Picnics and pig’s ears and peckers, oh my!  Spring has finally sprung!  After weeks of indoor Date Days, we were able to break out our hiking shoes, tear off our clothes (ok, our coats) and spend the day outside.  And what better place to kickoff the outdoor season than the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

We loaded up the family truckster with picnic supplies (and Nova), dropped Nate at school and headed for the Dunes.  We arrived around 10am and set off on our usual pre-picnic hike.  Today we decided on Trail 10, an easy going 6-mile trek that starts with 4 miles in the woods and ends with 2 miles on the beach.  The temperature was in the uppers 60’s and we were in great spirits.

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We’ve been to the dunes countess time, but always seem to find something new.  Today, it was woodpeckers.  In the first mile or so of the trail we must have seen half a dozen of the hard-beaked little monsters.  We’re no bird experts, but they all seemed to be of the Pileated variety.  Unfortunately, we were not able to get any good pictures to prove our sightings.  Alas, we will not likely be asked to replace Jack Black and Rashida Jones if they ever do a remake of The Big Year.  It’s a great movie by the way.

Continuing along the trail, we came to the Bird Observation Deck.  A few years ago, this was a great place to hangout and observe the surrounding marsh.  Today, it’s a broken-down ruin and should be removed by the park service.  Further down, we wandered through the Pinery, a pine forest in the middle of the woods, and ambled along the Boardwalk, a board walk.  Seriously, who names these things?  Finally, we crossed Paradise Valley, not a trailer park, and the Big Blowout, not a messy diaper, and reached the beach.  Whacky names aside, the 4 miles in the woods were awesome.  We saw lots of pants beginning to bloom, quite a few different birds and were generally by ourselves the entire time.

Before we hit the beach, we stood on top of the last dune, enjoying a spectacular view and catching our breaths from the climb.  The sun was shining, the water was blue, and the beach was pristine.  If we didn’t know better, we could have been in a tropical paradise.  We then strolled hand-in-hand down to the beach, where we found a 20-mph headwind for the last 2-miles of our hike.

Despite the wind, we had a pleasant hour on the beach.  Nova met a couple dogs, we saw some interesting pieces of driftwood and Theresa even found a couple pieces of beach glass.  It was a bit chilly at times, but we always love walking on the beach and didn’t mind.  We were, however, getting hungry.

After walking for 3 hours, we made it back to the car, tossed Nova into the back seat and headed for the picnic area.  As is usual during the week, we had the entire place to ourselves.  We set up our vittles, popped the top on our box of wine and dug into our picnic.  This week it was brie and cheddar cheeses, several types of crackers, turkey, hummus and fruit.  We even got smart and brought a pig ear for Nova to much on.  She enjoyed it so much that she forgot to beg for any of our food.

We wrapped up our meal with a box of various desert treats and finished off the wine.  It was time to head back to school to pick up Nate, so we left the Dunes behind us and put another great Date Day in the books.