The Newest National Park: Indiana Dunes

It was such a gorgeous day, I decided to take a day off from planning and head to my first National Park…which happens to be the newest National Park and only an hour from me, Indiana Dunes!

I think I’m going to regret hiking Trails 8-10 tomorrow, LOTS of sandy uphill, but I need to get used to it. My buddy Matt met up with me for the beach half, where we hung out until sunset. It was a little hazy, but still pretty. 🙂

On weeks where I can’t do big trips I’m going to do short little day or weekend trips instead.

This was fun!

Chicago Pride Parade 2019

Pride Parade day started with a “pre-game” party on my roof at 10am. We had hard cider, vodka and orange juice, watermelon soaked in vodka, and an assortment of other drinks. Needless to say, by noon we were all feeling pretty good and made our way to the parade route. The parade was AWESOME as usual. The floats were colorful, the energy was bumping, and everyone was having a great time. However, after a couple hours we started to notice the sky getting darker, and my Samsung Watch kept buzzing with new severe storm watches and warnings, so we decided to end it early and get back to my place before the storms hit us. Despite the weather, it was still a fun time, and I’m glad people were able to make it out to the pre-party!

Chicago Pridefest 2019

The weather gods were smiling upon us last weekend! Originally we were supposed to have storms, some severe, all weekend but it held off until later Sunday afternoon. My mom came to visit for the weekend, which was an added bonus. On Friday we wandered Boystown, did some shopping, had some ramen at Strings off Belmont, and just enjoyed the sunshine.

Saturday we went to Pridefest and picked up our free swag and saw a few shows. The Drag Show this year was particularly good, likely because it wasn’t 100 degrees out. It’s hard to have a lot of energy when you’re melting hot, so conditions were perfect for them this year. One of the best parts of Pridefest is seeing old friends, there were a lot of people there and it was great seeing everyone on Saturday.

Sunday Pridefest has always been my favorite, mostly because of Miss Foozie’s annual Pet Parade at noon. About 50ish dogs, cats, and sometimes other animals dress up in costume or their best rainbow colors to walk from the north stage to the south stage. It is the CUTEST thing and I love it! When the first round of rain started we dipped into Earth’s Kitchen on Halsted for some late lunch, then once it stopped headed home. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening watching Good Omens, a new show on Amazon Prime. It has sort of a Monty Python feel too it, and towards the end seemed to drag a bit, but definitely worth the watch for David Tennant’s performance alone.

Looking forward to the Pride Parade next weekend!