Dunes

Where were we camping, you might ask? Why, Chesterton, Indiana. Obviously.

Indiana Dunes State Park is quite a lovely place, about an hour and fifteen minutes from Chicago by train. The entire thing was beyond crazy, however, so let's see how well I can narrate it. To begin with, we were supposed to be taking a bus to the train stop at 57th Street at 3:40 on Friday to catch a 4:16 south/east bound train to Indiana. I had Italian until 3:20. I ran home, literally, threw all my school stuff out of my bag, and then threw the camping stuff (which I had stacked up the night before) in the bag. It didn't all fit, so I put my towel, an extra jacket, and my quilt in a huge Borders bag. Of course, I was still one of the first people done and, to make a long story very short, we missed the 3:40 bus and caught the 3:50 bus instead....which died about two blocks from the train station. Just when we thought we would have to get out and schlep all our stuff, the bus was resurrected and we got off, ran up the stairs to the train platform, and caught the NICTD South Shore line, which was so crowded with commuters that we couldn't sit near one another.

Fast forward to getting off the train. As it turns out, the campsite is about a mile from the train station, so we had to walk through random parts of Indiana. For about an hour because we got lost. With a heavy bag on my back, my overflow bag in one hand, and my sleeping bag in the other. When we finally got to the overnight part of the campground, we found that my male RH, who had driven a car down with the one-year-old and all our food, had chosen a spot very far away from the entrance to the campground. We eventually got there, pitched three tents, started a fire, ate dinner by dark or so, which consisted of (for me) two burnt hot dogs and s'mores. Most everyone else had fish tacos, since it's a Friday in Lent and apparently real Catholics (aka not my mother's side of the family) actually don't eat meat on Fridays in Lent, but frozen whiting (yeah that's apparently a type of lake fish) is just not particularly edible to me, someone who grew up with fresh haddock as a conception of what "fish" is. It was raining on and off, it was pretty cold, the one-year-old was cranky, I was cranky, etc.

When we eventually went to bed, I was so tired that I collapsed into my sleeping bag and basically fell asleep right then and there. The next day was more fun, with card games and much better food and hiking to the lakeshore, which was so windy that the waves were enormous and the wind blew us all off our feet. It did look a lot like the ocean, which was cool, only without that key ocean-y feel and smell, where your hair gets matted and tangly and salty even without getting it wet. The sand from the dunes was blowing around everywhere, so that I sort of felt like I was walking on Mars or something, and afterwards when we reached the beach house, out of the wind, it felt a bit like we were survivors of an apocalypse. Once we got back, I went to take a shower in the bathhouse, which turned out to be an excellent life decision because it enabled me to dry off nearly every article of clothing I had under the hand dryers. I spent about an hour in there drying off clothes and watching my female RH, the five-year-old, and my RA take equally long and hot showers.

Things went downhill after that, however. It turned out that 4pm was a great time to take a shower, as that was when it was snowing--yes, snowing--outside. By the time I returned to the fireside the snow was replaced by consistent 40 mph wind and bitter cold, so cold that even after I put on three pairs of pants and four layers of shirts and sweatshirts I was still unbearably cold. The food was slow to cook, we were all frozen, the wind was blowing acrid fire-smoke into our eyes and nostrils and mouths no matter where we stood near the fire (and it was too cold to not stand near the fire), the one-year-old screamed for probably half-an-hour without stopping; we finally just admitted, out loud, that things were "sucky" and "pretty awful" (in far more colorful language), and of course after that the food started to finish, so that the first bites of biscuit-dumplings we passed around the fire were pretty much the best bites of food I have ever had in my life.

After that the wind went down to only about 20 mph, which was bearable, and the food and hot chocolate was all really warm and nice. We considered sleeping all seven of us students in one tent but eventually just divided it up into two tents instead of three, with the 4 girls in one and the 3 boys in the other. Before bed we all huddled together in the impromptu girls' tent talking, lying on one another, and trying to keep warm, until the boys eventually left. I thought the tent was going to come down on us several times, as the gusts were back up in probably the 30-40mph range at night, but at least it was fairly warm in the tent with four bodies in it. (In the morning our female RH informed us that the previous night had seen a record low for the northern Indiana area.) In the morning it was cool but not so cold, and the sun was finally out, just in time for us to strike camp after breakfast and come back to the city, where I am now only wearing the usual one pair of pants, long-sleeved shirt, and sweatshirt and am not bone-achingly cold and covered in campfire smoke.

Despite all that, it really was a fun trip, just sleeping and shivering with one another and eating campfire foods and reveling in simple things like showers. You get to know even people you already know well just that much better when you are stinky, cold, tired, and yet somehow still happy at the same time and sharing the same cramped living spaces. Now I get to sleep in a real bed again and take a real shower (which I should get on, after I put away my all-too-real disgusting laundry from this past weekend), and do quite a bit of real homework.

Sounds like real fun.