Lansing, Dearborn, and Detroit, MI: September 7-9, 2023 - Invennovations!

The last big drive of the Wishigan trip took us out from Grand Rapids on the afternoon of the 7th through Lansing; another state capital crossed off my list.

The perspective is not being messed with in that photo; the Michigan state Capitol really does have an oddly skinny dome to it.  The dome, by the way, was under repair and being worked on, just like in West Virginia!

I just can't win!

But we took the tour nonetheless, and it was a solid tour!  Plenty of history as well as sights:

I think Wisconsin takes the cake between the two visited on this trip, but Michigan's still a solid one!  

Oh goodness...I am going to become a State Capitol snob.

And then we continued on to Dearborn, the location of our final hotel for this trip.  We did venture into Detroit proper, but stayed in Dearborn, a suburb, to be closer to the main event for this area, which we arrived at bright and early the next day: The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation:

Not much to look at from the outside...but inside:

A wonderland of invention, innovation, inspiration, incantation, and anything else along those lines!

I have to say, I dug this.  Very very much.  A truly unique type of museum, and endlessly fascinating.  You could easily spend all day here.  Any type of mechanical progress that has taken place in America's history can be found here.

First and foremost, you had cars:

I have never been much of a car guy in terms of their functionality, but I am totally into their history and development, which you could see in a very long display showing the steady evolution of cars from the late 1800s until today:

And they had a section on presidential cars, including - and I absolutely could not believe this - the car that Kennedy was assassinated in:

I could not fathom how this was here, in Some Museum, as opposed to like a secret bunker deep under the White House or something.

To go along with our automobiles, we did also have planes and trains:

And a paper airplane testing lab!

This ode to the American innovation of fast food:

This room of early steam engines:

And of course a good old fashioned tour through the decades:

And some farm vehicles, as a coda:

An excellent hidden gem of a place, although I'm only saying that as an outsider to not only this state but this region.  Maybe everyone in the American midwest knows all about the Henry Fonda museum.

With the late afternoon and early evening, we now ventured into Detroit proper, intending to walk about a bit and then grab dinner.

We saw some art deco buildings:

but were then lured, tractor-beam-like, toward the massive GM complex of buildings on the river's edge:

Apparently it was cool to just waltz right in:

and for the second time that day, find ourselves in a fancy museum of cars:

This frankly felt very out of place.  The architecture, neon lights, and futuristic interior felt more like Guangzhou than Detroit.  But nonetheless, we pressed on, finding ourselves eventually able to access a people mover for only 75¢

Which allowed us to swing out into the city and quickly see just a bit more of downtown:

before at last grabbing a pub dinner at a place called Grand Trunk:

and that was that.

The trip ended with a quick jaunt through Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor the next morning, somewhat-en-route to the airport since we had just a bit of time to kill.

And thus it was that Wishigan was finally complete.  With this trip done, my mom now has just two states left before having seen all 50.  I could, with cheeky sarcasm, say that with the final two - Nebraska and Iowa - we saved the most exciting for last.  But I gotta say, we've already started looking for points of interest, and there's actually some neat stuff to see.

I suppose, with travel, there's always an adventure.

Traverse City and Grand Rapids, MI: September 6-7, 2023 - In the Vast Deserts of...Michigan

The perfect weather we'd had so far began to deteriorate as we began the leg of our trip that brought us into the Lower Peninsula of Michigan.  To be clear, what we had from here on out was what I'd been expecting the whole time for this part of the country in early September: 60s, grey, and intermittently rainy.  The sunny 70s and 80s had been just a nice extra treat.

And so it was that we headed out into the rain on that Wednesday morning, headed for Sleeping Bear Dunes.  Sleeping Bear Dunes is one of only three National Lakeshores in the U.S.  Another, Pictured Rocks, we had been to just days earlier, and the third, oddly enough, is in Wisconsin.  The two states we picked for this trip contain all of the National Lakeshores in the country.  How about that!

A former National Lakeshore is Indiana Dunes, which is now a full-fledged National Park.

Sleeping Bear Dunes are a collection of gigantic sand dunes on the shore of Lake Michigan on the northwestern side of the Michigan Mitten near Traverse City.  As you might gather, the topography of such a place is not what one would expect in this part of the country.

We arrived while the rain was still trickling down:

And then began the climb:

This was far more arduous than you might think!  Not only is it a steep, lengthy climb, but the composition of the ground means about 5x the effort per step, as the sand crumbles away beneath your feet.  My assessment was, it was actually fortunate that it was raining - it meant the sand held together just a little better than it otherwise would.

Made it to the first plateau:

A nice view!

The dune stretched on endlessly before us:

It really was like being in the desert.

Here's a pano from atop the next little hill:

Really great!  A strong recommendation, even in the rain.

After the dune, we got back on the road heading south, stopping for lunch in the town of Mesick:

and then finally finished our driving for the day in Grand Rapids.  Had dinner at a brewery called City Built:

and then took an evening stroll along the river:

There were a few art installments to see:

And then we partook of the hotel reception:

That was it for the evening.  Grand Rapids had really been chosen as a stop just to break up a long drive, but there was one interesting thing we decided to check out on our way out of town the next morning: the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park:

This is Frederik Meijer of Meijer grocery store fame, and it was him that donated the land for this admixture botanical-garden-and-outdoor-art-museum.  Kind of an interesting result!

I particularly liked the Japanese Garden:

And there was plenty of weird stuff:

And cool stuff!

It was pretty vast, and I don't even think we got to everything despite spending the whole morning there.  

We ate a quick lunch at the garden's café, then headed out to the final leg of the Wishigan adventure.