from the park. It turned out to be delicious.

Juliet got a ½-rack of ribs

And I got a plate of pulled pork.

Perhaps as important, they had fantastic pie. I was let down by the pie at the diner yesterday, so I needed pie redemption. We found it here, with a slice of blackberry pie. The banana cake with cream cheese icing was great too.

This picture looks like I was hogging all of the dessert. Not true. (Notice the beautiful pies on the shelf behind me. So tempting. So hard to have just one.)

Tom