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!