August 9, 2012

Today is my son Allen’s 39^th birthday.  We didn’t have any rain during the night as expected.  Most of the rain is east of us.  We left camp and headed out for Frankenmuth. This town was settled by Germans and the downtown area look like a Bavarian village.   It rained on and off after we got to Lansing.  We got a campsite and then drove to Bronner’s Christmas Store.  We bought some ornaments to give at Christmas.  We found two geocaches.  In one of them we picked up a travel bug and put the one we had in the cache.  We went to Sullivan’s Black Forest Brewery for a couple of beers.  Jim ordered us an appetizer of four kinds of German sausages, mustard and fresh hot rolls.  Then we drove to Frankenmuth Brewing.  Their glycol cooling system went out and their beer on tap was too warm.  The bartenders were opening bottles of beer to use.  Afterwards Jim wanted to go to Zehnder’s Restaurant for all you can eat fried chicken dinner.  This place serves over 1 million customers a year and is one of the largest restaurants in the U.S.  It rained steadily all afternoon and the temperature was in the lower 60s.

August 10, 2012

Raindrops keep falling on our heads….   rain, rain, rain and windy today.  We drove to Bay City and got a site at Bay City Recreation Area State Park.  There is a lot of standing water and lots of little limbs down.  At least we are across from the restrooms and showers so we don’t have far to walk.  After setting up and putting on dry clothes, we went to Tri-City Brewing.  The brewer, Paul Popa, took us into the brew house.  All of his beers were really good.  He had several high gravity Belgian style beers.  On the way back we stopped at Wal-Mart and bought some items and then rented a movie, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” from Red Box.  We had leftovers from our all you can eat chicken dinner last night in Frankenmuth and watched some of the Olympics.

August 11, 2012

Finally, no rain this morning.  It rained all night long.  We lazed around camp this morning and then went to B.A.R.T.S. Brewery.  This is a huge place with six bars, including a martini and cigar bar, a whiskey bar, and a banquet room.  We had one beer and then went to look for geocaches.  We found six today and now we have found a total of 100.  One was a skirt lifter (the base of a light pole that lifts up) at the back of a Honda car lot.  We had a choice of two to lift.  Jim lifted the first one and yellow jackets flew out -- it’s a wonder he didn’t get stung.  He told me to lift the other one and the cache was there.

We got a hot & ready pizza for $5.00 from Little Caesars.  Jim went into an antique store just before closing and I went to a candy store.  There was old timey candy in it that I used to eat as a child.  Candy cigarettes, candy lipstick, slow pokes, black cows, Boston baked beans, large jaw breakers, and candy that we used to see at the downtown Houston Sears and Woolworth stores.  We returned the Redbox movie.   We tried to watch it last night but it was so boring we just couldn’t make it through.  We had dinner and then called Allen to go through the mail.

August 12, 2012

I hooked up the Casita today.  I always help Jim but he wants me to learn to do it by myself in case of an emergency.  We left camp and drove south through Saginaw and through Detroit to Belleville.  Jim wanted to camp at the Wayne County Fairgrounds. The county fair was over yesterday and he knew it would be less crowded.  When we got here the U.A.W. (United Auto Workers) local 900 union was having their annual picnic today.  They rented all the rides and food carts from the fair for the day.  I set the Casita up and then we walked over to it.  All the beer, cotton candy, pretzels, ice cream, hamburgers, fries, sausage on a stick, and rides were free.  We took advantage of the free beer.  There were lots of old classic cars there also.

We listened to a really good jazz/blues band at the picnic. Then the band announced that a very famous man was in the audience.  Carl Carlton came up to sing.  His most famous recording was “Everlasting Love” in the disco era.  He sang that and another one of his hits, “She’s a Bad Mama Jama”.  He was really good.  Jim took a picture of him and me.

There is a garden at the campground that the campers can pick from.  When we checked in the lady didn’t know if anything was left because of all the campers and crowd this past week.  We picked three different kinds of tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini squash, bell peppers, banana peppers, hot peppers, green tomatoes, and green beans.  There was also some okra but it was too big.  When it gets that big it’s really tough.  We found one geocache today.  For supper I fixed sausage and fried green tomatoes.

  

August 13, 2012

Last night after posting the blog we were sitting in the Casita with the door and windows open.  All of a sudden we smelled a skunk.  I started stomping on the Casita floor with my bare feet in hopes of scaring him away if he was under the Casita.  Jim and I went outside with a flashlight and we didn’t see anything.  In a few minutes the odor disappeared.  He must have just been passing by.  So far tonight he hasn’t made a repeat visit.

After breakfast this morning we went to the the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.  It opened at 10:30 am and we got there a few minutes after 10 am.  There was already a big line for tickets.  We got ours and were in by 10:40 am.  We walked through the whole museum and finished at 5:00 pm when they were closing.  This museum was really great -- it had all kinds of stuff.  It has the original bus that Rosa Parks was arrested on -- I sat on her seat.  It has the limo Kennedy was assassinated in and the rocking chair that Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated.  It has an Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.  There were lots of old farm machines, huge steam and electric engines, antique manufacturing machinery, furniture, jewelry, clocks, guns, and Americana.  There was a section with trains and RV’s.  And of course lots of cars.  Jim bought a year membership that includes a companion.  We will be going back for the next couple of days.  We want to go to Greenfield Village, the IMAX theater, the Titanic exhibit and the Ford assembly plant.   Also, we want to visit Henry Ford’s home – Fair Lane. It was rush hour when we left so we went to the nearby Fort Street Brewery then found two geocaches before returning to the Casita for dinner.

 

August 14, 2012

It rained some during the night.  It was cloudy most of the day but it cleared up in the afternoon.  We drove back to the Ford Museum and went on the Ford Rouge Factory tour.  This is the factory where Ford makes F-150 pickup trucks.  After the factory tour we saw the Titanic artifacts exhibit at the Ford Museum.  No pictures were allowed at either the factory tour or the Titanic exhibit.  

It was 4:00 pm when we finished and Jim wanted to go have a beer.  We went to Motor City Brewing and across the street to Traffic Jam & Snug.  Traffic Jam & Snug was the first brewpub in Michigan and it is also a DDD.  We had a beer at both places and at Traffic Jam & Snug we had a really good sliced BBQ panini sandwich.  Then we went a few miles down the road to Detroit Beer Company.  This brewpub is a half a block away from Comerica Stadium where the Detroit Tigers play.  They were out of town for a game tonight.  We got gas and went to Wall-Mart to buy coffee and then went back to the Casita and I cooked stir-fry chicken for supper.

August 15, 2012

We went to Greenfield Village today from 10:30 am – 4:00 pm. This is a village created by Henry Ford where he put buildings and homes he purchased.  Among them were historic homes, labs, farm buildings, a pottery shop, a woolen mill, a tin shop, a printing shop, two saw mills, a glass blowing shop, a railroad turntable, a jewelry store with a clock tower, a chapel for his wife, schools, slave cabins, an 1832 covered bridge, etc. etc.

Among the historic houses were Luther Burbank’s 1800 home (he is the developer of the current day Idaho potato), Robert Frost’s 1835 home, Noah Webster’s 1823 home, Edison’s grandparent’s 1815 home from Ontario, Canada, the Wright Family’s 1871 home, and the Ford’s 1861 home.  Other buildings include the court house where Lincoln was a lawyer, the McGuffey birthplace (he wrote the eclectic readers for children), the 1835 Susquehanna plantation, a Cotswold cottage from early 1600’s England, and an 1870 boarding house for Edison’s workers.  There was an old carousel, the oldest windmill in the U.S. from the mid 1600’s, a recreation of Edison’s Menlo Park Complex, and a doctor’s office from 1840.

You could buy a ride pass and ride a horse drawn carriage, a model T, an old Ford truck, an old Ford bus, or a steam train. Most of the buildings were put here in the 1920’s.  All of the employees were in period dress.  They had skits is different places, the slave quarters had two slaves acting out Brer Rabbit, a man acted out a scene as Edison, a shop owner performed a skit. There were cooking, glass blowing, weaving, and printing demonstrations.  Children could play with toys of that era.

Then we went to the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanit, Michigan and had a beer.