2022 KC/MI Wander, Day 15: The Road Home?

 

This is Part 13 of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

 In my memory, life was much simpler before the tech revolution. For a traveller, the halcyon days were those that came after the invention of accurate paper maps, and before the invention of GPS. Paper maps work every time you look at them. They do not issue ludicrous instructions, they do not freeze up for no reason, they do not require a signal of any kind to operate, they do not suddenly go blank, they do not change from moment to moment. True, there's a lot they can't do: they can't tell you if the road is closed or if there's been an accident up ahead. They can't warn you of a speed trap along your way. And they can't tell you what restaurants or motels are along your route, or how much they cost.

I'll take that trade.

Anyway. So saying, in yesterday's post, that I would finish with Michigan around noon and start for home proved to be a little optimistic. After Google Maps threatened several times to send me down gravel roads I just pulled up a map of the state, figured out where I wanted to go, and then looked for paved roads that would take me there. That worked, at a glance. I also enjoyed, for a change, having at least some picture in my head of where things are in relation to each other, in the thumb of Michigan's mitten. And at 2:20 pm I sailed into Sanilac County, the last of the 83 that make up the state. Thirty-seven states down, thirteen to go.

And now I'm torn. I've already skipped Wills St Clair Auto Museum -- that was easy; it was closed -- and Stahl's Automotive Foundation -- that was harder; it's only open on Tuesdays, and today's Tuesday -- and Marvin's Marvelous Museum, and the Roush Automobile Collection, the National Construction Equipment Museum (it would have been closed by the time I got there), Stroh's Center (home of the world's largest bronze falcon sculpture), Snook's Dream Cars, the Fostoria Rail Park and the Fostoria Glass Heritage Center; and the Basilica and National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation. Some of those things I'm more disappointed at not seeing than others. And tomorrow I know I'm going to skip almost all the stops I'd planned on. (I did try to buy some moonshine here in Ohio, but the supermarket I went to didn't have any. I will find some tomorrow, I hope.)

I don't mind so much skipping all the places I'd planned to stop, back when I was just planning the trip. They're all things I can go to some other time, and to be honest most of them aren't worth the forty cents worth of gas it might take to get a photograph. They were just there, near where I was going to be anyway. The thing I'm torn about is: do I just get on the freeway and go home, or do I get off the freeway when I cross into Kentucky, and wander through the five counties I need just southeast of Cincinnati, and then the three in the middle of the state, and then the two in western Tennessee before I get back on the freeway? Or do I just stay on the freeway. That is the only thing on my mind. (That, and the British Transportation Museum in Dayton, which isn't actually open tomorrow but they say tours can be arranged outside their regular hours. If I could just get hold of them....)

So. Today I stopped at a sculpture museum and garden in Saginaw -- well, first I stopped for breakfast at a Bob Evans restaurant where something was going wrong in the kitchen; they were way behind and people were complaining and cancelling their orders and leaving. I, having lots of emails to read, didn't really notice until a certain point when I realized that I'd already had my allotted three cups of coffee and still hadn't gotten any food. It came shortly after so I wasn't too upset. Not like the guy behind me at the cash register a few minutes later. Then I went to an auto parts store seven miles down the street -- there was a much closer one, but Google Maps chose not to so inform me -- to find out why my Check Engine light had come on. (As I'd expected, a slight vacuum leak. It's been that every time but once since the invention of the vague Check Engine light, and except for that one time it's meant the gas cap didn't get tightened all the way, and the warning light goes out after a while. So far it hasn't gone out, but at least I'm not too worried about it.) And then I went to the sculpture garden.

Black Elk, the Lakota philosopher

 It's located at Saginaw Valley State University, and features the work of a local guy named Marshall Fredericks, who made good in the Art World. He was popular with auto-industry executives. Big, monumental sculptures in well-known places like Cleveland and Europe. The indoor gallery is mostly filled with plaster casts and scale models of works, while the garden outside has a number of full-sized pieces. 

There are also four fake swans in the pond out there. I only knew they were fake because one of them tipped over. 

Pointe Aux Barques Light

From there I made my way up the thumb of the mitten to Pointe Aux Barques, the second-most-dangerous area of the Great Lakes for shipping, to see the old lighthouse.

And from there I made my way through Detroit (which, to my surprise, has a lot of new high-rise construction downtown) and Toledo to Lima, Ohio for the night, where I will ponder my course for tomorrow.

2022 KC/MI Wander, Day 14: winding down

 

This is Part 12 of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

 So I guess I didn't need to spend all that time at the Gilmore complex of car museums: on Labor Day Weekend, all of Michigan is a car show. There were several in the parking lot of my hotel last night, and today I saw at least 40 old cars on the road, including a rare 1927 Alfa Romeo. 

It's just not the same, though. You don't get the chance to really look them over when they zip past you on the highway.

All I did today was drive, from Cadillac, to Clare, then up to Petosky and through the Tunnel of Trees. It wasn't looking good when I left the hotel: 48 degrees and cloudy; but by the time I got to the scenic drive along Lake Michigan, it was clear and around 70. So, perfect. 

Of course, last night I'd carefully re-routed the Google Maps instructions to keep me on the shoreline -- it kept trying to take me on a direct route, which would have been a bore -- before sending it to my phone. Then, today, it had apparently decided that I didn't want to waste all that time driving a scenic route when there's a perfectly good road from Point A direct to Point B. So for the entire trip I kept hearing "In a quarter-mile, make a right." Until I lost the GPS signal. And then I hit the spot where the road was closed and I had to go back to one of those ignored right turns.

remains of a 1905 shipwreck

I saw a couple of lighthouses and a shipwreck, and that's about it. There were some Adirondack chairs set out by the first lighthouse, so I took that opportunity for a five-minute nap. Very refreshing.

I've been to 15 of the 20 counties I needed in Michigan; tomorrow I'll get those last five and then start for home. I have, I see, about a dozen car museums on the return trip. I can guarantee I will not be stopping at those places (with one possible exception). There's a glass museum on the route, too, but at this point, who cares? I wanna go home. So I expect I will finish my Michigan county-counting before noon tomorrow, then get on the freeway and start home. I'll be stopping at a supermarket in Ohio to stock up on moonshine, and if it can be arranged I'll be stopping at the British Transportation Museum in Dayton; and other than that I will be driving as far as my little roller skate will carry me tomorrow.

Oh, and two things I've forgotten. First, the most interesting photo I took at the Gilmore Museum Complex:

1957 Isetta and 1960 Lincoln

And the other thing is about the price of gas, since a few people have wondered about it. I use premium gas in the Jag, and while I know what I've paid, I don't know what it is at stations where I didn't stop, since they don't advertise premium's price; just regular. When I left San Antonio regular gas was going for about $3.59/gallon. In North Texas it was about ten cents less, and in Oklahoma and Kansas about another ten cents a gallon less. In fact, the price kept going down as the trip progressed, until I hit Illinois. In Sabula, Iowa, on the Mississippi River, regular gas was $3.24 a gallon; four miles away, in Savanna, Illinois, it was $3.90. When I bought gas in Illinois the next day, around Dixon, regular was $3.59. (Premium seems to run about 70 cents a gallon more, consistently.) Interestingly, in Michigan, it has varied from $3.59 in the southern part, around Kalamazoo, to $3.89 in the more remote areas up north. But I chanced on a station somewhere east of Cadillac, a BP station, that sold it for $3.29; my premium gas there was less than the regular gas at the station before, or the station after. Don't know why. Of course, my last fill up this evening was at $4.70/gallon, but then the next station I passed had it for $4.39. I don't know if prices back home have come down since I left, but I hope so.