Getting to know you: A visitor to your hometown

I typed a really really wonderful post on this yesterday. Hotlinks and everything. Then Movable Type went kaplut! and I lost everything. It's taken me until now to get the courage to type the post again. I'm seriously feeling some aggro towards MT right now.

Via Deb at Create a Connection:

I grew up in Crown Point, Indiana, about 40 minutes from Chicago.

1. Your visitor wants to see something historical. Where would you take her and why?
I'd take her to the Lake County Courthouse in Crown Point. In the 20s a notorious mobster, John Dillinger, escaped the courthouse jail by carving a gun out of a bar of soap and coloring it with black shoe polish. (I never said the residents of Crown Point were very smart.) The courthouse was also known for granting marriage licenses without a waiting period. Throughout the 20s and 30s various famous people got married there: Valentino, etc.

2. She wants to see something hysterical...well, mildly amusing anyway. She'd even go for cute, quirky, odd, or unique. Where would you take her and why?
We'd visit the giant rootbeer mug in Valparaiso, a few minutes from Crown Point. It's, basically, a giant root beer mug that stands alone in a parking lot near a bank. It used to stand next to an old drive-up diner, Hannon's Root Beer, which has since been torn down. It was the kind of place where the servers would come up to your car on rollerskates. We ate there a a lot when I was a kid. Their rootbeer floats were the best. It was owned by one of my third grade teachers. Since seeing your teacher outside of school was always an amazement when I was younger, I always thought it was an adventure to try and see if she was at the diner when we visited.

3. She wants to take some beautiful and/or interesting photos to fill her albums when she gets home. Where would you take her?
Definitely the Indiana Dunes! I spent a lot of time there in high school and college. You can hike up these gigantic dunes and then roll all the way down. There are also various trails. It's right on the shore of Lake Michigan, which, if you ignore what you've heard is in the water, is actually quite beautiful. The lake's so big that you can't see across it and I always imagined it was the ocean (what's a Midwestern girl to do?) If you stand on the shore and look to your left you'll see the Chicago skyline right on the water. To your right is, well, a nuclear power plant, but continue looking to your left and forward and you'll see the beauty. Lots of time was spent hiking up Mt. Baldy or sneaking out at night with friends so we could see the skyline of Chicago at night.

The amazing thing about the dunes is that they are constantly moving. I was always amazed by the houses with prime shoreline property that were either, being swallowed by the dunes or falling into the lake.

Also, the wildlife is amazing. Once I was hiking with some friends. We turned a corner in one of the valleys. All of a sudden, we were surrounded by hundreds of butterflies rising into the air. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. To this day it is still one of the most beautiful sites and experiences I've ever had.

Nearby are natural prairie lands which are actually becoming endangered in the US. There are few natural prairies left. One of my internships in college was doing research to help restore the ones in Northern Indiana. For one summer I spent my weekends going out to count and tag the wildlife in an effort to measure how the local land development was affecting these protected areas. Exciting, eh?

4. She'd like to buy a souvenir that will remind her of your area every time she sees it. What would you suggest and where would you go to get it?
We'd get a South Shore Line poster from the Indiana Dunes Preservation Society. During the early 1900s there was a move towards tourism in Northwest Indiana. Artists were commissioned to create prints depicting various stops on the South Shore Line, the railroad that runs from Chicago to South Bend. It's now a major line for commuters to Chicago. The posters are gorgeous and some are in the art deco style of the period. This one hangs in our living room. Bill is from the South Bend area, and Crown Point is one of the stops on the way to Chicago, so the poster represents the connection between where each of us grew up. Also, this particular one features Notre Dame football, one of Bill's favorites.

5. Wow, it's been a long day and you're both ready for a snack, or maybe even a meal. Where would you take her to really get the flavor of your area?
Broadway Cafe in Valparaiso! It's one of those pseudo-50s diners where the menu is 10 pages long and they serve everything from American, Italian, Mexican, Greek, Polish, German, and gigantic cakes and sundaes. It represents the area well: Northwest Indiana was a major area for immigrants to move to because of the available work in the steel mills. Many a night was spent there having a piece of pie and an endless cup of coffee. The waitresses didn't mind if you stayed all night just talking and taking up space.