Living in My Pajamas: Indian Summer Weekend

{Warning: there will be a ton of pictures of nothing but trees in this post. If you get bored, don't say I didn't warn you.}

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This past weekend, I spent a splendid Saturday enjoying the amazing Indian summer we're having.

I drove from Chicago to the Indiana Dunes to I meet up with my sister & my cousin to enjoy the day walking the trails.

One of the things I miss now that I live in big city is driving on back roads where the trees make a canopy over you.

(Yes, I took these while driving. But look at those colors!)

Once we got to the park, we decided to walk on trail #10, which was the longest at 5.5 miles, but a moderate one that took us around the entire park. We were up for the challenge. Plus, it sounded much better than trail #8, which took you up & down three dunes. We weren't up for that big of a challenge!

So off we went, enjoying the scenery & chit-chatting away.

A little off the path, we found a look-out. Here's the view at the top.

Back on the trail (and eating Pretzel M&Ms)

After a long while, we were ready for a change of scenery. I mean, the woods was lovely & all, but it all starts looking the same after a while.

We soon rounded a "corner" & came upon this...

...the beach!

Those are faces of happiness because we now have a place to eat our lunch! Can you see how hot & sweaty we were? 80 degrees in October is crazy!

Those don't look like beach pictures taken in October, do they? Who knew it could get so warm this far into autumn (or sunburned!).

Trail #10 continues down the beach for quite a while (about 2 miles). We walked it for a while, but we were getting hot & really wanted the shade of the trees again. So we jumped back into the woods & found Trail #9.

Because I forgot the trail map in the car, we had no clue how far we were from the Nature Center (where our car was). We found someone who did have a map & figured out where we were.

Onward we went!

We finally came out onto a parking lot & started rejoicing...we were ready to be done with this walk!

But it was a false alarm. It wasn't our parking lot. So we followed the signs to the Nature Center & ended up walking another small trek.

With sore feet, shoes filled with sand & full bladders, there was no sweeter sight than that building! (I know, we're kinda of pathetic, aren't we?)

After dumping all the sand from our shoes & trying to freshen up, we jumped in the card & headed to New Buffalo, MI to meet my parents, brother, aunt & uncle.