State straddle

The past few days have been a tale of Northeasts--northeastern Illinois, northeastern Indiana and northeastern Ohio. We departed Wednesday from Chicago and arrived at Pokagon State Park, in Indiana, later that night. The campground has a lot of potential--wooded sites, nice online reservation system--but was a bit disappointing. As the problem has been in the past, raccoons and other varmints were lurking in the woods around the sites. They were ready to pounce at the slightest sign of humans. In our case, no food out at all and yet they were creeping up on us.

Also, maybe I haven't camped in the lower Midwest in midsummer for a while, but there were a ton of bugs around. A plague of daddy longlegs descended on our tent, and the mosquitoes were fierce in the morning. Our tent was set up on a hardpan dirt surface that made sleeping incredibly uncomfortable. Anyway, we'll probably stay in the nearby Potawatomi Lodge next time around.

It was a perfect summer morning amid the glacial lakes, marshes and woodlands of the region. We meandered a bit by car and found the point where Indiana, Michigan and Ohio come together. Representative really of nothing, though there was a stone marker signifying the convergence of the boundaries. It took a three-point stance to straddle all of them at once.

All told--40 plus bird species already and should be more to follow.