I got to Warren Dunes about 7:30 pm, still plenty light out, but not a lot of daylight to spare. The ranger told to me to put my vehicle permit on the passenger side of the dash, but I suggested that since I’d left the sidecar at home, maybe he could give me a piece of tape so I could stick it to the handlebars. 🙂 I got some surprised looks as I buzzed into my campsite, but wasted no time getting the tent set up.
Warren Dunes is a fairly typical Michigan state park, with all the good and bad that entails. It’s in some nice woods, and they left lots of nice big trees in place, and some woods between the sections, so each site at least has some nature in its “back yard”, and there are a fair amount of bushes and such so you don’t have to stare too much at your next-door neighbors. But they’re still packed pretty tight compared to the wilderness campgrounds I’m used to, and of course every site is still open to the “street”. The crowd this weekend was a mix of RVs, pop-up trailers, and tents. (Quite a few Illinois licence plates.) I was the only on there on two wheels, though. I rolled my eyes at some of the elaborate homes-away-from-home that some campers had constructed, but to each his own, I suppose. I’m sure some of them thought me a rather odd duck with my backpacking gear strapped to a scooter.
After making camp I set off for the beach via one of the trails. Rather than scaling the incredibly steep dune climb right outside the campground, I took the path around, which still included a bit of climbing and descending. The beach was mostly deserted. It’s still a bit early in the season for swimming in the Lake to be much fun, and it had been raining here most of the afternoon (and still mostly overcast), so I can’t say I’m surprised.
I managed to snap a telephoto portrait of the Chicago skyline from across the Lake. As a kid I got the notion that Chicago was right at the southern tip of Lake Michigan, so I have to keep reminding myself that it’s really on the west side and actually extends north a ways. Of course here I am pretty close to the southern end of the Lake myself. And this far south, it’s just barely narrow enough to see across, obscuring the shorter buildings of Chicago, but still showing the skyscrapers.