It is late spring, everything is lush and vibrant. There is a some filling in still to come. Trees will soon be filled out and grasses and ferns will begin to dominate many areas of the park. The transition from spring to summer is more subtle than winter to spring, but it is just as much fun to watch. With all of the Lupine blooming in the western part of the park it is easy to neglect the trails around Beverly Shores on the east side. The Dune Ridge, Beverly Dr. loop is one of my favorites and it was overdue for a visit.
Yellow Salsify grows tall, so it can be difficult to get a top down view of its flower. This particular one is a bit past its prime and was wilting a bit which allowed me to get this nearly head on shot.The morning had been foggy, which left many small droplets of water on these grasses. I find their magnifying effects irresistible and I always have to take a few photographs when I encounter a scene like this. I find it easy to get carried away however and could easily spend most of an afternoon doing nothing but photographing these lovely drops.Spiderwort is always fun to work with. It is easy to focus your attention on the rich purple hues in the flowers. But the buds beneath them are worthy subjects themselves. It was a sunny day with strong contrasts between the shadows and the brightly lit flowers. I had to over expose the flower in order to bring out the buds.The Dune Ridge portion of the trail does indeed wind its way along the top of a forested dune. From it you get some great views down into this recently reclaimed portion of the Great Marsh. Zooming in a bit we can see a group of birders down on the closed stretch of Beverly Dr. which makes up the second half of my trail loop for the day. This happened to be the weekend of the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival, and as such I encountered a lot of people out on the trail looking for birds, of which there are a great variety this time of year.This small Orb Weaver was hanging out in the middle of his web when I came walking up. I guess he saw me because he quickly scurried over to the fern, though it was not much of a hiding place. I suppose if you are a spider and you detect movement of anything larger than a golfball you run and hide.Blue-Eyed Grass is a favorite treat. One little flower petal atop a single blade of grass. Well it is not technically a grass, but that’s unimportant. The pollenating visitor was a nice extra.Fleabane amidst the reeds and grasses at the edge of the swamp. The slightly elevated abandoned roadway cuts through the middle of the swamp and provides some really nice views. Look up from the close in view of the Fleabane and grasses and this is the view you get. Unlike a lot of boardwalks which cross marshes and swamps in the area, the roadbed provides a view which feels more like being in the actual swamp.Campion. Not native but I don’t think it is considered invasive. It seems to get along with the local ecosystem nicely, as opposed to running rampant like Garlic Mustard. Makes it easier to enjoy coming across it.
Last year we had a very dry spring, and that had a noticeable impact on the park. Water levels were quite low. This year, wow. It has beed a very rainy spring. Water levels are as high as I’ve seen them across the park. It is a wonderful thing to see all the Pannes which were were dry last year, full of water this year. The impact on the spring growth has been phenomenal. The whole park is exploding with wild flowers, lush and vibrant greens are everywhere. The photographs in this post were are taken on Mother’s Day on the Miller Woods trail in the IDNP.
If you happen to live anywhere near the Indiana Dunes I highly recommend that you visit the park sometime soon. You won’t be dissapointed.
(Click on any image to view it full size)
It was a beautiful day to be out on the trail. Temperatures in the upper 70’s, lots of sun, not too much wind. The Lupine pretty much stole the show, as they tend to do each year at this time. They grow in dense clumps which amplifies the impact of their intense purple/blue flowers. The other striking feature of the trail was how intense and vibrant the greens were. Brilliant yellow-greens and rich blue-greens.Of course I collected plenty of my more typical close up photographs of plants and insects. Not surprisingly the bees were out in abundance, and were heavily laden with pollen. And where you have pollenators, you have predators hunting them, like jumping spiders. This was one of the rare times when I took more landscape photographs than closeups of plants and insects. Partly because my prior two hikes had resulted in plenty of closeups of Lupine. But to be honest I was totally captivated by the beauty of the landscape, so I just kept trying and trying to capture the impact of it all.
