Weddnesday june 30, 2009

The last image is a picture of A summer day at Muskegon
beach. It's cloudy, thretening rain, the wind is about 12 mph off of the water out of the west. The temperature has risen all the way up to 57 degrees. The water temp has warmed up to 53 degrees. A really good summer bech day in western Michigan. HAH HAH.
Thhe second and third pictures are a museum that I stumbled onto while looking for the beach. its of a world war two submarine that is a national historic place because of its feats in the war. It sank 30 japanese ships and damaged 14 more, and rescued severl downed aviators during 15 patrols over three years during the war. It has more sinkings than any other submarine that survived the war. The other picture is kof the Great lakes Naval Museum which houses memprbilia and pictures form naval efforts during world war two. It also hosts sea scout activities. Kind of like the Battleship North Carolina. The submarine was interesting you could walk thru it and see all of it. it was in very good shape and some parts of it were still working like the desiel engines and some control room things.
Spent some time looking around Muskegon. You can see the effects of the recession here. More homes for sale, and more empty commercial buildings. However there are a lot of abandoned factory building that i ddont think started with the recession. i think that a lot of these factories had closed up long before this year or last year. It reminds me of the area around Beaver Falls with all the old factory buildings standing idle. I will say that they seem to be making an effort to get their economy going again.I noticed a large building that had a sign on the front Amazon. It looked full and busy, I would assume that it was Amazon.com. In addition rhey are having that music festival for a week that I mentioned last night. The beach areaslooked rather deserted of tourists on the streets for this time of the year, and the boat yard still had a very large number of boats on the hill, and had advertisments for slips available. Not a good sign.

Thats itd fort today, tomorrow I plan to go to Ludington for he day.
lzst night as I was comming bacck from diner, I saw a big doe standing in a clearing beside the road. She was a really nice looking doe.

Tuesday June 29, 2009

This is written on Wednesday Morning because i had a problem getting on the internet here. Hope I rresolved it now.

Made the trip to Muskkegon with no problems, although it was tiring. Very windy and lots of traffic. Michigan drivers are worse than Wilmington. The weather here is a surprise, cold and rainy. Last night I put the blanket back on the bed. Temp was 53, and raining. I thought I had seen the last of that blanket for this trip. Today is rain showers and cool about 65.
One interesting item from Sunday. i was driving on us 12 going into Detroit, As I mentiondedd in last blog they need to bulldoze that part of town. Well when I watched the 10:00 news Sunday night one of the large buildings I hd noticed because it obviously had been a very nice building at one time about 5 stories high and set back from the road a good ways on a landscaped area that had gone to ruin, was on fire. Apparently homeless had been in it and it caught fire about 6:00 Sunday. i had been past it around 3;00.
There is some kind of music festival going on here from June 25 until July 5. Tonight they are having the girl from eastern north Carolina,Kelly Pickler. Croud last night was huge when I went out to eat.
Today I am just going to look around and try to get the lay of the land here.
thats it for Tuesday

Sunday June 28,2009

Today was kind of a slow day. Got up late and cleaned up\(shower) then I worked out the trip route to Muskegon for tomorrow. After that I took a road trip. Went to Yipsilanti and looked around. Nice little town, clean, and the downtown seems to still be busy. Then to
Detroit by way of several towns along route 12 including Deerfield. There was a Ford factory there that went for about a mile along the road. Very modern town. From there went into Detroit. The outer city needs to have a bulldozer taken to it and started over again. However the downtown area after you cross third street is as nice as any of the big cities that I know. They have cleaned up the area along the river and there were a lot of people down there taking advantage of the day. I ran across one area called Greektown that was alive with people walking on the streets and going into the shops, A nice surprise on Sunday afternoon. that was it for today. Tomorrow is off to Muskegon.

Saturday june 27

No pics of Ann Arbor. the camera went dead. In any case there wasn't much to take interesting pics of. more later in blog.

I call these Pics Saturday night at Fords pond. This is the small lake where the Detroit/Greenfield KOA is located. As you can see from the pics its loaded with campers. All of them are having a good time. It may be a bad time, but this campground is loaded with campers, it almost sold out. maybe the sky is not falling after all.

The trip to Ann Arbor was interesting,but not great, On the way there I drove thru several sub-divisions looking at homes that might be forclosed or for sale. I would bet that there are more homes for sale in Wilmington than here. The ones i saw ,i probably could count on the ten fingers of my hands. I was really surprised.
Ann Arbor reminded me a lot of Ashville, in that they had revived their downtown with a lot of small sidewalk cafes and shops. The place was really busy. Lots of people there. Geneally the rest of the town was like most any medium size town. The University of Michigan is another story. It is spread all over town, The stadium , basketball field house and several athletic things were in what was called the west campus, the hospital and medical center were in a campus several miles away, the business school and some others were in what was call the center campus (it was all over a large area just away from downtdown).
The east campus was out to the east of town and had several things like the school of architecture, music school, and space research area. Also any number of research and development buildings spead over a very large campus. Most of them were hardly visible to each other. Buildings were very modern. I didnt think it was that great, although, i must say they had facilities for almost all areas of learning.
Nothing planned for tomorrow, little sightseeing in the area maybe. On Monday I am going to move to Muskegon KOA until July 3. From this area I can go to Grand Rapids to see the Gerald Ford Museum and other things and I can go up to Ludington to see the beachs and Lake Superior.

greenfield

I really don't know where to begin with this days story. Arrived at Greenfield about 11:00 am and didn't leave until 4:30. What a great place. I'll begin by trying to describe the pictures.
The first one is a map of the park, its 81 acres in all.
The second one is a water wheel at the grain grinding mill. The next one is four men in period costume playing croquet.The next one is Sir John Bennets clock shop from england. The next is one of the horse drawn carrages that circulate thru the park that you can ride.
Then the origional home of a Mr. McGuffey of Mr. McGuffys readers. The story goes that he had writen a poem in one of his readers that Henry Fords wife enjoyed, and Henry set out to find a copy of it and then started collecting from this.The next one is the Georgia family farm of the Maddox family. The windmill si one of the last working windmills in the United States.THe next is the origional Robert Frost home where he wrote many of his poems. Then these are the slave quarters for Heritage plantation in Savannah. Then Edisons workshop from Menlo Park-this is only one of three buildings in the workshop group. Thsi is a puppet show booth,one of many little shows going on around the grounds for children.The carosel is an origional 1913 carosel with hand carved wooden horses and it gives rides. This is the Wright Bros home from Dayton. The brick buildding is the Heinz home from Pittsburg. The next one is me riding in a Model t (real 1913 model t) around the park. Rhe next two shots are model t s. These were circulating constantly giving rides. The next two shots are what is called main street. very well landscaped area. THe next is a man on an old bicycle, he constdantly circulates around for pics. Then this is the train with a real coal fired engine. It runs completely around the park. Fun ride.
The brick building is a real working roundhouse from somewhere. The last two pics are of a lady in costume.

There was so much to see and do. This should be a must for familys with kids especially. Almost all of the buildings are the real thing that was transported here and re set up. Inside of them are furniture, pictures,writings, and machinery that came from the origional building. Things like the train locomotive are real antiques that have been moved here and rebuild.
This place is a history lesson in itself.
There is a charter high school on the grounds that Henry Ford started. It now serves Wayne County,the students have to apply and are chosen by lot from the applicants. The only stipulation is that the parents have to get the kids there. They said that thay have a 99 % graduation rate. While we were there I saw several summer discovery campss that were going on here to teach the history.

The place is designed to be historical in nature,but it is set up so that it can be fun for the whole family. Really a good job.
As a sidelight, while I was riding the train around, across the street is a Ford autotest track. You could see several cars running aroud being tested.

All in all this was a great experience that i could recommend to anyone.

WhileI was writing last nights blog we had a really bad electrical storm.No damae here dbut around the region therre were over 100,000 homes without power.

Tomorrow I am going to try to go to Ann Arbor to look around.s Supposed to be a nice place,

Wednesday June 25,2009
Yesterday was a moving day. Packed up at Middlebury and moved to Detroit/Greenfield Koa in Yipsilanti Mi. Very uneventful move, Weather was hot, lots of traffic and road construction. Arrived about 2:00 pm and set up the trailer and just took it easy the rest of the day. This koa was a plesant surprise, seems to be very nice,clean, have a private lake for fishing and a swimmming area that isn't too deep for the kids with water slide, also a playground. The area where i am is wooded and shady. Good place.

Today i set out for the greenfield/ford museum and rouge ford plant tour. That was the best tour of the factory, only problem was no pics. It was an overhead walkway where you could look down on the floor where they were putting togather ford 150 truck bodies. It is just amazing to see an empty body come in and move from station to have all the parts put in, The beds were assembled on another ilne next to the bodys and the doors were assembled across the room. Bodys and beds came togather automatically and the doors were put on last before going to another area of the plant where the motor and wheels were added, then to testing area. I was facinated as to how the whole thing worked and how sophisticated it was. They had assembled 287 trucks by noon. I've helped build a lot of plants, but this was way above them.
After lunch I spent a couple of hours in the Museum, Lots of old cars and machinery of all kinds. Patrick would have enjoyed this place. lots of historic machinery. Really an educational place Anyhow i took some pics, one of the entrance gate, and one of the area in from of the museum. There were some old memory raisers too. The DC-3 was like the airline that I used to fly from San Antonio to Mcallen when i was courting dee just before we got married. In the afternoon when the sun was hot, there were a lot of thermals over the Texas desert,that old plane shook like a dog that just had a bath, rattled, and the wings flexed up and down, oil came out of the cowling behind the motors is a steady stream, Very comforting flights,The old Ford-Ferguson tractor is just like the one that I learned to drive on about 1943, There was a Studebaker coupe liked the one we had just after we were married and used to move our things 13 times in the first two years,but it was in a dark place and pic wouldnt take the cars are a presidential limo from Roosevelt,the car jfk was riding in when he was shot in dallas, and the car Reagan was using when he was shot,
This whole area is Ford country, Research offices,development offices, battery research buildings, experimental engine biuldings. From the amount of cars around these buildings, you would never guess that the auto industry was in trouble,
Tomorrow I amgoint to the Greenfield village

Tuesday June 23.2009
Today was a down day. Resting up after a long day yeterday. Did some routine items around the trainler getting ready to go tomorrow. Went to the grocery store.
everthing seems to check out in the trailer. Ready to move on tomorrow.

June 22 from Middlebury KOA.
Left Wilmington Sunday morning and went to Kernersville for Fathers Day. We really had a good time . WE had all the family except David there for the afternoon.
I got up at 5:00 AM this morning and left Kernersville at 5:30 Am. and arrived here at 5:30
pm 12 hours and 660 miles. Trip was uneventful except for one event that I surely would like to know the whole story about this,

I was about 65 miles west of Columbus Ohio and 70 miles east of Ft Wayne Indiana. It was a beautiful summer day 87 degrees, very little breeze; clear and only a few puffy clouds in the sky. This is in the middle of a farming region in western Ohio, you looked in any direction, all you could see were corn fields or wheat fields;REAL COUNTRY. This section of road was a two lane road. I came up to this small rural midwestern type farm town named Patapokata.Really small town the main highway came in at one end of town, down the main street and out the other end. I was almost out the other end of town when this cemetary caught my eye. IT WAS A REALLY BIG CEMETARY-ABOUT TWO SQUARE BLOCKS. It looked to be two hundred years old. In fact I would bet that there were more people buried there than were alive in that town, the lawn was manicued.I couldnt see a weed or any uncut grass,even the ditch between the lots and the concrete highway. Most of the headstones has some sort of artificial flowers ond them and the veterans headstones each had a little flag on it, You could tell that the town really cared for this cemetary.
As i got almost to the end of the cemetary a strange event startled me so much that it took a couple of seconds for me to grasp just what was happening. I would have taken a picture but it went past so fast that i was out of range before it hit me. In anycase I bet this is being duscussed around more than one dinner table in that town, and probably at the local garden club. In one corner of the cemetry next to the road at the end of the cemetary, there were three or four headstones that looked to be newer than any others and they didnt have flowers on them. One of the headstones was by itself toward an open area of the cemetary. Id noticed a car on the road beside this headstone and saw three women ( i couldnt tell their exact ages, but probably in their thirtys)had spread blankets in front of the headstone and over yhe grave, They had on bathing suits and were lying on the blankts sunbathing and lookidng like they were enjoying a day at the beach.

In anycase it broke up my trip thinking about what was the real story.
Tomorrow I'M going to stock with grocerys and do a couple of things around here then Wednesday morning i will leave for Yipislianti for four days to see greenfield, and the henry ford musieum, visit Ann Arbor before movinfgon.