Going for Silver

225 miles

Since joining the National Park Travelers Club in 2011, our travels have gotten us the Special Achievement Award (minimum 10 units in 2 regions with 20 stamps) every year except for 2020 (pandemic 😢) and last year when we earned the Bronze Master Traveler Award (min. 25 units, 4 regions, 50 stamps). This year because we have been able to visit a number of different NPS passport regions (Western, Midwest, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and North Atlantic), we are really close to achieving the Silver MTA (min. 35 units, 5 regions, 75 stamps). Only need stamps from 7 more units before the end of the year! 

So, in an effort to get our (okay, *my*) certificate, we took a slight detour on our way down to my parents' house today to move 3 units closer to Silver...

Our first stop was the recently designated Emmett Till and Mamie-Till Mobley National Monument. On July 25, 2023, the 82nd anniversary of Emmett Till's birth, President Biden established this unit (#425) by executive proclamation. In 1955, Emmett, then 14 years-old, was lynched for reportedly whistling at a white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi. His mother Mamie's decision to hold an open-casket funeral for her son back home in Chicago served as a touchstone for the modern civil rights movement. 

The national monument includes the area believed to be where Till's brutalized body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River in Glendora, MS; Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, IL, where his open-casket visitation and funeral were held; and the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse in Sumner, MS, where Till's murderers were tried and acquitted.   

Located just off I-90/I-94 in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago, only the exterior of the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ is accessible to the public. Since there currently isn't much interpretation available, we only spent a few minutes here. 

Then we continued south on the Dan Ryan and the Bishop Ford Expressways to Pullman National Historical Park. The passport stamps for both units can be found at the visitor center. Because we spent more time exploring the park when we were here in 2016 and 2021, today was basically just a "stamp-and-run" stop.

J in 2008

Our third and final unit for the day was Indiana Dunes National Park. It was a "national lakeshore" when we last visited in 2008, but it was redesignated to a "national park" in 2019. Since I only intended to get stamps today, we went to the closest visitor center within the park - Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education in Gary, IN. (The main visitor center is farther east and is actually outside of the park boundaries.) However, these stamps proved to be a little more challenging to get because of road work. 

Don't tell Hertz that we went off-roading!

After briefly checking out the exhibits, we headed back to the car, made our way back to I-80/I-94, and stopped for lunch at Freddy's in Homewood, IL on our way downstate. I think it's been almost 30 years since I last drove this stretch of I-80 between the Indiana border and I-55!