We stayed at William C. Sterling State Park, near a Lake Erie beach, for three nights. It was windy when we arrived, so the lake looked pretty much like an ocean, with waves coming up on shore.
The main attraction for us near the state park was doing the Ford Rouge Factory Tour. We parked at The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation and took a shuttle bus to the factory. They had a couple of videos to watch plus an observation area, where we could look out across the huge complex. One of the buildings had a “living roof”, with grass growing on it. Their experimental area without the grass has proven having the grass on top really does extend the life of the roof. Interesting.
They didn’t let us take pics in the factory, but they claimed it was because we couldn’t get permission from the workers to take their photos. So, I stood back and took one shot with no workers in it. No one said anything to me if they noticed. It was a self-guided tour without many signs with info, but it was neat to watch a F150 truck being put together piece by piece. Each worker only had about 50 seconds worth of work to do before the section of truck moved onto the next person for the next small task. The truck bed and cab are assembled separately, then eventually come together once they’re completed. Henry Ford really was pretty ingenious in coming up with the process of the assembly line. Watching the robots work alongside the humans was cool, too. It is quite the production!
After the shuttle brought us back to the museum, we grabbed some lunch then walked around for a few hours in the museum. There was TONS to look at. Randy and I both complained a bit at the lack of a distinct flow to the exhibits. Several times, I tried to find the “start” of an area, to see things sequentially, but it seemed more like they expected you to wander around in any order. Not really my style, haha, but I managed. The museum had way more than just car stuff. I especially enjoyed looking through their collection of most popular things of each generation. When I got to my generation, I was excited to see that 5 of the 7 toys they had on display were ones I played with a lot growing up, especially Merlin and Little Professor. I texted my mom to tell her nice job on providing me with the most popular toys of the era! š
On a more somber note, the car that Kennedy was assassinated in was there, along with the bus that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in.
After they kicked us out of the museum at closing time, we ate some Detroit-style pizza at Buddy’s Pizza (I had never even heard there WAS a Detroit style pizza!) It was a rectangle pizza with a thick pan crust and was pretty yummy!
After dinner, we drove a few miles to the Marvelous Marvin’s Mechanical Museum, which had come up in a search for top things to do in Detroit. It was actually an arcade, but every extra inch of space was covered with a ton of extra stuff that is hard to describe. But I think their website had a pretty good description: “vintage coin-operated machines, macabre, oddities and unusual nostalgia”. There was a couple walking around dropping quarters in a lot of the old machines, so we just followed them around at a distance, haha. Compared to today’s entertainment, they were all pretty lame, but it was still kind of interesting, in a weird way, to watch them. Kind of cool that someone has made the effort to collect so many of the vintage machines in one place. Worth a visit if you’re in the area and have time to kill.
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