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June 20-23, 2024: Indiana Dunes National Park and Cuyahoga Valley National Park 

This blog is the last of a 7-part series describing our 8-week, 7,368 mile epic journey through the middle of the United States, in which we visited 10 national parks and many other state parks. 

June 20: We left the Badlands around 8:45 AM to head home. It poured throughout most of the drive and we drove about 8 hours past Fort Dodge, IA to spend the night in Brushy Creek State Recreation Area. We spent $25 to stay in a really nice setting with an electric hook-up and free showers. We took a nice walk to the lake and enjoyed seeing the nearly full moon over the trees. We saw a few pronghorns on the way through South Dakota, and one deer and lots of bunnies in the park. 

June 21: Leaving the campsite, we headed to Maquaketa Caves State Park. We arrived in the morning and found the park to be fairly crowded. We could walk through some of the caves, which were dark and wet, but really fun. Some caves required crawling through, so we skipped those. This was the first day that we really felt the humidity of the east, a strange change from the dry west. And there were lots of bugs as well. We spent about two hours at the caves and then headed toward Indiana Dunes National Park. We snagged a Boondockers Welcome (KevNancy) in Chesterton, IN, which turned out to be in a nice neighborhood close to the park. We ate dinner at the nearby Westchester Bird Sanctuary and walked to Dogwood Park to get some exercise. It was hot and humid out and we ran the fan using the EcoFlow block, which worked well. We slept well overall. 

June 22:  Waking up around 7AM, we headed back over to the bird sanctuary to make and eat breakfast. We then drove the scenic route to the national park, starting at Beverly Shores Beach and stopping at the Century of Progress Homes. These were homes constructed for the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago that were barged to the national park via Lake Michigan. Then people purchased them, agreeing to fix them to their original state. We walked along the Great Marsh Trail which was buggy and overgrown, but is the largest wetlands in Lake Michigan. And then we drove along Lake Michigan to Mt. Baldy, the highest dune (not very high) in the park. The highlight was swimming in Lake Michigan, which was surprisingly warmer than we had expected. We ate lunch at a picnic table in the parking lot and then headed out to get gas and go shopping at a local Meijer. Then we headed toward Elkhart to get propane as our indicater said we’re running low. Despite being known as a huge RV production area, Elkhart was a bust as they don’t sell propane on Saturdays (not sure why) but we got to see the Forest River and Thor plants along the road. Having cooled off in the lake, we didn’t feel the need to get a campground with a shower, so we tried to get a Boondockers Welcome or Harvest Host part way to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Most of our options either did not take same day requests or were already booked, but we found one that we requested and headed in that direction. Unfortunately, the host did not respond until I cancelled around 8:30 PM. IOverlander suggested Heckert Nature Preserve just past in Galion, OH which is where we stayed the night. We were hoping not to get the dreaded “knock” in the middle of the night. But this was a lovely spot, with lots of woods and pretty quiet. Around 10:30 PM, a car drove into the parking lot and we heard two young men’s voices. They only stayed for about 10 minutes and then left. We stayed very quietly in the dark van, but it was a bit freaky. We remembered that we still had the bear spray we had purchased for Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons and that made us feel a bit better. After the men left, we were exhausted and actually slept pretty well. It rained throughout the night which we hadn’t really expected. 

June 23: We took about 1.5 hours to drive to Cuyahoga Valley National Park, our last National Park of the trip. We parked at the main Visitor Center and hiked the tow path along what used to be the Eerie Canal, of course singing Pete Seeger’s song along the way to the Stanford Trail and then to the Brandywine Falls. The canal is now grown over but it was still wild to walk near the old canal. And there were black raspberries ripe on the path that we ate. The Brandywine Falls were a bit underwhelming, but the hike was nice. We returned and got vegan ice cream from the Boston Mill Visitor Center. Due to time constraints, we decided to skip the Native American path and hike the Ledges Trail instead, about a 10 minute drive away. The ledges were beautiful, 300-500 million year old sandstone that rise up from the trail. It was raining a bit at this point, our first non-travel day of rain in 8 weeks! 

After the Ledges hike, we started driving to Holiday Pines Campground in Langonton, PA, our last night of camping for the trip! The drive was supposed to take about 3 ½ hours, but there was a lane closed that caused a 15 minute delay and then it poured so the driving was slow. We listened to Eddie Vedder and the Grateful Dead to pass the time. We arrived at the campsite around 7PM. We tried to get propane (again!) but the pump at the campsite wouldn’t work and the husband/owner was getting soaked in the rain, which we felt really bad about. We drove to the campsite, set up, had dinner (vegan chicken patties with red sauce and a salad), and then took well-needed hot showers! We also turned on the AC to dry things out. We found two leaks in the van - one from the bathroom fan and one somewhere near the back left tire well. We were sad that the trip is over, but really looking forward to being home! NOTE: The leak in the bathroom was due to not closing the bathroom fan vent to prevent rain from coming in. The other leak was coming from the top of black tank (YUCK!) and we sanitized the area and sealed that up! 

June 24: We woke up around 7AM, ate a quick toast breakfast, cleaned up, dumped the tanks, and drove three hours to see relatives outside of Philadelphia. We ate a wonderful hoagie and delicious key lime pie for lunch, showing our hosts photos of our trip and giving them a tour of the van. Then we headed home around 4 PM, stopped on Rt. 30 to get diesel and was able to fill the propane at the gas station. We drove home to arrive around 6:00 PM, ordered Thai food for dinner, cleaned up quite a bit, and started unpacking a bit. 

In exactly 8 weeks, we traveled through 12 states, visited 10 national parks, several state parks, and drove 7,368 miles, spending just under $1300 in diesel. An epic journey!