[Carolyn Foley]
Welcome back to Teach Me About the Great Lakes, a twice-ish monthly podcast in which Stuart Carleton, a Louisiana native, gets people who are smarter and harder working than him to teach him all about the Great Lakes. My name is not Stuart Carleton, once again. My name is Carolyn Foley, and I'm one of the co-hosts of Teach Me About the Great Lakes.

I'm thrilled to join you today to share our Season of Giving episode for 2025. So, we try to do this every year, an episode where we feature a couple of non-profits who are helping support the Great Lakes and the people who live, work, and recreate there. It's always been a really inspiring conversation for me personally to have with these different groups who are passionate about the lakes and trying to help preserve them for generations to come.

So, I'm very excited to share my interviews with two different organizations today. So, I think we'll go ahead and get started. So, this is Carolyn Foley with Illinois Indiana Sea Grant, one of the co-hosts of Teach Me About the Great Lakes, and today I am speaking with Sandy Winstelt and Tony Spaniola, the co-chairs of the Great Lakes PFAS Action Network.

And so, we've had a couple of great conversations with them, and I'm going to share with you episodes of the show in the past where we've spoken to scientists and journalists about issues related to PFAS, health issues, food web issues, things like that. But Sandy and Tony, I wonder if you can tell me a little bit about the goals of your organization and what you're trying to do, where it came from, and where you're trying to go.

[Sandy Winstelt]
Sure, I'll start with a brief explanation. Tony and I got to know each other after learning we were both impacted with PFAS. And what we learned was that community members who have gone through this are really the best experts in helping people understand what has happened.

So, our goal is to give a format to people that can come together and share their knowledge both with each other, but also with state and federal agencies, with policymakers, with decision makers, and things like that. So, it elevates our voices on what we can do about the PFAS issue.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's great, that's great. And so, what kind of formats do you offer? Like, do you have meetings or do you have online webinars or things like that?

What kind of stuff do you do?

[Tony Spaniola]
Well, we do all of the above. It's online, it's work in the actual communities where folks are impacted, it's in-person meetings. We were just in Lansing, Michigan yesterday at our state capitol meeting with other impacted community folks from around the state and with our state legislators.

And I think a couple of things that we bring that other organizations don't, and it is, as Sandy said, it's the community. We use the term experts because a lot of times the real expert, the so-called normally recognized experts in the room operate in a bit of a vacuum outside of the reality of what people like Sandy and me and many, many, many others have to deal and live with every day. And I really believe, I thoroughly believe that the best way to find solutions is to bring in people who have to actually, of necessity, find ways to deal with the problems.

And so, I think that's really the core of what we're trying to do.

[Carolyn Foley]
So, what are the, how did you find out that your communities were impacted by PFAS? What, if you're willing to share those stories.

[Tony Spaniola]
Sandy, you want to go first?

[Sandy Winstelt]
So, I learned in 2017, the department of environmental quality at that time just happened to come to my house and asked to test my water. And it turned out that my well, I was on a private well, as many people in the state of Michigan are, my well had been contaminated with PFAS from Wolverine worldwide. They had dumped tannery waste in a 40-acre plot of land across the street from my house.

There was actually a Christmas tree farm when we moved in here, but it was, they had dumped tannery waste in there in the 70s and 80s. And given that PFAS doesn't dissolve or go anywhere, it went straight into the groundwater and impacted my well. So, that was how I learned.

But Tony was actually one of the first in the state to encounter this.

[Tony Spaniola]
Yeah. So, I actually live downstate in the Detroit area, but my family has a home in Northern Michigan in a town called Oscoda, which is in Northeast Michigan, near, actually right on the lake Huron shoreline. We have a home on an inland lake in the Huron National Forest there.

And in 2016, we learned that our water well, not unlike Sandy's, had water that was potentially contaminated with PFAS from the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base, a strategic air command facility that operated for many, many, many years and was shut down in 1993. But we were told to stop drinking our water. And as Sandy and I both know, Sandy has suffered a lot of personal consequences, far worse than mine.

But when you get a letter like that, or you get a knock on the door that says, your water's not safe to drink, that's a major, major jolt in your life because we use water for so much. And when you're told you can't drink it, you realize how much more you use it than you even realize. So we both had a similar awakening to this issue.

And we really had to learn on the fly and as we were going, because it was an issue that really hadn't been in the public eye much at all up until that time.

[Carolyn Foley]
Right. And something we've heard working with different people at Illinois Indiana Sea Grant and Michigan Sea Grant, different places around the Great Lakes, is that Michigan is such a leader in. And so thank you, because it sounds like the two of you, I'm very sorry for what happened.

But I think the rest of the region is and the country really is really, really benefiting. We even had a couple of years ago that we wrote a grant and we were writing it with some colleagues in the southern part of the U.S. And they were like, what's PFAS? Is that even a problem?

And we were like, my goodness. So how do you identify other groups to like, like, do you do outreach to Michigan or beyond? And how do you encourage other people to share their stories?

[Sandy Winstelt]
Well, the one thing, you know, Michigan is a leader in testing. We test everywhere. And that is the one area I think we're leading.

Tony and I agree that we are well behind some states in legislative action. So we're really good at finding the problem. We are not quite as good at solving the problem.

But the benefit of us doing so much testing is that becomes information that we can use. And we can then reach out to those communities and offer a resource, whether it's going to visit them directly or encouraging them to join our group and attend some meetings with us, just providing some information online, handouts, support community. We also do small community grant programs where we will help communities facilitate a town hall or do some well testing of their water or even do some blood testing.

It's a variety of things. So we try to provide some resources directly where the community needs it.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's really great. And it's kind of, I'll back up and I'll acknowledge that a lot of the people that I talk to are scientists. So they love the data.

Right. And even people who are who I know are thinking about like, ultimately, this can hurt people, you know, and animals and all sorts of things. But yep.

So that's a thank you for checking me there. So what are some of the successes that your organization has had that you feel have gone really well?

[Tony Spaniola]
Well, absolutely. Absolutely. And this is the part I think that offers a real hope for folks who are first dealing with the issue.

Sandy and I got together when we came to realize that we had so many things in common and that we really, our strength is in numbers and the ability to come together. And we live in a participatory democracy. And yes, sometimes it can work.

And we've seen that. Sandy and I have seen it go both ways. And I would say probably the biggest win, and Sandy and I are involved also in the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, which is an organization of community-based impacted folks across the country.

Probably the biggest win, I would say, Sandy, would be the National Drinking Water Standards that were announced by the EPA in April of 2025.

[Sandy Winstelt]
Absolutely.

[Tony Spaniola]
And Sandy and I were at the White House for things that, in connection with that, to push to get that through. And it was a generational victory, I must say. And I would also say we were able to get a set of PFAS drinking water standards in Michigan back in 2021.

And as well in really working, for example, with our Attorney General here in Michigan, who has taken action against PFAS polluters, manufacturers, and polluters across the state. Worked very closely with her on some of those initiatives. And I would also say that in each of our little niches, we've been able to push policymakers in terms of, how do you look at this problem?

Sandy is just a real leader in the whole notion of, how do we work with physicians in order to address PFAS when it's in people's bloodstreams? And working with physicians is really important. Working with the patients is even more important.

And getting the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to issue physician guidance was something Sandy was heavily involved in and was a real, I want to say a win, right? And then I would say also, my neck of the woods, I'm dealing with the Defense Department a lot because our contamination is from a defense site. And there's more than 700 sites in the country.

We were able, through my little community, to get the Defense Department to establish a national policy directive to strategize and prioritize how you clean up sites. We got together with a group of community scientists, put together a plan for our particular community, and then through the White House, members of Congress, and leadership in the Pentagon, that became a national policy back in 2023. So there's more, but those are the kinds of things that I would say that we've been able to do.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's fantastic. I really appreciate you sharing all of those because it's so heartening to know that, as you said, it does work sometimes. I'm certain that it's your personal stories that really speak to them, too, in terms of how you've been affected.

So thank you for being willing to share those. So do you have anything that's on the horizon that you're kind of looking forward to, or you see as a major challenge in the next year, in terms of what you're trying to do next?

[Sandy Winstelt]
You know, I think the biggest challenge right now is, I think, as everybody can see, we're seeing kind of an erosion of the EPA and environmental protections that we work so hard to get in place, and those are slowly being peeled back and peeled back. And so I think at this point, we're trying to figure out a way that we can stop that rollback of those protections, because we've lived firsthand, and we've heard so many stories from people who have been harmed by this. So to see that to roll back is really disheartening.

So I think we're trying to kind of shore up that message. I think we're also recognizing that that makes states' powers even more important, that it's through states that we're going to have to keep people safe for a while, at least, until we can get that. So for me, that's the number one thing.

I think the second thing that we've been working on is there's new fish standards out, as far as the safety of fish and our water bodies within the Great Lakes. We're very worried about wildlife, about ducks. Our deer hunting season starts Saturday.

You know, that's a big thing in Michigan. Like, school's closed. I'm talking, this is a holiday, at least on the west side of the state.

So to think that those are areas that we're also going to have to struggle with contamination, I think, are things that I'm thinking about in the future.

[Carolyn Foley]
Tony, do you have any that you wanted to add to it, Sandy?

[Tony Spaniola]
Yeah, I would say, and I totally agree with Sandy, I would say in the bigger picture, I think, and I think Sandy would agree with me on this, if we're going to attack this problem in the most effective way, it is not to run around and find all the places that these chemicals have been dumped at, and then try to figure it out after people are sick, waters are polluted. It's prevention, right? The old house of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

And that's to educate the consumers and the business community that you can make your products and you can buy products that don't have PFAS in them. And that it is best for our economy. It is best for our health.

It is best for our environment to move in that direction. And we're seeing companies, Sandy's done some fantastic work. We're seeing some companies that are moving in that direction to make the marketplace kind of a driver of PFAS-free products.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's really neat. So one of the episodes that we had done before was with a scientist named Dr. Marta Vanier. Well, I'm not sure if you've met.

Yep.

[Tony Spaniola]
Yes, we have. Yep.

[Carolyn Foley]
And that was one of the things that really stuck with me from our conversation with her was that she said, I'm a chemist. I want chemistry. I just want safe chemistry.

[Sandy Winstelt]
That's right.

[Carolyn Foley]
Yeah.

[Tony Spaniola]
Absolutely.

[Carolyn Foley]
So since this is part of our season of giving episode, we would love for you to share how people can support your network or become involved and what they can do to help you out.

[Sandy Winstelt]
Well, there's a couple of ways. One is we, like everyone in the world, we have a website, glpan.org, G-L-P-A-N.org. If you go there, there's a big donate button right there if you want to do it.

But the other thing I would encourage people to do is go there to get resources. We have some really user-friendly resources that people can use to educate themselves and others. Heck, use them for Christmas gifts, hand them out in stockings.

But just the more we get the word out on this, the more that we're going to be able to work together to combat this problem. So that would be my suggestion.

[Tony Spaniola]
And I would totally agree. And I would just also say to anyone who's listening, educate yourself on this because we all have PFAS in our blood. Every single American does.

And as Sandy and I know, as well as anybody, the last people I want to see PFAS in are my grandkids, are women of childbearing age, people who are immunocompromised, the general population too. But find ways to protect yourself because right now there's not enough regulation out there to regulate. Think about this.

We know there's 15,000 PFAS variants right now. We regulate six.

[Carolyn Foley]
Oh, my goodness.

[Tony Spaniola]
That's a whole lot of unregulated forever chemicals. So your best action right now is to protect yourself in this whole scenario until hopefully we bring more enlightened policy decisions into play.

[Carolyn Foley]
Great. Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that.

And so the link to their website will be in the show notes at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes.com slash episode 117, I believe it'll be. So Sandy and Tony, thank you so much for coming to teach us all about this. It was wonderful to hear about your organization.

But what we'd actually like to know about, we're amassing a list of places that we need to visit in the Great Lakes region. First relates to food. So this goes to each of you.

If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose? And where should we go to sample it? So maybe Tony can go first.

[Tony Spaniola]
Okay. Well, the breakfast thing is really easy. I would go to On The Rise Bakery in Detroit.

It is in the Solanus Casey Center. They have absolutely fantastic baked goods. And it's a social experiment in which people who are coming out of substance abuse treatment and incarceration are given a chance to develop a skill in baking and to get on their feet and get trained to get back out into the workplace and become productive citizens.

So you kind of get two for the price of one. And the food and baked goods are fantastic there.

[Carolyn Foley]
Awesome. Okay. Sandy, what's your suggestion?

[Sandy Winstelt]
Well, I'm not nearly as kind as Tony is.

I was going straight for a Sprinkles donut because they're right up the street from me. They're baked fresh every day. There is not a bad donut.

I have never met a donut I didn't like. Just saying. Sprinkles donuts it is.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's fantastic. I love it. Okay.

And that may be the first time that both people chose breakfast. So that's a record. That's good.

[Tony Spaniola]
Okay.

[Carolyn Foley]
Okay. So second question again for each of you is this.

What is a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience? And maybe we'll do Sandy first this time.

[Sandy Winstelt]
My favorite place of any place in the state of Michigan has got to be the Porcupine Mountains. We call them mountains in Michigan. They're not really mountains.

I know that. But they're called the Porcupine Mountains over in the western upper peninsula over by Aunt Nagan. It's a huge state park that's just got incredible views, incredible wildlife.

Two wonderful campgrounds that you can go to. One is pretty rustic. One is a little more my speed.

But we would go every year in October and camp there every year. And I never had a bad time. It's just beautiful up there.

[Carolyn Foley]
Thank you. And Tony?

[Tony Spaniola]
Well, there are so many fabulous places. And I think many people from my neck of the woods would kind of default to say to go to Leelanau County and the Sleeping Bear Dunes. And they're beautiful.

But there's a kind of a hidden gem that I want to share with you and your audience. And it's in the Huron National Forest. It would be a little bit to the west of Oscoda, Michigan.

Fantastic, unbelievably beautiful sand dunes, bluffs, swimming, and very pristine condition. It is just absolutely out of this world. It would be the Ausable.

It's technically the Ausable River. But it's a dammed up area that is just spectacular. And you can't go wrong.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's great. Thank you so much. This has been a lovely, lovely conversation. Thank you for sharing the goals of your organization, some of your successes, and where you came from.

Thank you for doing the work. It's very important work. And it's very much appreciated.

So yeah, I wish you best of luck as you keep going and look forward to reading about some more of your successes.

[Sandy Winstelt]
Thank you.

[Tony Spaniola]
Thank you.

[Sandy Winstelt]
Wonderful to be here.

[Tony Spaniola]
Yeah, thanks so much.

[Carolyn Foley]
So this is Carolyn Foley, the co-host of Teach Me About the Great Lakes. We're doing our Season of Giving episode today. And I'm speaking with Em Racine and Betsy Maurer of the Save the Dunes non-profit in Michigan City, Indiana.

Welcome, Betsy and Em.

[Em Racine]
Hi, thanks so much for having us.

[Carolyn Foley]
So I think we've done some episodes on the show.

And if we haven't, we really ought to have by now on some of the Great Lakes sand dunes. And they support some rather unique ecosystems. They're also a lot of fun to explore.

So could you tell me a bit more about Save the Dunes and what your mission is, what you're trying to accomplish?

[Betsy Maurer]
Sure. So Save the Dunes is one of the oldest environmental non-profits in Indiana. And we're largely credited with establishing the Indiana Dunes National Park.

So our founder, Dorothy Buell, brought together women in her home in Ogden Dunes to form the Save the Dunes Council, who then advocated between 1952 until 1966, which is when the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore was created. And so that is our founding. And then throughout the decades that followed, there were several expansion bills to bring us to the present day 16,000 acres of protected land and 15 miles of shoreline within the Indiana Dunes National Park.

We also have a state park, which was advocated for in the decades prior to Save the Dunes Council. And so that is why we have both a state park and a national park. And we do support the state park as well.

But a lot of our focus, and because of the acreage that's involved with the national park, is focused at the national park level. So our mission is to protect and advocate for the Indiana Dunes, Lake, Michigan, and surrounding natural areas. And we do that through a variety of programs that focus in on conservation or restoration projects specifically.

Advocacy. We're very proud of our roots in advocacy and continue to be strong advocates for the dunes to this day. And then our community engagement programs, which Em on the call, I'm sure will tell you about since she had some.

[Carolyn Foley]
So that's really, really awesome. And so it was just some people, it started out just a lady bringing people together at her house. And they just decided they wanted to try to protect the Indiana Dunes in some way.

[Betsy Maurer]
Yeah, it was very much a grass-led movement. And this woman, Dorothy, she was a retired school teacher, and it was just like-minded local residents and conservationists who cared about both the ecological significance of the dunes. We're one of the fifth most biologically diverse national parks in our entire nation.

So it was well known within the scientific community, but also for its recreational value. There were people visiting from Chicago. It was called the Prairie Club that would come and do Saturday walking tours.

And so it was known for decades for its recreational value. Our beaches are a very, very popular destination. We're actually the number one tourist destination in the entire state of Indiana.

And a lot of that visitation is driven by our beaches. People love to come here in the summer and spend the day out on the water and on the dunes. And so those were the founding reasons.

And there was a lot of pressure because of industrial development along the shoreline. And that is why the rallying cry, Save the Dunes, was created.

[Carolyn Foley]
Oh, really, really cool. And so I was this close to actually getting married on those beaches. But then it was cold.

And at the hotel that most of everybody was staying at, there was this random pond in the back. So my mom was like, why don't you just get married here instead? Because we had brought all the chairs ourselves and everything.

So we're like, oh, OK. So I agree that it's a beautiful, beautiful location. So in terms of programs that you're working on today, what are some of the programs that you're most proud of?

[Em Racine]
Yeah, so as Betsy mentioned, we work across the aisles of community engagement, conservation, and advocacy. And a lot of our programs are dictated onto different funding sources or different projects that come across our desks and our dunes. But most recently, I'm really proud of some wellness-focused projects that we've been working on.

We've got funding now two years in a row from the Health Foundation of LaPorte for increased wellness events and outreach. So we know that there's a direct correlation between time spent in green spaces and in nature to both our mental health and our physical health, like kind of tapping into that early recreation. People were coming out and obviously reaping the benefits of spending time in nature.

So we've been working those programs, and that looks like having yoga in our pollinator garden here at our headquarters in Michigan City, leading winter wellness hikes, getting people out onto the trails off-season, and encouraging them to still get out and move their bodies and take time in nature throughout all four seasons in the dunes. We also this year completed an advocacy-focused programming funded through the Legacy Foundation in Lake County, which was gathering a group of young folks and kind of walking them through step-by-step levels of advocacy from a municipal-level, grassroots, state-level, federal-level advocacy, how to approach that, how to best practices around using your voice to speak up for the things that you love.

Definitely with a focus on environmental, but really wanting to use this as a pilot program to get people engaged in those sorts of spaces. And then we're really excited about an upcoming program that's funded through Legacy and Lily Foundation that's all about connectivity and green ways. So, as you may know, our region received, or the South Shore Line just did a really big update to their double track, which is bringing more folks to the region and connecting people all across the area.

And so this program will be about bringing people to the train stations, which will eventually be educational hubs and wayfinding signs and just getting people out from those spaces. So recently, we ran a Bike Miller Beach event. We met everybody up at the South Shore Line in Miller Beach, used some bikes in the rental program from Gary Public Transit, cycle 219, and took to the trails.

And this was a group of people who had never visited Miller Beach or known about the Douglas Center or seen the lakeshore there. So it's very, you know, just encouraging folks to use this infrastructure that's coming in into our region and connecting them really easily. You don't need to necessarily have a car to access things.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's really awesome. That's really, really awesome. So is it like you really seem to be leaning into what exists locally and programs that exist locally in terms of like using the train, using the yeah.

So that's a fair characterization. Yeah.

[Em Racine]
Yeah, definitely. I think one thing is the community engagement manager I've heard is a lot of people say I don't I didn't know about that or I didn't know that it was there. And the National Park, the State Park, Shirley Hines Preserves, Nature Conservancy Preserves, all are right here in our backyard, kind of puzzle piecing together with the region.

And a lot of folks don't know about them. So educating them about what's there that also adds the level of creating new advocates for the region, because once they see shelf ice or once they see rare plants or once they access the Douglas Center and see that there's all of these resources for them, they align themselves more closely with the Indiana Dunes. And that's really like what we want to encourage people to see the dunes as, you know, in irreplaceable, you know, no no dollar attached to how special and great this area is.

[Carolyn Foley]
Right. That's really cool. I feel the need to say, please don't climb on shelf ice.

It's beautiful.

[Em Racine]
Stay off the shelf ice. Stay off the dunes, stay on designated trails. Our ecosystems are beautiful, but very delicate.

[Carolyn Foley]
Yeah. And then the other thing was, you know, you mentioned Miller Beach and I had never, you know, I mean, I'd lived in Indiana going to school for a while, but I didn't know anything about Miller Beach. And then there was an event up there and I was like, holy cow, this place is beautiful.

Like, yeah, it was, that was really, really cool. OK, so given that, so that's really awesome work that you guys are doing. And I think people will be really excited to hear about it.

What are some different ways, since this is the season of episode, what are some different ways that people can support Save the Dunes? Like, can they volunteer or can they participate in some way? What types of things are you all looking for?

[Betsy Maurer]
Oh, where to begin? There are ways for people to get involved with our organization. It's something that we really actually take pride in is that we're, if you're passionate, then we have a place for you.

You know, whether that is your time, your talents, your treasure, we really value anybody who is self identifies as a Dunes lover or once they get introduced to the Dunes, they will also fall in love with the Dunes like we have. So, but a few things that people can do just this week that we have available. Giving Tuesday is coming up next week, so we are doing a small challenge, if you call it.

We have matching dollars, so any gifts that you make to our organization on Giving Tuesday will be matched by our generous sponsors. We also have opt outside hike scheduled for the day after Thanksgiving, so we believe in the power of getting into nature as we described earlier before, and so instead of participating in Black Friday, we encourage people to get outside. And so this is an annual hike that we do at the Indiana Dunes National Park at their West Beach location, which is a really, really beautiful part of the Dunes, a very accessible space where you can hike.

Even the Dunes succession trail is located there where you can see all the different ecosystems within the Dunes within a one mile hike. So it's a great way to get introduced to the Dunes or revisit them if you've been before. And then if you're looking for more ways to get involved just with your time, we have a fun challenge going on where we have a tree on display at the Blue Chip Casino, and you can go online and vote for us.

And if you vote for us every day and we get enough votes, then we'll win thousands of dollars. You know, you can just volunteer your time by voting for us online and that will help support our organization. But we do have more traditional activities like volunteering for cleanup days, beach cleanups, or going out and pulling invasive plants.

So you can also get in contact with them and we'd be happy to get you on our volunteer list as well. So many, many ways to get involved.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's awesome. And so we'll share some of these links in the show notes for anyone who's listening at teachmeaboutthegreatlakes.com is where the show notes will be. I believe it's episode 119, although one of our editors did make fun of me for maybe not being able to count the other day.

She was like, yeah. Okay, but there's two things. So the first off, I feel like future Dunes enthusiasts or something like that, it's like a t-shirt opportunity that would be really, really great.

But what is on your tree? Like, is there a picture of it that we can share with people?

[Em Racine]
Yes, we do have. We have a couple of photographs. I believe that our talented development team decorated it in kind of a woodland theme this year.

So there's little deers and mushrooms and animals on there. And underneath the tree is plenty of Save the Dunes swag. So if you need gift inspo for your Dune lover in your life, we've got hoodies and long sleeves and all the trail gear you might need while you get out this winter.

[Carolyn Foley]
That's fantastic. Those reviews are really great. Okay, so Betsy Marr and Emery Seen, thank you so much for sharing about the wonderful work that Save the Dunes is doing.

Especially, like, I don't know, it's very interesting that the National Park, because like, you know, I don't know, some people are saying, oh, but does it deserve to be a National Park? That could be a whole other episode, right? But it's like, there's so many unique attributes about it.

And so many people can access it that it's like, to me, that's one of the things that makes it great, you know, because it's beautiful. And as you said, it supports a lot of ecological diversity and different things like that. So that's really cool.

But we did not invite you on to teach me about the Great Lakes to tell us about, well, we sort of did to tell you about your organization. But we also would really, really, really like to know two things. And each of you can answer these.

So the first one, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which would you choose? And next time we're in Michigan City, Indiana, or thereabouts, where should we go to sample it? So maybe we'll go Betsy first.

[Betsy Maurer]
Sure. Well, I am known for loving my donuts. But I have a favorite lunch spot in Michigan City.

I'm sure Em knows what I'm going to say because I have ordered it quite frequently. So I would I'm going to pick the sandwich choice because Panini Panini is an outstanding sandwich stop in Michigan City. That's worth checking out the next time you're in the area.

[Carolyn Foley]
Okay. And is there a particular sandwich that you think is the best that you must try?

[Betsy Maurer]
I mean, their whole menu is fantastic. And they have breakfast food as well and lasagna and everything even beyond just paninis. So it's really try everything but maybe start with the chicken pesto panini.

Chicken pesto. Awesome. Okay.

[Carolyn Foley]
Em, what about you?

[Em Racine]
Well, I'm definitely a sandwich person. I'm a lunch person for sure. I'm going to stray a little way from Michigan City and just encourage that any but anytime you come out to the Indiana Dunes is to check out your any local small business, small restaurant that's nearby.

So some of my favorites, I've got Joe's Bread in Chesterton. So from there, you can directly access the State Park and many of the and the National Parks Visitor Center is also all right in that area. Then there's Tiny's Cafe in Miller Beach, which is really good, have had some really great meals and hospitality at Tiny's.

And then if you are in Michigan City and you need to pick something up before you hit Mount Baldy, I really recommend the Lock's Bagel from Fluid Coffee. Cool.

[Carolyn Foley]
All right. That's that's fantastic. We are at some point we're going to like try to start actually hitting the places that people have recommended because so many of them you're just like, oh my gosh, that sounds delicious.

All right. That's really, really cool. Okay.

So thank you for sharing those thoughts. Second question is, what is a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience? And this time maybe we'll let Em go first and then Betsy.

[Em Racine]
Sure. So a special place in our Great Lakes region of northwest Indiana is Marquette Park. It's actually a secret third thing after state managed or federal managed.

It's a city managed park by Gary and that is the true latitude spot of the southernmost point of the Lake Michigan. So it's really unique in terms of geology history and it also has great cultural history to the city of Gary in our region. You can see things like the historic Aquatorium, which is like the old bathhouse that's been refurbished by a local non-profit.

You can kayak, you can rent bikes, you can see the Chanute Trail where airplanes were invented before the Wright brothers. So it's just like it kind of has everything right in that area. So that's my special place.

[Carolyn Foley]
Cool. And what about you, Betsy?

[Betsy Maurer]
Well, since I love Save the Dunes history, I'm going to recommend Coles Bog. It is one of the most biodiverse sections of the National Park and the entire Indiana Dunes region. So when you go to that trail, you park in the parking lot and then you cross back over the street.

And then right when you cross the street, there is a historical marker and it's a shout out to it being a National Historic Landmark because Save the Dunes purchased that property at tax sales so that it could one day become part of the National Park. So that was one of our earliest wins as an organization. And the trail is just stunning.

And then you can take it all the way down to the beach. And so you get these beautiful views of the lake. And if it's a clear day, you can see the Chicago skyline on the other side of the lake.

So really, really beautiful spot.

[Em Racine]
Fantastic. Another definite spot where you can see so many of the ecological diversity. Like you go in and you're hitting wetlands and then you've hiked through Oak Savannah and then hit the dunes and then hit the beach.

So you really get to see it all.

[Carolyn Foley]
Great. That's really cool. And that's one of the things I mentioned a second ago, how people talk about it as a National Park.

But I feel like one of the gems of that region is that there's so many different types of things within a pretty short area. So that's really, really cool. Okay.

Well, Betsy Maher and Emery Seen of Save the Dunes doing really, really awesome work. And we will again put some links up and you can check out the work that they're doing and how you might be able to get involved. Thank you so much for coming on.

This was a lovely conversation. Thank you for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.

[Betsy Maurer]
Thank you for having us.

[Carolyn Foley]
Thank you. So thanks for joining me and listening to the conversations with two really, really cool nonprofits today. I did not expect to fly fully solo for this particular episode, and that includes editing.

So please don't blame Sandy or Stuart or anyone but Carolyn for anything that you find extremely weird about this particular episode. Just as a reminder, the Lakies Nominations Forum is still open. I have no idea when Stuart's going to ask me to close it.

So get those nominations in. We'll have one or two more episodes in 2025. And we're going to try to keep things rolling on a fairly regular schedule in 2026.

We'll be bringing back Ask Dr. Fish with Dr. Katie O'Reilly and Titus Seilheimer. And we're looking forward to a whole lineup of great guests and learning much, much more about this wonderful system. So thanks for sticking with us through all of the scheduling craziness.

And thanks for listening to our terrible, terrible jokes. Hope you all have a really, really lovely holiday season.

[Megan Gunn]
Teach Me About the Great Lakes is brought to you by the Fine People Illinois Indiana Sea Grant.

We encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do at iiseagrant.org and at iliseagrant on Facebook, Instagram, and other social medias.

[Stuart Carlton]
Yeah, should we put our LinkedIn? I think we have a LinkedIn now. We're trying to ramp up the LinkedIn.

[Megan Gunn]
Yeah, that would be really awesome.

[Stuart Carlton]
All right.

Our Senior Producer is Carolyn Foley. And Teach Me About the Great Lakes is produced by Megan the Lake Lover, Gunn, and Renie Miles. Ethan Chitty is our Associate Producer and Fixer. Our Coordinating Producer is Motia Gumbionde. Ava Hale is helping too, but we don't have a title for her yet. But thank you, Ava.

[Megan Gunn]
The Awesome Ava.

[Stuart Carlton]
The Awesome Ava. Awesome Ava Hale.

They used to call her back in college. And our super fun podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport. The show that you're listening to, assuming any of it is left off the cutting room floor, it's edited by Sandra Sobota.

[Megan Gunn]
If you have a question or comment about the show or want to ask Megan or ask Carolyn anything, please email it to teachmeaboutthegreatlakes at gmail.com and leave a message. Or you can leave a message, I guess, on our hotline at 765-496-IISG. Or if you want to send us a postcard, that would be awesome too, because we love postcards.

[Stuart Carlton]
Sure, it's easy. 195 Marsteller Street, West Lafayette, Indiana.

[Betsy Maurer]
479-06 or 7. You can use both.

[Stuart Carlton]
Anyway, thank you for listening.

[Megan Gunn]
And keep creating those lakes.

[Carolyn Foley]
It's like, no, no, we're featuring them, Stuart. We're featuring them.