Travel Tips

One of our favorite one day weekend trips is to go to Warren Dunes State Park. We visit a couple times each summer. On Sunday June 1st, (2008) we deciced to visit and beat the usual summer crowd .

The park is located on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan on the Red Arrow Highway, Northwest of South Bend, Indiana and south of St. Joseph Michigan. It's about an 1 1/2 hour drive from our house.

It's a scenic area with hiking, camping and swimming. The swimming is only for the very brave or maybe very numb, since the water is always cold, even in summer.

Climbing the tallest dune is an endurance test. Its steep and climbing in sand is no easy task under the best of conditions.

I hope you enjoy my photos.

This is Luke at the bottom of the Hill.

This dune you have to take a short walk to along the beach.

Can you find Luke in this photo?

This is how the ridge line of the dunes look like and also the eastern side of the dunes. This is the side away from the lake. On this side the forest grows up next to the dunes. In time the dunes grow, move east and push the forest eastward.

The is looking south and towards Indiana.

Chicago and Wisconsin are on the other side. You can actually see the skyscrapers in Chicago on a clear day from atop Tower Hill.

This is the beach, which is normally be very crowded in the hot summer months.

This hiking trail starts at the beach but quickly goes thru a thick hilly forest over the top of the first hill shown here.

If you visit the park at the right time, there are many wild flowers to be found. I do not know the name of this flower. There's lots of them and they only grow in open sandy areas.