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.
No comments:
Post a Comment