Detroit

We stayed at the Hotel St. Regis, located in the New Center area in downtown Detroit. Housed in a beautiful, old, and what appeared to be recently refurbished building, it was a rather sleepy hotel, with the staff appearing to outnumber the guests (speaking of which, I was looking at the hotel website to gather a little information about the history of the building and discovered the that both Martin Luther King and Mick Jagger were once guests here…think they’ll add the Clark Family to that list of distinguished guests?). With the recommendation of one of the valets, we ordered up some ‘Pizza Papalis’ for dinner and James hit the streets in search of wine, finding a couple of bottles in a store where everything was kept behind glass and delivered through a little window by the cashier. The pizza and salad were delivered just a short while later, enough to feed all of the guests in the hotel, but rather than share, we opted to save our leftovers for lunch the next day. Initially when we put Detroit on the travel itinerary, we had planned to see the Motown Museum on day 2 but a good friend advised us otherwise and after a restful night’s sleep, off to Dearborn we went. So very glad we did. The Henry Ford Museum is so much more than a car museum and cannot be fully appreciated in 2, 4 or possibly even 6 hours. There’s just so much to see there including cars and locomotives and other pieces of Americana. Some of our favorite exhibits were the Dymaxion house (an idea that never really took off – thank goodness), the presidential motor cars (which included the John F. Kennedy limousine in which he rode through Dallas the day he was assassinated – did you know that both Johnson and Nixon continued to use the limousine even after President Kennedy’s death? That’s just a little creepy. Thrifty, but creepy…), ‘Heroes of the Sky’ (which reviewed the history of aviation) and ‘With Liberty and Justice for All’ (which explored America’s fight for freedom and had on display the beautifully restored Rosa Parks bus which museum-goers could board). We spent several hours touring these exhibits and got involved in some of the hands-on activities including designing and building our own cars with K’Nex and constructing paper airplanes and then testing our newly-made crafts on a course (never could manage the loop-the-loop but apparently it’s possible, even with a paper plane). By the time we pulled ourselves away from the museum at about 3 we still hadn’t done it all but we needed to get on the road. Last stop on this great American tour – Niagara Falls Canada.

Chicago

We quickly settled in to our rather cramped digs at the Red Roof Inn on Ontario Street in downtown Chicago. Just around the corner from the ‘Miracle Mile’ the accommodations did not offer a lot in terms of space and reminded me of when James and I went away for my 30th birthday (surprised me with a weekend away in New York City, awww, what a guy). We saw an amazing show (Bombay Dreams) and when we finally made it back to the hotel later that night, I nearly dislocated my nose when, upon entering the room, I almost walked straight in to the wall on the opposite side. This place had the same ‘cozy’ kind of feel to it. I tried to explain to the kids (who had been commenting non-stop on our cramped quarters) that we were staying in the middle of a city now – not a lot space in the middle of a city – and that rooms like this were much to be expected. Of course when we entered in to the Marriot Hotel just around the corner to purchase tickets for a city bus tour, all of that logic was lost (we nearly lost Emmett in the cavernous lobby). Oh, well, so much for that logic/lesson. The open-top, double-decker, hop on-hop off bus tour we took with the Chicago Trolley and Double Decker Company gave us a good overview of the city’s beautiful architecture. We hopped off to grab a Chicago-style, stuffed pizza at Giordano’s. While the other adults and all 4 children ooohhed and aaahhed and tucked in to piece after piece, I could only feign satisfaction as I quietly longed for my preferred pie – the straight-forward, thin-crust, cheese pizza at Pizzeria Regina in the North End of Boston. We made our way back on to the tour bus and didn’t get off again until we completed the whole circuit once round. We cashed in on some of the coupons that came in our bus ticket tour book, including the free chocolate at the Hershey store and the popcorn at Garrett’s. Now I want you to pay close attention to what I’m about to tell you. They do this popcorn at Garrett’s called the ‘Chicago Mix’ – caramel and cheese popcorn all mixed up in one little package. Sounds weird, I know and while the caramel popcorn is to die for, it’s the cheese popcorn that may very well kill you. The shiny orange-yellow coating will stain your fingers as well as your tongue and while eating the cheese popcorn on its own is not very appetizing, eaten together with the caramel, it is just fantastic. Who knew, right? The tins available for purchase are extraordinarily expensive but they sell smaller bags for a reasonable price and if you can somehow score a free sample like we did, you absolutely should. We walked up to Millennium Park to hunt around for a shiny something James had heard about. Not a lot to go on, but we didn’t have much trouble finding artist Anish Kapoor’s polished stainless steel sculpture which joined Chicago’s renowned collection of art in 2001 (also on our tour, we saw the Picasso in Daley Square but unfortunately missed Chagall’s mosaic The Four Seasons). The Kapoor sculpture is simple yet dynamic, and provides a different perspective of the city’s skyline as well as nearby Lake Michigan. It was an amateur photographer’s paradise as about a hundred people gathered around to pose and shoot themselves and their friends’ reflections in the giant, silver bean. As it was Steve’s last night on tour, he took us all out for a wonderful meal at the Weber Grill. Never heard of it and a little skeptical at first, Weber Grill turned out to be a delicious place to eat. A scrumptious meal from start to finish with everything cooked and grilled to perfection and you should have seen the size of the grills in the open kitchen! After dinner, James took his parents and Steve to Howl at the Moon which according to James was good, but not quite as fabulous as the one we went to in San Antonio. Apparently Howl at the Moon is opening up in Boston some time this year. James is considering making it a hat trick….

One very looooong drive

While visiting my sister in AZ, she told me about a recent conversation she had had with a friend of hers. In that conversation the friend told her that the ‘average’ time a visitor spends at a National Park is 15 minutes (which I really have a hard time believing because some people spend a week at a time at National Parks and that would mean many more people actually spend less than 15 minutes when they visit a National Park – which seems a little improbable, not to mention totally pointless). Well, if this little factoid is indeed true, today we didn’t do much to increase that average as we did our one and only ‘drive by’ National Park visit through the Badlands in South Dakota. Much as we would have liked to stop and take a walk or two, we had just under 1,000 miles to knock down on our way to Chicago on the agenda today, so we really didn’t have time for any sight-seeing along the way. So I don’t have a whole lot to say about the Badlands other than that it looked pretty cool. A nice place to get out and do some hiking. We’ll make a note and have to hit it better on our next road trip. The other 2 stops we made along the way to Chicago were Wall Drug in where else, Wall, South Dakota and the Corn Palace in Mitchell (again, another ‘drive-by’ affair). Wall Drug. How could we not stop at this famous shopping mall tourist-attraction… but I rather wish we hadn’t. If I’m being honest with you, it’s a lot tacky and just a little over-priced (except for the 5 cent coffee you can buy which sadly, isn't even worth the 5 cents so please do yourself a favor and no matter how desperate you are - don't buy the 5 cent coffee). That being said, we’ll still proudly display the bumper sticker (one free to each visitor) on our roof box. After leaving the Corn Palace in Mitchell (tough to explain, so just look it up), we drove, and drove, and drove and drove, until, at 2:00 a.m., we reached our next destination – Chicago.