I wanted to write a separate post for the second half of the day after leaving Mammoth Cave. Do you ever experience synchronicity? Where things just line up perfectly as if arranged? The stars really aligned for me that day.
I had planned to head north to Indiana at the end of my hike/tour but I wasn’t sure yet where where I was going to stay. The tour finished at about 3 pm so I decided to just get driving and figure out a place to stay along the way. The ranger from my tour had mentioned that there was a brand new National Park on my route called Indiana Dunes—right on Lake Michigan. It was 6 hours away and even though I’d already had a long and exhausting day I decided to go for it.
Driving through Indiana was so peaceful and relaxing. I didn’t know what to expect, but I fell in love with the views from I-65. I especially loved the expansive wind farm that I drove through north of Indianapolis. It felt really magical to pass through the rows of massive wind mills for miles at a stretch.
After stopping for gas and coffee, it was getting to be near 10 pm when I got to the highway exit for the park. I was one of a line of cars arriving at that time and when I got up to the gate entrance, the person on duty told me the campsite was full. They recommended a couple of other campsite names but didn’t have any other information about the (including even location!).
I headed back to the main road and saw signs that were only visible upon leaving the park that pointed to other campsites about 5 miles down the road. Unlike the previous road, this one was empty. Sailor and I were exhausted and we were both ready to be horizontal for hours. As we were nearing the campsite, I told Sailor our campsite is here waiting for us.
When I drove in I followed the signs to the walk-in sites. The campsite I had just come from in Mammoth Cave NP had separate loops for people arriving after hours, so that’s what I thought I was looking for. I drove through both loops of campsites and I couldn’t find the designated walk-in numbers. Also, they were ALL FULL.
I pulled through the first loop again certain that I had missed something about the location of these mystery walk-in campsites (like maybe they were a group in the center of the loop rather than one with a driveway for a car?). I parked in a small lot and decided to poke around a little, and I was right about the sites being grouped but wrong about their location. They weren’t in the center of the loop, they were off in the woods, completely invisible until you were on the trail. Walk-in sites meant literally walking into the woods with your stuff, not walk-in as in lacking a reservation.
I left Sailor in the car, put on my headlamp, and started hiking through the dark woods at close to 11 pm. The trail was…interpretive at best and most often nearly invisible. It was quiet in the woods and the campsite markers were few and far between. Every site I found had a tent on it though it seemed many people were still out at the lounge I passed on the way in, so there weren’t even any campfires to help with light or direction.
Despite all of this, walking in the woods in the middle of the night didn’t feel scary in the least. I felt completely at home and I still knew that our campsite was there waiting for us I just had to locate it. I finally found a site where the people were there having dinner, with dogs and a campfire. We chatted a little bit and I kept on down the trail looking for our site, and then…….I found it! One site unoccupied. I didn’t know until morning that it was the last site in the loop, closest to where I had parked to scout. I hustled back out to the car, grabbed my backpack with all of our overnight gear in it and headed back into the woods with Sailor. We were set up and cozy in the tent 10 minutes later.
Anyway, whether you see it as coincidence or synchronicity will likely depend on your personal outlook. All I know is that night I felt like I conjured our campsite out of thin air just by maintaining the certainty that it would be there. And by feeling completely at home in the woods.
Here are a few other pictures from the long last half of the day.
