Walks Archives - Ephemera

Region Walks: Bluhm County Park in Westville, LaPorte County

I may have found my new favorite walk in LaPorte County. Most of my walks are pretty boring, I either walk down my street to the end and back (which is 2.5 miles) or I walk around Downtown Michigan City when I’m at work (as long as I want it to be, but usually a 1.5 miles)

Recently, after dropping off my kids at their grandparents’ house in Chesterton, I decided to stop by Bluhm County Park in Westville since it was halfway. It was a nice sunny day, with about two hours of daylight left, and I still needed to get my walk in. Driving all the way home and then walking down my street did not appeal.

Walking down my street is all right, but lately, it’s become trying. The walk is easy enough, that’s fine. But I don’t know if it’s just me, or what, but the drivers who tend to drive down 400 W in LaPorte have gotten worse in recent months. They drive 60-70mph down this country road that I treat as my sidewalk. They don’t even slow down when they see me (some people even speed up). When I first started walking down the street, I would wave at people, and they’d wave back. No one really waves anymore. It might be a reflection of the larger problems in America right now, but simply walking down my generally quiet country road now feels risky and dangerous because the drivers simply don’t care about common courtesy anymore.

So, I’ve been trying to find alternative walks that are close to my house.

Bluhm County Park is a former farm that was donated to the county when the owners died a while ago. Donated in 1992 by Gayle and Lucille Bluhm. The Park has 96 acres of spring wildflowers, upland forest, wetland, prairie, and a pond. It’s been developed into a lovely, free, and public park with multiple features. There are several developed and paved walking trails, kids’ play equipment, shelters for rent, bathrooms, and even a very nice-looking dog park. I applaud the county and Westville – the park is well-maintained.

For my first walk, I took the paved marshland walk. It was a lovely afternoon, the sun was low on the horizon, and it wasn’t too hot. The cicadas were out in full force. As I got further and further away from the road, I started to hear what has started to become my favorite noise: nothing at all.

It was so peaceful walking through those fields and marshes with just the sounds of the bugs and birds. The silence was wonderful. I never have complete silence at my house; I live too close to the Indiana Toll Road for that. I walked the path until it stopped at a woodland, but decided to keep going. The woodland part of the walk was lovely, though the mosquitoes couldn’t believe their luck at the snack they suddenly found themselves enjoying.

I walked through the woods to the end of the path and turned around, returning the way I came. I walked the other way around the marsh/pond area and soon found myself back in the parking lot. In total, about 1.25 miles.

It was one of the best walks I’ve experienced in quite a while, mostly for how quiet and peaceful it was out there in Westville. I liked it so much, I’ve been back since with my wife for another walk. Next, I’d like to add some distance with the Lincoln Memorial Trail at the other side of the park.

When my new Irish Setter puppy arrives in a few weeks, I look forward to taking him for walks here and joining the dog park so he can get some run and play in with other dogs. It looks like the perfect place for that. The only downside with the park is that it takes about 15 minutes to get there, down Indiana Route 2, which can be slow going if you’re in a hurry.

But my lovely, slow experience in the park is a great reminder that slowing down and enjoying the pockets of nature we have in LaPorte County is a wonderful thing. I can’t wait to go back. I’ll try to do this walk at least once a week.

Here’s a map of the trails with distances if you’re curious:

Walking Around Stone Lake in LaPorte, Indiana Dodging Bikers and Mosquitos

Recently, I was a volunteer parking attendant for the annual Dunebrook Dragon Boat Races, which took place on Stone Lake in LaPorte, Indiana. My task was done once most people had actually arrived for the event. While directing traffic into a baseball field, I realized that I was actually on a paved trail, and, wondering where it went, I looked it up on my trails app.

It appeared that I could actually follow the trail all the way around the lake. As my wife still had a few more hours to volunteer, I took this as an opportunity to go on a nice, long walk around Stone Lake. For those who don’t know me, I’ve been trying to improve my health by walking every day (and I’m training for a much longer walk – walking Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, an 84-mile walk that takes a week).

My own ignorance was guiding me here. For some reason, I thought the paved path went all the way around the lake, and I thought it was only two miles.

I was wrong on both counts.

So, I set off on the walk, following the nicely paved path along the southern end of the lake.

Stone Lake is not one of LaPorte’s largest lakes, nor is it one of the most popular (that would be Pine Lake). But it’s this lack of popularity that makes it a bit more sedate. There are well-developed beaches here, with bathrooms and facilities in the summer to serve beachgoers. You can even rent a kayak. I’ve never swum in the lake; there have been far too many contamination warnings for that (I won’t even swim in Lake Michigan).

It’s not even particularly clear whether Stone Lake is a very natural lake, Indiana classifies it as a reservoir because it is linked by a small channel to Pine Lake. Either way, it’s about 140 acres in size and only a few feet deep. Most of the shoreline, which was wise of the city planners, is parkland, though there are a few streets with houses that line the lake. But again, it’s far less than on Pine Lake. There are a few boats, but not many like in the volume on Pine Lake.

I passed the beach facilities and headed on the newly paved path that passes along the Lakeshore. I followed it for about a mile and enjoyed looking at all the beach cottages, a few of which look like they have recently been renovated (and a few that were clearly renovated with Chicago money because they follow a similar style – usually painted white with black trim and shutters).

And then after about a mile, I found myself at the end of the paved path, which unceremoniously ended at a dock. This was where I learned the paved path didn’t go all the way around the lake. But my trail app said there were trails to follow. So, I followed along the road, which would lead back to trails through the woods that would follow the lake shore.

I considered packing it in and walking back the way I’d come. If I did, it would be at least a two-mile total walk for the day, but I thought, well, I’m a mile in, and it’s only another mile around the lake, you’re halfway, keep going. Then at the end of the day, you can say you walked around the lake (I was wrong in my distance calculation here).

I walked to the boat landing area where fishermen put their boats in the water. I found the trailhead and followed it as best I could. This was not an enjoyable part of the walk. I generally like walking through the woods, but this was clearly a well-developed mountain biking track, and I kept worrying that I would be in the way of an angry biker trying to enjoy the paths.

This is where I would start to criticize the haphazard nature of the paths around Stone Lake. I don’t have a problem with the mountain biking tracks. And I was lucky that I didn’t encounter any that day, but there should be at least one dedicated foot traffic-only path around Stone Lake.

One reason is that I don’t want to get run over by someone moving too fast on a bike, and the other reason is that the paths were designed for biking; they do not go straight through the woods, they zigzag and go up and down in a way that makes walking unpleasant. I just wanted to walk around the lake. But I found myself zigzagging back on myself several times, while also watching out for bikers. I just kept dutifully following the trail app, which thankfully didn’t guide me too far away from the shoreline. For large parts of this section of the walk, you can’t even see the lake. It’s right there, but none of the trails allow you to see it.

Finally, I got to a section I’d walked on before and realized that I needed to get out of these biking trails before I got hurt. So, I cut through the trails and found myself in the middle of a neighborhood. The map indicated that further down the street, a proper hiking trail would start up again.

So, I followed the street, again, no sight of the lake at all, and found the trailhead. There were a few kids riding, I think, hoverboards through the woods, and we would end up crossing paths several times (or rather, I would be in their way as they were trying to hoverboard their way through the woods). Even though this was meant to be a hiking trail, it zigzagged very much like the biking trails I’d just left, and these teens were using the trail as such. It was… annoying.

Other than this group of teens, I mostly had the whole walk to myself, only occasionally encountering another person or a dogwalker. It was quiet in the quiet bits, and it was lovely to walk through and only hear nature as my companion on the walk. I just wish I hadn’t been in constant fear of being run over by a bike.

Eventually, I found myself back on the main trail next to the lakeshore. Clearly for walkers now. I crossed the neat metal bridge of the channel linking Stone Lake to Pine Lake and found myself in a parking lot next to Pine Lake. Then, I found the paved trailhead and walked the rest of the way to where I started.

In total, by the time I was back at my car, I had walked three complete miles, much more than I’d intended to walk that day.

I’d managed to walk around the lake, and I was rather proud of myself. But if I had to ‘review’ my walk, I would say that it was only moderately successful. LaPorte has spent a lot of money in recent years upgrading its parks and trail systems. But if they really need to take the initiative and either pave the trail all the way around the lake, or develop a hiking trail that’s separate from the biking trails (or develop a clear separation of the two). Then you have one singular experience that someone can tackle in a morning or afternoon.

Frankly, I’m not sure if I’ll do the walk again. I like the distance of it, but I was very well aware that I was walking in places or shared spaces that were not ideal for walking. I wish to encourage the LaPorte Parks Department to develop a walking trail around the whole lake. It’s also, and I should admit this, completely likely that I followed the completely wrong trail. Very possible since I’d never done the walk before.

It is nice that you can even walk around the whole lake, for the most part. The shoreline for Pine Lake is practically 95% controlled by private landowners, so there is absolutely no way to walk around LaPorte’s biggest lake (which, at one point, was two lakes made into one lake). I think I will try walking around Clear Lake next; it’s a similar size to Stone Lake, and it has public trails all the way around it.

After my walk, I waited in my air-conditioned car for my wife to finish her volunteering work, and I fell asleep. So, I guess the walk tired me out!

The Indiana Landscape That Went to War

Rural Indiana is a place that evokes two things: flatness and corn. And, for the most part, you would be right. Indiana is indeed a very flat place (at least in the big middle). And corn is the preferred crop, though that has given way somewhat to soy. So, it’s not a place that evokes being the engine of war.

For a brief period in the 1940s, it was the engine of war.

Indiana is blessed with geography. It’s at a crossroads in the USA – of the roads and of the railways. This makes it useful in times of war. And during World War II, a small town just outside of LaPorte, Indiana became one of the biggest munitions factories in the world: The Kingsbury Ordnance Plant. Driving through the Indiana landscape, if you didn’t know it was there, you would never notice it. But it’s there.

Here you had a vast open space, well connected to the rail network with close access to the Great Lakes (and thus the Atlantic Ocean). It was in the middle of nowhere but close enough to major cities that finding labor would not be hard. It was located thousands of miles from the nearest coastline, so it was safe from foreign bombardment and air forces. And it would be easy to disguise the operations within the landscape. It’s remoteness also made it safe: if there was an accident, it’s damage could be contained.

Kingsbury, Indiana became a wartime boomtown. The American war economy was a boom time, which, despite wartime, was most welcome after the austerity of the Great Depression. There was a labor shortage, and thousands of people had to be lured to rural Laporte County Indiana, then only home to 16,000 people (today, it’s population is still rather small at around 110,000).

Thousands of workers, at one time over 21,000, were brought in from all over the country and lived in a newly constructed town called Kingsford Heights. It was one factory, one-industry town. Shrouded in secrecy. Many employees were women since the men were sent away to war. It was dangerous and dirty work. Many had health issues for the rest of their lives.

The Kingsbury Ordnance Plan sprawled across 13,000 acres. There were dozens of factory buildings, each connected to the railways, separated by safe distances in case of accidents. An entire infrastructure was put into place to support the factories. Machine shops. Water towers. Warehouses. Canteens. Offices.

And here, they made the bombs, shells and bullets that fueled the ‘arsenal of freedom’ that was sent over to Europe. That supplied our allies. That leveled German and Japanese cities. That led us to victory.

Kingsbury did its job. And when the war was over, it wasn’t needed anymore. It was briefly reactivated for the Korean War but has been abandoned since 1960. And by abandoned, I mean that it’s mostly still there, rotting away in plain sight.

While the security cordons and military patrols are long gone, the infrastructure is still largely there. Many former factory buildings, built with reinforced concrete are now warehouses, and there’s a vibrant core of businesses that operate in them. Other, less useful buildings have been left to rot and are falling down, leading to the picture of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. You could film The Walking Dead here and not need to dress the set.

Much of the area was returned to farmland or given to the state of Indiana, who set it aside as the Kingsbury Fish and Wildlife area. In these places, you can wander around in overgrown fields, dotted with former munitions stores, steel doors long broken into. These ghostly bunkers, a remnant of a war long gone, sit there, abandoned in the landscape. They’re too difficult to demolish. Too dangerous to demolish. So, they’re still there. And will probably be there for hundreds of years.

There are dozens of them. Inside is the detritus of decades of teenagers up to no good. Garbage. Graffiti. Drug needles. If you grow up in Kingsbury, it’s a cool place to hang out in the dark nights of rural Indiana. When you walk amongst these silent sentries, you only hear the wildlife and the occasional gunshots of the people there to kill it.

It’s a scarred landscape. But a landscape where the wildlife has returned and is thriving. Even where the signs warn you that the land is contaminated and never to enter, they grow corn where they can, on land that one hopes isn’t still contaminated. There are large areas where nothing grows but grass. In the winter, when the land freezes and unfreezes, local farmers have reported hearing explosions as long-forgotten buried munitions manage to still explode.

When you approach by road and see the former factories, now working warehouses, it’s a chilling sight. It’s very reminiscent of a concentration camp. Railway lines go to each building, the complex is still surrounded by barb wire and is guarded. What are they doing in there? A few hardy people live out here, in mobile homes or industrial buildings converted to homes. It’s a muddy, dirty place. Many work the land that surrounds them.

In the areas that are no longer fenced off and part of the Kingsbury Fish and Wildlife Area, you’re free to wander and explore – at your own risk. You can walk along the streets that are now mostly grassed over. Peek inside the former munitions stores. Listen to the birds and the silence of rural Indiana. Despite what the place represents, it has a harsh beauty to it. And I love it.

It feels like walking through a town that was abandoned and razed. It’s weird walking through a cornfield surrounded by paved roads. This was industry. This was war. Now, it’s nature. And this is life.

The most chilling thought when you visit this place is that when you realize that most of the infrastructure is still there. The roads are still there. The rails are still there. The fences and buildings are still there. The electricity and water towers are still there.

It could all, quite easily, be spooled up again to manufacture death and destruction.

Walks: The Lighthouse, Michigan City

I’ve started walking again. I have been diagnosed with high blood pressure which means I need to take medication, eat better and be more active. I choose walking to be more active. So, here I’d like to show the interesting things I see on my walks. This is the iconic Lighthouse in Michigan City, set out on a concrete pier. The day I visited was windy and cold. I could not walk further than this, as the waves were too dangerous – I could have been swept away.