Badger, Take Me Home

If you read the last post, I explained that we had to get up early to catch the ferry home. Here is the view from our room-no this isn't a sunset!

We had good driving and made it to Ludington before 8:00 to get a spot on the Badger.

This was another ship in the harbor, but the Badger looked pretty similar to it. They could fit many cars. This trip, a coach bus was driven in along with a couple of large motorhomes.

Ludington was kind of a dumpy town, but the condos on the waterfront were pretty spectacular.

This was the view of the harbor as we pulled away.

There was also an extensive breakwater with this big marker on one side

and a lighthouse on the other side.

This is a panoramic view of the harbor.

This is a view of some of the many sand dunes along the western coast of Michigan. We would like to go back and see these. You can take a ride on a big dune buggy.

I thought this picture of a sailboat turned out pretty neat.

The color of the water was amazing; much different from that of Lake Erie.

After many attempts, we got a decent picture of the two of us with the water in the background.

We sat on the rear of the boat because it was less windy there and we could soak up the sun. It was really relaxing.

Even thought the ride was 4 hours, it seemed to go pretty fast. Soon we were approaching the harbor in Mantiwoc.

Before we landed, I snapped this picture of my beautiful wife. It reminds me of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on her yacht. I'm a lucky man!

Once we got off the boat, we made our way up to Green Bay and had lunch at Krohls. We had the fried chicken which was really scrumptious. This was the first really hot day we had had on our vacation but our air worked fine in the CRV as we made our way across the state back home.

So that's the end of this trip. I hope you enjoyed the Travelblog! Thanks for all the comments.

Betty

Saturday found us sadly bidding good bye to Detroit and our cozy room with the fabulous view. I took a few last pictures from our window. In the distance you can see Comerica Park on the left and Ford Field on the right. The road that goes between them was our pathway when we walked to and from the game.

We set our gps to Grand Rapids as that is where we were staying. On the way we ran into construction traffic and took a detour on back roads. We found a Bob Evans on the way and had a great breakfast for lunch. Across the street was a Meijer store which is kind of of like a Walmart only nicer. We explored it for awhile and found some great cherries, new sunglasses for me and Gywneth Paltrow's cookbook. We didn't realize it, but Meijer's headquarters are in Grand Rapids.

We made it to Grand Rapids and checked into our hotel and then made our way to:

It was kind of strange that Betty Ford had died and ended up being buried here just two days before we came through. The museum had just closed, but we mainly wanted to see the outside and the burial site. The big poster they had on the exterior of the museum was really neat. I think that it is a rare occurrence when there is really no one who can say anything bad about her regardless of their politics. She really transcended politics and was instrumental in raising awareness of women's rights.  

There were wreaths that were inside the area where they were buried. You can see the wall in the distance.

There was also this stone marker in front of the gated burial area. I was amazed that the stone had already been engraved.

The gates had been closed to walk by the graves so I took this close-up between the bars.

The museum was really striking from the outside and the grounds were very nice. I took this picture of the downtown area across the river.

We explored the downtown area. It was very nice. We headed south back towards our hotel and found ourselves in a fairly large "barrio" area. Quite the contrast from the affluent looking downtown less than a mile away. We decided to eat dinner at Quaker Steak and Lube which is a chain that features wings with many different sauces. It was pretty good. They had cars and motorcycles hanging from the ceiling and this interesting map of the US made from the license plates of all the states.

We decided to call it an early night as we had to get up to catch the car ferry the next morning. We had originally planned on taking the ferry from Muskegon to Milwaukee but when I had called a few days earlier they were already booked. So we had to end up taking the Badger from Ludington to Manitowoc. There were no hotels available there so we had to drive 100 miles to make it there by 8:00 in the morning. Stay tuned for the final post!

Take Me out to the Ball Game

We woke up Friday still stuffed from our dinner last night,  but that didn't seem to stop us! We headed over to the Eastern Market. Even though the Farmer's Market part of this is on Saturday, we thought it would still be fun to see what was there. There were a lot of different restaurants and food markets. We happened on Roma's, which is the oldest restaurant in Detroit. We were greeted by a valet who was wildly running to park the cars. Inside, we were met by tuxedoed waiters and taken to our table which already had the big loaf of bread placed on it.

It was really good. Crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Next, we had a glass of Barbera d'alba wine and shared the Roma salad. Very good!

I had linguine with pesto sauce and fresh sauteed shrimp. Yummy! Notice the fresh peas.

Linda had chicken Marsala with pasta and meat sauce. It was really good. The tomato sauce was really good because you could tell that it had been simmering for awhile. You could taste the olive oil and the sweetness of the tomatoes.

Naturally, we finished with tiramisu. It was very good. Sorry you missed it!

Linda was not really taking a picture of me, but the guy at the next table. His two cell phones kept going off all through dinner. He must have been someone important! Notice the splashes of pesto sauce on my shirt. Lindy got 'em all out!

Our next destination was Belle Isle which is located in the Detroit River between Detroit and Windsor. There was a bridge that went over to it. It was actually quite large. I could see that it would be a great place for people living in the crowded city to find some nice outdoor space. We decided to go to the zoo.

There weren't too many animals there; mostly toads, turtles, snakes, gar fish, and squirrels. We missed the deer. The most impressive was the baby t-Rex. It moved and roared. There will be a video on You-Tube eventually.

We drove all the way around the island. It had nice beaches and open areas. There were also shelters and the concierge at our hotel said it was a popular gathering place for reunions.

You can see our hotel again off in the distance.

Next, we decided to explore more of the town. I wanted to go to the Motown Museum mainly to see if there were any t-shirts worth buying at the gift shop. Our gps was giving us the wrong directions so we ended up at the Fisher Building which is an old theater and it has shops in it also. We stopped at Pure Detroit and found a couple of shirts there instead which was a good thing. . . 

because when we found the Motown Museum there was a funeral going on next door and two tour buses so we took a picture and waved bye-bye.

We wanted to try and find some of the more depressed areas of Detroit so we started driving away from downtown. We found the area!

There were many buildings like this that were empty. There were a couple of beautiful churches that were boarded up. But along the with empty buildings were businesses and remodeled developments. "Down but not out" would be the phrase to describe the city as evidenced by this church undergoing remodeling.

We drove out to 8 mile road as we had read that conditions got better as you passed this and headed farther away from downtown. This is the road that gives the name to Eminem's movie.

We drove back to our hotel past the stadium. We walked around the Renaissance Center but there wasn't  a whole lot to see even though it is an amazing space. It almost seemed like there were less shops open than last year. I hope that it eventually fills up because it is a great place. Well, maybe not because then the rooms might be more expensive. Our rate was only 95 dollars a night. 

We had originally planned on taking the People Mover but a storm had blown trees or something on to the track and it had to be repaired. We decided to walk as it didn't look that bad. It had measured .95 miles on our gps  as we passed it earlier. It was a nice walk. Even though it was warm out, we managed to keep to the shady side of the streets most of the way. The outside of the park was pretty neat looking. We were going to see the White Sox play the Tigers.

There was a bar next to the park that had a fenced off area with picnic tables. So we each got a cold Molson for 4 bucks a can and sat and enjoyed the view and the people.

Eventually, we made our way inside and walked to our seats. It was Negro Leagues Weekend which honored the early players who eventually made their way into the major leagues. 

Along one side were these statues of famous Tigers. We had only heard of Ty Cobb and Willie Horton.

Water shoots out of this fountain sometimes.

Ford Field, home of the Lions is right next door.

Even though the pictures make this look like a great stadium, it was not. The way the seats were arranged made it very hard to see over people sitting in front of you. The fans are constantly going up and down the steps and people were standing in the stairways, plus the video screen is really pitiful so it made it very hard to stay focused on the game. It didn't seem like anybody was really worried about watching the game even though they were playing a major league rival. The food was really crappy. The best thing was the big cans of Modello we had for 12 bucks a piece. 

Since the Sox were winning 8 to 2 at the 7th we decided to forgo waiting for the fireworks and head back to the RenCen because the Guess Who were scheduled to play by the Riverfront. We made our way back on foot and were very tired, hot, and sweaty. We walked to the Riverfront by our hotel and the band was playing, but Burton Cummings was not the one singing. I was very hot and grumpy by that time so we went to our room and watched the crappy fireworks from our window.

Having cooled off, we went back down, but the band had just finished playing by then. I wasn't too disappointed because I had a really hard time listening to those songs without the original singer.  So we went back to the room and fell asleep for the last time in our wonderful room.