Hey everyone! Today is a different post from usual, but I wanted to share some parts of a recent camping trip I took to the Indiana Dunes since it was both memorable and funny. The last time I was at the Dunes was in middle school for our yearly retreat, and so my group wanted to go back in search of wilderness and nostalgia.

We arrived around 2 PM, and since we were expecting thunderstorms we set up tents and a tarp. I was very surprised by the number of other people at the campsite. It isn’t shown in the picture, but to our left and right were rows of mobile homes and RVs. Many of them had fancy tents and equipment. By comparison, as my friend puts it, we “looked homeless”. We were still good on rain, so we left to explore.

We took an unorthodox route by following a trail off of the main roads. It involved a lot of spider webs and stepping around forestry, but we still ended up at the beach.

Back at camp, we rekindled the fire using the embers the group before us left behind. Some cuisine tips for camping: if you cook the graham cracker in bacon grease and eat it with a marshmallow, it tastes a little bit like Creme Bulee (or funnel cake, according to my friend). Shown below is potato ship, banana, chocolate, and marshmallow all in one.

The next day we woke up to see a bit of the sunrise.

Our goal was to complete the 3- dune challenge, which was to climb the 3 tallest dunes. Unfortunately, we kept getting lost and running into stuff like the stairs shown below. One of the steps was rotten, but instead of replacing the rotten step the park decided that it would be a better idea to simply block off the section of the stairs that were rotten. As a result, we ended up accidentally climbing the same dune, Mt. Tom, 3 times. In my book, that’s a success.

Going back to the place we camped at over four years ago brought back memories. It was also a lot smaller than we remembered. Strange.

Have you gone camping recently? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading, and make sure to subscribe if you enjoy this content!