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Places to go in Indiana.

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3 places

Indiana Dunes National Park Canyons & deserts

Indiana Dunes National Park

Porter, IN · Northwest Indiana, Lake Michigan shore

Indiana Dunes National Park packs roughly 15 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and 15,000 acres of dunes, marsh, prairie, and woods into the industrial corner of Northwest Indiana. Climb the shifting sand of Mount Baldy, a 120-foot living dune that creeps inland a few feet each year, for views across the water to the distant Chicago skyline. One of the most biodiverse parks in the system, it rewards birders and beachgoers alike.

Marengo Cave Caves

Marengo Cave

Marengo, IN · Indiana Cave Country

Two schoolchildren stumbled into Marengo Cave on a September afternoon in 1883, and tours have run almost without pause ever since, which makes this one of the oldest show caves in the country. The reason it became a National Natural Landmark is the sheer density of the decoration: the Crystal Palace and Queen's Palace chambers are packed wall to wall with stalactites, soda straws, and honey-colored flowstone draperies, earning it a reputation as the most heavily ornamented cavern in the region. Two walking tours split the difference, the quick Crystal Palace loop through the showpiece rooms and the longer Dripstone Trail past totem-pole formations and the cave's underground stream level, both held at a steady 52 degrees year round.

Bluespring Caverns Caves

Bluespring Caverns

Bedford, IN · Indiana Cave Country

Eighty feet under the limestone of southern Indiana, you board a small boat and glide onto the Myst'ry River, the longest navigable underground river in the country. The guide's light sweeps across mirror-still water and rippled rock while blind cavefish, born without eyes after generations in the dark, drift below the hull. It stays a steady 54 degrees down here, the air is damp and close, and for an hour the only world is the one your lantern reaches.