Indiana’s State Nature Passport
Mondays are our adventure days.
Or our exploring days.
I’m not really sure what we’re calling it but what I do know is that Mondays are days that we don’t have a traditional school days but instead find something fun to do. Sometimes we spend the day hiking at a park. Oher times we find a museum to visit. Occasionally we have a day of just kicking it around the house in our jammies. And sometimes we clean the house from top to bottom when I get really sick of teenage messiness.
Today we decided to visit an Indiana State Park.
For Christmas we purchased an Indiana State Park pass. This was a great idea. Here’s what we did:
For a family Christmas gift we purchased a park pass gift pack. I believe it was $99 last year. With that we received a magazine subscription to the Indiana Parks mag, an annual pass to the Indiana State Parks (read: you get in for free at all of the parks), and we got a $60 gift card to the Indiana Parks Inns. So that was a wonderful gift for us. We now have an incentive to visit the parks as a family and we can stay at one of the inns or cabins with our gift card. Such a great gift!
Anywho… today we decided to go to Pokagon State Park. The four of us had never been! Since Nick was with us I decided it would be fun to go somewhere a little further away from home as I always feel safest when he’s with us (I am not a change a flat on the side of the toll road kind of gal!).
We drove up to Angola, Indiana and we found somewhere super fancy to eat lunch…Moe’s Southwest Grill!
We then entered into the park for our day of exploring! We went on a wonderful hike (Trail 1) that started near the Nature Center. We walked around to where there was an apple orchard, then looped back around to our car. We then drove through the park to see what all was around. We checked out the campgrounds for future trip ideas, scoped out the beach area, and then spent some time at the CCC Pavilion. It was a gorgeous, sunhiney day, where everything nearly glistens with the hope of spring coming. It felt so great to be able to run around in fresh air with the kiddos and Leroy (the dog with the biggest ears).
All in all it was a wonderful day! While we were there we “checked-in” on our phone to the Pokagon Park for the State Nature Passport through Visit Indiana. By checking into 60 different nature areas designated in the program you can be entered into giveaways and contests throughout the year.
It is a free program and although this was our very first check-in we’re all excited to participate throughout the rest of the year.
After we drove the length of the park we made our way back to the Potawatomi Inn, the hotel in the park. Opened in 1927 this inn has such a rich history within the state of Indiana. They have a reader board outside of the front door. On it we learned that during the World War II, Indiana didn’t have a waiting period to get married after you got your marriage license. Because of that the inn became a popular place for couples from Ohio and Michigan to sneak away and get married before the grooms were deployed. Isn’t that just the cutest thing?
The hotel was fun to walk around and explore with it’s sunning deck, pool, craft room, and recreation room. Lots to do and such a quaint, old world kind of charm!
And then it was back home! We had such a fun, laid back day of adventuring and we can’t wait to add on more places for our State Nature Passport!