Valley and Dune

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We left our Virginia home mid-afternoon on Wednesday, May 19 on the first leg of our trip to Alaska. Our first destination would be Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, more than a day's drive at that time of day, so we overnighted in the back parking lot of a Cracker Barrel in New Stanton, Pennsylvania. Cracker Barrel welcomes RVers to boondock overnight, and for us it's preferable to staying in a Walmart parking lot. We try to return the favor by ordering breakfast for takeout the next morning before getting back on the road.

The next day, right after we crossed the border into Ohio, disaster struck! Rather, we struck a steel bollard going through a very narrow EZ-Pass gate and ripped off the passenger side mirror. According to the Ohio Turnpike attendant on duty, this is a frequent occurrence as the older tollgates have not been widened in years, while vehicles have continued to get wider. We were able to retrieve the mirror, and, although a bit scratched, it still appeared to be in one piece. The 4 screws bolting it to the RV had been sheared off but the plastic base remained intact.

We carefully drove the remaining 40 miles to our campground in the rightmost lane, since we had no way of seeing along that side of the RV. Our auxillary side view cameras as well as our backup camera seemed to have gone on the blink as well.

We have an emergency road service contract with a company called Coach-Net, and they were able to find a terrific mobile RV repairman who came to our campground later that afternoon and reattached the mirror. He tenaciously worked to find the source of the camera failure, eventually taking the dashboard apart and securing electrical connections that had become dislodged. We offered him ice water during the 2+ hrs he worked on our rig. He positively raved about the great taste of the water which was from our garden hose back home (and then filtered through our Brita pitcher). It was a reminder of how the quality of water varies in the US, especially in industrial areas.

Disaster averted! And ready to hit the road once more.

Cuyahoga Valley National Park is a long, narrow park along the Cuyahoga River about midway between Cleveland and Akron. It started life as a National Recreation Area, and was redesignated as a national park in 2000. To us, it felt more like a set of interconnected county parks than a national park. However, we spent two days exploring the area, and enjoyed our visit.

The first day, we rented bikes and rode along the Ohio and Erie Canal towpath. The canal is empty of water, but you can still see some of the locks. There were also beautiful wildflowers growing in the canal bed and along the side of the trail.

The next day, we visited Brandywine Falls, one of the park's premier attractions. Site of an old (now gone) mill, the falls drop about 60 feet and cascade down a stair step cliff face.

We also visited The Ledges, an interesting geologic feature accessible by a trail at the base of 40 foot high sandstone cliffs. The area was green with moss, and there were some amazing trees that held onto boulders with contorted root systems.

Steps built by the Civilian Conservation Corps more than 85 years ago

We continued our trip westward, overnighting at another Cracker Barrel in Elkhart, Indiana, which bills itself as "The RV Capital of the World" because many RV manufacturers are based in the area. When we discovered that the RV/MH (Recreational Vehicle/Manufactured Home) Hall of Fame and Museum was also in Elkhart... well, how could we NOT visit?

One of the units on temporary display was a particularly tricked-out RV used for tailgating at Philadelphia Eagles games. On the side of the RV, various football players were featured in larger than life photos, and there was even a picture of the Pope sporting an Eagle's jersey.

After our RV immersion experience, we drove to western Indiana and enjoyed a two day visit to Indiana Dunes National Park on the southern shores of Lake Michigan. The park boasts as many visitors as Yosemite, probably because it is the closest thing to a large sandy beach near Chicago (only 45 minutes drive away). It used to be a National Lakeshore, but was promoted to National Park in 2019.

Clearly, Lake Michigan is a big draw, but the park also showcases the plant and bird diversity of the area. Some of the dunes were created at the end of the last ice age, and are now covered with forest and bogs. There are arctic tundra plants (from seeds dropped by the glaciers as they retreated) and even prickly pear cactus which you normally only see in the desert (they lay down flat in the Indiana winters and are covered with snow, protecting them from the frigid winds and ice)

This was well illustrated on one of the trails we hiked, the Dune Succession Trail, where climbing over and through the dunes on boardwalks led you from mature dune forests to younger and younger areas.

From the top of the boardwalk, on a clear day you can see the skyscrapers of Chicago twenty-seven miles away. Our day was hazy, but we could still make the skyline out.

In another area of the park, we visited several "Century of Progress" homes that had been relocated from Chicago after the 1933 Worlds Fair.

We also spent some time relaxing on the beach below the homes (although it was too cold to go swimming).

Leaving Indiana, we drove back to the east for 50 miles and then north into the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. As we drove up the state, the temperature steadily dropped, and was a good 20 degrees cooler as we arrived at another National Park Service site: Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. Near sunset, we took in the spectacular view of Lake Michigan and the dunes from the Empire Bluff overlook which sits almost 450 feet above the water.

The next morning, before leaving the park, we drove on the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive (although it sounds like an 18th Century fantasy figure, it's actually the name of the Michigan guy who suggested building the scenic road). In the pictures above, you can see a sand dune on the far horizon. Here's a closeup below. The Pierce Stocking drive goes through that section of the park.

Sleeping Bear Dunes gets its name from an old Native American legend about a bear and her two cubs who swam across Lake Michigan from Wisconsin. The cubs tired and drowned, forming two offshore islands. The mother bear laid down on top of the dunes and died, gazing out at her lost children.

The dunes drop sharply to the Lake, and tourists are warned against going down to visit. We wondered if rescuers would take credit cards, and whether there was a "senior citizen" rate.

There's a nearby area of the park where you can dune-climb on your own. Howe we'd "been there, done that" and decided to skip the experience.

Although we loved the view looking south from the dunes...

...it was time for us to move on. We returned to the Ciaowagen, leaving Sleeping Bear Dunes behind and headed for Michigan's Upper Peninsula. More about that in our next blog post!