21) Indiana Sand Dunes

Visited: Thursday, August 13th, 2009

This is the final national park site we visited during our big 2009 tour; we considered trying to hit one more on the way home, but opted for Corning and the Baseball Hall of Fame instead.

We didn't spend enough time at the Indiana Sand Dunes, mostly because we were tired, and in the middle of a _long_ drive (from Wisconsin to NE Ohio). And it was here that we first discovered the difference between the Eastern and Western national parks; our Western national park society membership was reluctantly accepted here, the last time save for an online order) that happened.

(A complete aside - I collect patches, and have since I was a kid. While patches have become a less popular souvenir, they are common at the national parks - and, almost without exception, beautiful. But they're entirely different in the Eastern and Western parks. In the Western parks, they only have official patches for the smaller, less touristy parks; so Hubbell Trading Post and the Mississippi River have official patches, but not Yosemite or Yellowstone or Zion, among others. But they're inexpensive - $2.95. In the Eastern parks, there's a patch for most of the reasonably major parks, they're a little bigger - and they're inevitably $5.95. And, of course, they don't offer any discounts, unlike the Western parks.)