Family Arrives, Greenfield Amazes, and Tigers Blow It Up (Day 2)

I was pretty tired from driving from Maryland to Michigan after having worked at 11 hour work day on Saturday and into Sunday.  So I took my time getting up on July 4th. My family's flight didn't arrive until 11:00 a.m., so I have plenty of time to get to the airport.

I went in search of the world's largest tire, which happens to be a Uniroyal tire off the side of I-94. However, getting to the tire wasn't as easy as I thought it would be as you had to cross some train tracks with no trespassing signs.  I decided to play it safe and just view it from the highway.

After filling the car up with gas, I went to the airport in Detroit to pick up my family at the Southwest terminal. We decided to go to Greenfield Village that afternoon. Originally we had planned to go there on July 5th, but the baseball game we were planning on going to got moved from 5:00 p.m. to 6:45 p.m., we had some extra time on our hands.  So we decided to split up Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation on different days.    

After doing some research on the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, I realized it was actually a cheaper option to get a family membership as opposed to buying day passes for both locations. So we did that. As an added bonus, we got 10% off all purchases, food and gifts, while in the park, as well as free parking. In total, I think getting the membership saved us around $40.  

Simply put, Greenfield Village was amazing.  This was the first time my daughters spent a full 5 hours at a place of learning without fighting or complaining once. They were so into everything going on there, even though it was hot and they were tired.

We ate lunch first when we got in there, as everyone was hungry. The girls got a hobo lunch and loved the bandanas they got with them meal.

They immediately put the banandas on their head and wore them the rest of the day.  

After having lunch, we walked through a display of historic homes which had been moved from all over the globe to Greenfield Village for preservation. Some of these houses were absolutely amazing and beautiful.

The girls even had some fun playing a ring toss game.

After visiting the house's, we went to Thomas Edison's area in the park. It was so cool looking at the replica of his laboratory, as well as the street that he lit up.

Next, we got some candy in a building with a really neat clocktower.  

Then we let the kids play on this amazing old merry-go-round, as well as a playground next door. The girls had a lot of fun with that.

As we made our way over to the exit, we looked at more historical buildings that were brought to the park such as the Wright Brothers workshop and home and a Ford building that was used to build cars.

Next, we walked over to an area where people were making things next. The girls were fascinated by a couple men making a decanter out of glass. It was so hot in the building, but they both wanted to see him complete his project.

After that, we went to a couple other areas where they demonstrated offset printing, as well as weaving. The girls had a long day, so we decided to head back to the hotel after that. With that said, we loved Greenfield Village a lot.

We checked into the Comfort Inn at Greenfield Village.  There Norah took a nap and Avery went in the pool.  

After cooling down in the hotel, we drove down to Comerica Park to watch the Tigers in the Indians do battle in the second game of a doubleheader. We got really good seats in the outfield as part of a special sale, or tickets were $17.76 a piece with no service charges.

The girls spent a lot of time walking around the park, going on the merry-go-round, watching every one of Miguel Cabrera's at bats, and even sitting out near the Cleveland Indians bullpen. It was there, that one of the Cleveland bullpen catchers threw Avery a baseball.

At the end of the game, we went over a couple sections to watch the 4th of July fireworks. To quote my wife, "they were quote aggressive." They were an unbelievable display lasting about 10 minutes with a non-stop series of explosions. It was awesome!

On the way back to the hotel, we saw a bunch of fireworks displays going off all over the area. Must have seen 15 or 20 fireworks displays in total.

As soon as we got back, the girls were exhausted and went right to bed. I was a little exhausted too.  Detroit was a lot of fun on the 4th of July and this made for an awesome first day of vacation for the girls.  

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. 

Last Day of the Trip...the Final Stretch (Day 13)

On our final day of our trip, we had about 600 miles to drive in order to get home.  We left the Hampton Inn Chattanooga-North / Ooltewah around 9:00am and drove for about 3 hours before we decided to stop in Bristol, Tennessee for lunch.  We needed a lunch spot where we could get out and stretch our legs, so we found a place called Cootie Brown's that looked pretty good.  There was a short wait to get a table as there was a lot of race fans in the area and there was a race going on nearby.  It was well worth the wait thought as the Beale Street pizza I ordered was amazing!!!  It had BBQ sauce, mozzarella, BBQ chicken, bacon, roasted red peppers, red onions, smoked mozzarella, and cilantro on it.  

They had a pretty impressive spread for their Bloody Mary bar.  

After getting back on the road, we made a brief stop for gas at an Exxon station outside of Roanoke, Virginia where the kids got to get out and stretch.

After our gas and stretching break, it was a straight shot home and we got home around 8:30pm.  

Overall the trip was great.  It was so nice to get out on the road again after a long hiatus and put some miles on the car.  The drive down to New Orleans was a lot of fun and amazing.  The beach at Gulf Shores was as good as you can get.  In fact, the girls said they liked it so much we are considering going back there for Spring Break in 2023.  The weather was pretty good the whole time.  I couldn't have asked for a better couple weeks on the road.  It makes me look forward to our next roadtrip coming up in July to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.