Michigan State Museum

Started out early to make a road trip to the Meijers Garden in Grand Rapids Michigan,about half way there the clouds moved in and the rains started. Not a good day for the gardens but a rainy day is always good for genealogy research, so we made a right turn and headed for Lansing and the State library and Archives. Cathy is big on genealogy and I really don't care about it unless she finds someone that was very rich, so while she was in the archives I went to the state museum which is in the same building.

I've been here at least a dozen times but I always spot something that I never noticed before, there were no school buses in the parking lot so I knew it would be quiet today.

The museum covers the entire history of Michigan and it would fill a lot of pages so I'm just going to post a few pictures.

The first thing you see when you get off the elevator, the Old's Museum is a few miles from here.

There is a section about the building of BIG MAC or as we call it in Michigan The BRIDGE.

This is a piece of Float Copper from the U.P. , it's 8 foot by 4 foot and weights about 4000 lbs and is 99.9 percent pure copper

Of course they have to have a section on the auto industry

Every time I round the corner and see this beautiful 57 Corvette, it reminds me of my very first car.  It was red too.

The sticker price on the car was $3450.00

One of the great things about growing up in Detroit was MOTOWN, we had some of the greatest music in the country right in our backyard and they all preformed every chance they had.  Any kind of a festival or fair they were there and most of the time it was FREE.  You could go to the State Fair and in one day see at least 5 headliners on stage.

My favorite and the love of my youth, Diana Ross, during my teens a probably saw her perform 25 times.

And this is who every Detroit kid wanted to grow up a be, Al Kaline, Mr Tiger.  A kid I went to High School with lived next door to Mr Kaline so I was fortunate enough to have met him quite a few times.

Date Line  1957

Anybody that follows football knows that we may never see this headline again.

Just a pretty stained glass window I liked.

I didn't realize until I got home and started looking at the pictures, what a great trip I was able to take down memory lane.

Guess I'm a little glad it rained today.

Just stuff

I just noticed that it's been over 6 weeks since I posted a Blog.  It's not that I've been to busy, it's just that we haven't done that much since we got back to Michigan.

We ended June at the kids house, I had to drive the grandson back and forth to Driver Training class for a week, then we had two days back at the park before we were back at the kids to House/Pet sit for 8 days while they went north to a family reunion week over the fourth of July.  It was during that heat wave so we had free air conditioning for the whole time.  

This is the little girl that we were taking care of while House sitting

An aerial  view of our park, we're the little red squiggly line near the lower center.

Lighthouse Village Resort, Homer Michigan, 780 membership sites and 10 Coast to Coast sites. 

About 10 days to ourselves at the park doing this and that, cleaning stuff,cutting the grass, working on the garden, fixing things breaking things and watching Tiger Baseball, we're in first place.  Then it was back to the kids house to again House/Pet sit for 9 days while they were of in the Boston area for a little road trip.  They hit Niagara Falls, West Pointe Academy, Salem, Mystic and Boston Massachusetts. They went to a Red Sox game, hugged the Green Monster, did a Segway tour of Boston, went whale watching and a ton more things that I can't think of.

We spotted this one in a Walmart's in Battle Creek, Michigan I was really hoping that it had a For Sale sign on it since it looks like it still has a lot of life left in it.

I tried to explain to them that Cathy and I are the retired ones with a motor home and that we're the ones that should be doing all the running around and that they should stay home and go to work everyday.  But since it was the two hottest parts of the summer so far the free A/C made up for it.

Down by the dock

 

Hopefully next week we'll get over to the Lake Michigan side to tour a garden we've been wanting to see for a couple of years , if we do you'll probably hear about it.

Back Road Discoveries

It's been awhile so we decided to take a little road trip up around Marshall Michigan. After miles of corn fields, narrow roads and dodging the potholes in the road we spotted what a first looked like an old abandon airfield. As we got closer we saw a chopper taking off so I pulled in to take a look around. There was one lady in the office that ran the whole place, I talked with her for about 20 minutes an got an hours worth of history about the place.

Right out of a WW II Movie

Mr Brooks donated the property to the city of Marshall with the provision that it always be used as an air field, it was about this time that city of Marshall was changing over from brick paved streets to cement. Mr Brooks said that he would take all the old bricks and stock piled them on the property, then he contacted someone in the Federal government and had a small CCC camp built and the CCC used the paving bricks to build the three buildings for the air field. The main hanger and a smaller out building still remain.

The Airfield is used by some glider pilots (NOTE: they also built some of the gliders here that were used during the D-Day invasion) and a bunch of those crazy people that jump out of a perfectly good airplane. She said the it really gets busy on the weekends because of people flying into eat at Schuler's restaurant. When I was just a wee lad my folks would make a once a year trek from our home in Detroit, about a three hours drive back then, to Marshall so that we could eat at Schuler's. The reason I remember this is that back then I had to wear a suit and tie to enter the restaurant at least with my parents I did. Today the restaurant is divided into the main dining room where the old ways still exist, and the Pub room where it is casual for lunch and dinner.

Any how, after leaving the air field we drove into Marshall and figured we would give the Pub section a try for lunch. We both went with the Grilled Triple Cheese sandwich with tomato and spinach, a bowl of Tomato Basil soup with homemade potato chips ($10). WOW, when she brought our order the sandwiches were over hanging the plate, a large bowl of soup and so many chips, that were great, that we had to get a to go box to take over half of them home. If you're ever near here you can't go wrong stopping for lunch. (115 S Eagle St, Marshall MI 269-781-0600 Just south of Michigan Ave)

The lady at Brooks Filed also mentioned the Southern Exposure Herb Garden just north of town, so we thought that we might try walking off a little of our lunch there.

Another good choice, the gardens is basically used for weddings and other such parties, the property contains a 1835 farm house and numerous out buildings, all restored to original condition and surrounded by beautiful gardens filled with small walking paths. While walking around the paths we stumbled onto one of the owners, Curtis spent 34 years in the Air Force and calls this place his 2^nd life. While chatting we mentioned that we travel Full time and he had a bunch of questions about that, then he explained that, that was what he had planned for his 3^rd life.

Pictures from Southern Exposure

One of the buildings where the parties are held

Iron bench in the shrubs

1953 Chevy

This place is really beautiful but hard to capture in Pictures

After that it was back to base camp to watch our Tigers beat Cleveland and move into FIRST PLACE.