Hot Springs National Park

After having recently travelled hundreds of miles to visit a few National Parks located in other states, it's always nice to be able to make a quick visit a National Park just a short drive away. So the other weekend we drove an hour south and visited Hot Springs National Park. Even though we've been to Hot Springs lots of times before, we did the touristy things this time. We walked by the display springs, got our National Park passport stamped, and looked around the visitor center. As we were walking down Bathhouse Row, a summer thunderstorm popped up. It rained for a few minutes, and managed to drop the outside temperature down about 20 degrees.



I recently saw a video on Instagram from some content creator, which showed her making a frowny face by one of the display springs and giving a big thumbs down. She explained in the video's caption that she saw pictures of Hot Springs online and flew here from across the country. She showed the pictures to a Park Ranger, who then explained to her that the places in her photos don't exist. The pictures she saw were fake - made by AI.

Which I think explains a lot of the reasons why Hot Springs National Park usually ranks at the bottom of those "the WORST National Parks EVER!" lists. People are basing their rankings on stock or AI images and not actually visiting the park, or are completely uninterested in the park's history or what it has to offer. Hot Springs is a small park, but it is vastly underrated.

Dallas

And the next morning we left Indiana and then headed back into Chicago (or at least the airport part of Chicago). We had a flight that took us to Dallas, and luckily the flight wasn't too long. This is the view out the window as we approached the Dallas metroplex. I think this is the northern edge of Levon Lake:



As we approached the DFW airport, we flew through a rainbow. This isn't a great picture - it was taken with my cellphone during the brief 20 second span that we were able to actually see the rainbow. But I'm including it because it was really cool to see in person. Downtown Dallas can also be seen in the distance.



And a better view of downtown Dallas as we started our descent to the airport:



Every year around the 4th of July, Caroline's family has a little reunion. A bunch of her family lives around Dallas, so we tacked on the reunion to the end of our trip. Most of the few days we were in Texas were spent visiting with various cousins and Aunts and Uncles. But we did make a quick visit to downtown Dallas to take the kids to the Dallas World Aquarium.



It is a neat place to visit (except it's a little pricey). The kids seemed to enjoy it, the highlight of the trip for them was probably watching the manatee poop in the water.



Usually when we visit Texas in the summer, it is incredibly hot and humid. But somehow the few days we were there it was cloudy and actually cool. It felt really bizarre to be outside during the day when the temperature was only in the 80s. On the 4th of July, Jonah and I went to Toyota Stadium to see a soccer game. My beloved FC Dallas was playing Minnesota, and it had rained during the day. We got to the stadium and it was cool and pleasant (a huge difference to the game we attended here last year, when it was 100 degrees outside).



The game was ok (Dallas ended up losing 2-1). But at least there was a fireworks show after the game.  And I guess you could say that our trip ended with a bang - the next morning we loaded up the car and drove back home.

Indiana Dunes National Park

I hate to admit it, but the internet algorithms have me figured out. On Instagram, the recommended videos are usually either about National Parks or the Legend of Zelda video games. A type of video that pops up quite often is something like a ranking list of "the WORST National Parks EVER!' And by now, I've seen enough of these videos to know that they will include stock-image (or AI generated) pictures of the parks, which suggests that the creators haven't actually been to the parks they're criticizing. And usually the same parks will appear on those lists - Gateway Arch, Congaree, Hot Springs, Mammoth Cave, Petrified Forest, and Indiana Dunes.

Indiana Dunes National Park is located about an hour away from Chicago, along the southern shore of Lake Michigan. It protects about 15,000 acres of land, which includes many sand dunes and about 15 miles of shoreline. It's the sixth smallest National Park, but for being so small it contains a wide variety of ecosystems. Besides the dunes and shorelines, the park is also home to swamps, bogs, marshes, forests, oak savannas, prairies, and rivers. Over 1,100 native plant species can be found in the park, making it the fourth most biodiverse National Park.

Since we were so close, we rented a car and drove over from Chicago. I was curious to see the park, and if it truly was one of the WORST National Parks EVER!

We headed into Indiana and then checked into our hotel. Then we drove into the park and visited Porter Beach. The kids played in the water and in the sand, and I got the camera out to take a few pictures.



One of the coolest things about Indiana Dunes is that on clear days, you can see the Chicago skyline way off in the distance. Chicago is about 50 miles away, on the other side of the lake.



The sand dunes at Indiana Dunes are "wandering dunes" and always moving. At Porter Beach, the dunes here are starting to swallow up this fire hydrant.



And a nice sunset ended the day:





The next morning we headed back into the park and visited West Beach, which is home to one of the most popular trails in the park. Here the Dune Succession trail steeply climbs up to the top of Diana's Dune. The dune is named after Alice Mabel Gray, who lived here in the early 1900s when development was starting to encroach on the dunes. She was known as "Diana of the Dunes" after she worked to bring attention to the dunes and to help them be saved as a nature preserve. It is hard to hike on sand, but luckily a lot of the trail is along wooden boardwalks.



At the top you have a nice view of the lake and the dune, and then the trail drops down into a forest.



And then runs along the top of the dune before heading down to the beach:



Later that day we went to the small beach at the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk. It's a nice spot, even with a massive steel factory sitting nearby.



But there's also a nice view of a little lighthouse, and a fishing pier.







And then that evening, we got dinner at a brewery in the town of Michigan City. After we left, we drove by the sign for Mt. Baldy and decided to make a quick stop. Mt. Baldy is one of the largest dunes in the area, standing 126 foot-tall. We started the short trail, which went deep into a forest that was already getting dark under the thick canopy of trees.



And like the light at the end of the tunnel, we saw bright orange in the sky through the trees. Which meant there was a nice sunset brewing. We hurried to the end of the trail, and was treated to this view:



The bright colors really helped bring out the silhouette of the Chicago skyline, miles and miles away in Illinois.





We stayed there until the light began to fade out, it was a great way to end our trip to Indiana Dunes National Park.



The park isn't all that big, but we still didn't end up seeing everything there. We didn't hike all the trails, or visit all of the beaches. But it is still a neat park, and I'd say it's worthy of being a National Park. In our current political environment, when the Park Service's funding is under direct attack, we should seek to promote all of our parks. Even the ones that aren't as traditionally scenic as Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.

Chicago - Field Museum

The next day we took the kids to the Field Museum, the massive natural history museum that sits on the shores of Lake Michigan.



The museum contains over 24 million objects and specimens in its collection. And probably the most popular parts of that collection are the dinosaurs.



And the most famous of the dinosaur fossils there is Sue, which is considered to be the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex fossil ever found.



Sue is 40 feet long and 13 feet high, and is estimated to be about 67 million years old.



And just like those islands from the Jurassic Park movies, you can find dinosaurs all over the museum. This one is named Maximo, and is a titanosaur (which is the largest dinosaur ever found).



The titanosaur towers over the African elephants that are also on display.



We left the museum and then walked along the lake for a bit, passing by the Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. We walked by a small beach, and since it was a hot summer day there were lots of people out swimming. Before we went back to the hotel, I stopped to get a few pictures from the Planetarium, which offered this nice view of the Chicago skyline.

Chicago - Hancock Tower

Later that evening I headed out to visit the 360 Chicago Observation Deck, which sits on the 94th floor of the Hancock Tower (formally called 875 North Michigan Avenue). Like the observation deck in the Willis Tower, this one also starts with a series of exhibits on the history of the building and about architecture in Chicago. But the one here was much smaller, and also lacked a spot to get a picture with Oprah.

It doesn't take too long to reach the elevators, which quickly zoom up 1,030 feet to the deck. The views here are great, offering expansive views of downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan.







But it was kinda hard to get good pictures there. The windows were covered with smudges and fingerprints. And the glass was also really good at showing reflections, so many of the pictures ended up with ghostly reflections of other people's shirts or legs.



The Observation Deck takes up the entire 94th floor, but there really wasn't that much room. A lot of space is taken up by seating for a bar, where you can order overpriced drinks. There is also a spot where you can pay extra to stand in a little glass box that tilts out of the side of the building. So most of the remaining empty space always seemed to be busy with people posing for pictures or taking selfies. And if someone just happened to linger for a bit trying to get a picture, there would soon develop a line of people impatiently waiting for them to finish so they could take their spot by the window.



But one visitor there had managed to find a good spot - this spider had somehow made its way up 94 floors and built a web on the other side of the window. From there it had a pretty good view of a nice sunset.









As it got darker, the reflections in the glass became a lot harder to avoid.



But it was also really cool to watch as the millions of lights in the city turned on.



This is the view looking west, before the last bit of light from the sunset faded out.



I had just about given up on getting any more pictures. It was so dark that the glass was full of reflections, like a mirror. But then I saw a little wooden box sitting next to one of the windows. I'm not sure what that box's function was, but it turned into a really nice makeshift tripod. I put the camera on it, with the lens pressed up against the glass. If I put my hands around the lens, it cut out most of the reflections. So I turned on the 2 second timer on the camera, which gave me enough time to press the shutter and then move my hands over the lens to cut out the glare and reflections in the glass. I did this a few times and managed to get a few pictures that actually turned out ok (hopefully I didn't annoy too many of the other visitors by awkwardly sitting by that little box and taking pictures for a few minutes).



After that I took the elevator down to the lobby, and walked out onto Michigan Avenue. Just across the street from the Hancock Tower is the Fourth Presbyterian Church, which was built in 1912.



And just down the road is the old Chicago Water Tower, which was built in 1869.



It is the second oldest water tower in the country, and was one of the few structures in the area that survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.