Detroit

We spent the last few days of our trip in Detroit, MI. Henry has a college friend, who we haven’t seen for years, who lives in the Detroit suburbs. He and his wife graciously hosted us for dinner (4 weeks after having a baby!) one night so we could catch up. Again, my pictures are on my camera so I’ll have to find that cord this week while I’m cleaning everything out, but we had so much fun catching up with Jim and meeting Julie and his kids. It was like we’d seen each other yesterday.

While in the area, we visited the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. There is also a Village you can tour, but the day was cloudy and rainy so we just did the museum. I think the kids’ favorite part was this hot dog bed. It was directly next to the Oscar Meyers Weiner truck.

As Henry Ford grew in wealth, he began collecting things (like Thomas Edison’s workshop and everything inside it, supposedly reconstructed in the Village) so the museum reminded me a lot of the American History Museum. There were kitchens, furniture, cars, and other Americana from many different eras on display.

Always ready for a picture….

They had an antique touring car that you could get in. One of the workers (a friendly, older gentleman in our case) stood by to take pictures. For an older fellow, he sure was adept at using different smart phones! And he’d tell us how to pose!  We have pictures of all of us being the driver, but this one takes the cake.

Here are the girls trying to manually generate electricity.  It takes 12 hours for a glass-blower to make a lightbulb and 1 hour for an automated factory to make like 600. Crazy!

Ryan loved all the cars and trucks.

There’s a diner in the middle of the museum that is made from a train car or some sort of camper-type idea. They were the original “Food Truck” that we think of today, but generally stayed in one spot. This one has been relocated to the museum. The food was eh, but the kids liked sitting at the counter.

Looking in the door of the diner….

The kids really liked this train set too. It’s a HUGE track system with several trains running on it. One has a camera and shows the people standing on the side on TV screens. The kids enjoyed trying to figure out which train was carrying the camera.

For those with small kids, there’s an area over by the train set where kids can play and parents can take a load off.

One of my favorite things was this coach made for a wealthy woman. It reminds me of Cinderella’s coach!  And if you look really closely to the right of that white oval on the door, about midway to the rear wheel, you’ll see alittle squiggley thing. Up close, that’s the original owner’s monogram. LOVE!  It was fun to stand there wondering about the lady who used to tour town in this “modern” convenience!

And one last shot because I really love when Ryan walks around with his hand in his pocket!

And that my friends, was our family vacation of the summer of 2013! Thanks for hanging in there with us!

p.s. Detroit is everything you have heard. Sad, run down, lots of boarded up buildings. The fixer in me wanted to figure out how to revitalize downtown! Ha! But I have enough on my plate without taking on a bankrupt city…..