Beginning the Born Free Summer Tour 2022 (Day 1)

I never thought we'd get here, but here we are.  Back on the road again.  This time I'm heading to Michigan with my family for the next two weeks.  I've only been to Michigan a couple times.  Once I went to Grand Rapids for Homebrew Con and the other time, I did a day trip from Chicago to the southwest part of Michigan along Lake Michigan.  Both times, the people I met were real cool and I've always had a great time here.  I've never made it to the northern part of the state though and this was the goal of this trip.  

Work has been hellishly hard lately so I needed this trip more than anything.  I still love my job and I'll be excited to go back, but I've been working crazy hours lately in order to get ready for this trip.  As I took off from my home yesterday, I decided I'd play the King of Michigan, Kid Rock, while driving out of town.  The first song on was Born Free.  This was perfect in so many ways.  The lyrics are totally me and how I live my life.  The whole Fourth of July holiday happening this week really struck home with this Born Free message.  So I decided to name this trip the Born Free Summer Tour 2022.  

I worked until 3:00am on Sunday morning, wrapping up a few loose ends before hitting the road.  So my usual 6:00am "out the door" start time didn't happen.  I didn't get on the road until around 8:30am.  The ride was nice and smooth with no traffic and I rolled into Toledo, Ohio about 3:00pm.  I made great time covering almost 500 miles!

Luckily I made it into Toledo early enough to get to the National Museum of the Great Lakes along the waterfront.  What a great museum!  They had two ships you could tour and I toured them first as they stopped letting people onboard at 4:00pm.

The firsts ship that I toured was the 617-foot iron ore freighter Col. James M. Schoonmaker.  This was a massive ship with 16 bays for cargo.  The tour was cool as you got to go into the living quarters, down into one of the cargo bays, and tour the engine room.  I took soooooo many pictures as I was in awe of how big this ship was.  I won't post them all here, but here are some of them.  

Dwarfed by its larger counterpart was the tugboat Ohio.  You could also tour that as well and I gladly went aboard.  After coming off the much larger Col. James M. Schoonmaker, the Ohio seemed small, but was still a worthwhile tour.  

After touring the boats, I went into the museum.  The museum had some really cool interactive exhibits for kids, a fun 10 minute movie on the history of the Great Lakes, as well as a bunch of really neat old ship artifacts.  

Two items from the Edmund Fitzgerald were in the museum.  The sounding board and a life raft that were collected from the scene of the ship's sinking.  Those were pretty cool things to look at having heard a lot about the tragic last voyage of the Fitzgerald.  

The museum was definitely worth visiting.  I wish I had more time to explore than just 90 minutes, but I had a baseball game to go to and I was thirsty and hungry.  The drive from the museum to the ballpark was pretty quick, crossing over the river into the downtown area.  

I arrived, parked the car and went immediately to the Ye Olde Cock n Bull pub.  How could you not go to a place with a name like that?  They had a huge rooster in there that overlooked the bar.  It was a fun place to go to before the game with decent beer.  The bartenders were swamped, so I opted to eat food when I got into the ballpark.  

Once in the Fifth Third Field, I quickly realized it was gonna be packed.  In fact, there were over 10,000 people in attendance for the game between the Toledo Mud Hens and Louisville Bats.  My seats were out on the Homerun Porch in Left Field.  I spent a lot of time walking around during the first couple innings, but then settled into my seat for the rather quick game.  

Of course, I had to get a beer bat!!!

This was the view from my seat in the Home Run Alley, there were actually two homers hit into our section, both bouncing off the scoreboard.  

It's kinda cool they got Klinger retired at the ballpark!

After the game, I grabbed some wings and fried pickles at a place called Fricker's which was next to the park.  They were pretty fast in there and I was able to see the post game fireworks display on my way out.  The fireworks were nothing to write home about compared to the Baysox fireworks displays, but I guess it was good enough.  

After the fireworks, I walked back to my car, passing this cool mural before getting in and driving to my hotel in Monroe, Michigan.  

Along the way to the hotel, I must have seen 15-20 big fireworks displays around the area.  Toledo loves their fireworks!  I was exhausted from not getting much sleep on Saturday night and a long day of driving, so as soon as I got to my hotel, I was out cold.  It was a damn great start to what looks like it will be an amazing trip.