2022 KC/MI Wander: One Last Thing

 

This is Part 14 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.

 I did, in the end, manage to contact the people who run the British Transportation Museum in Dayton, Ohio, and arrange for a tour outside their normal Monday and Saturday hours, and I'm really glad I did. I got there just after 9:30 this morning.

I was a little late because, for reasons known only to itself, Google Maps had me get off the freeway north of town and drive south for about 5 miles on Dixie Highway, a four-lane city street that parallels the freeway, but with a red light every few hundred yards and, if it's possible, even more over-the-road trucks than the freeway. Then it had me get back on the freeway and continue south to downtown. Somewhere along the way (just south of Lima, about 90 miles back) the written instructions that normally appear at the top of the screen froze with the legend "200 yards Bellepointe Drive right turn, then turn left." But the audio worked and the actual map kept moving so I could follow the correct (or at least the specified) route. Until I got to downtown Dayton. The instruction there was, "In a quarter mile, take the interchange on the right." After that quarter mile, there were two exits, literally one right after the other. I chose the first one. Not, it turns out, a good choice. That took me out of the way, to the east. Google Maps rerouted me through a somewhat convoluted neighbourhood and got me back where I should be, but at that point the map itself stopped moving, so all I had was the audio. Fortunately, by listening carefully to the instructions and moving with unusual deliberation -- in case I missed a turn, I wanted it to have time to re-route and actually give me an oral instruction before I passed by the new turn -- I managed to get where I was going. And since I remembered from having looked at the map several times over the last few weeks that my destination was south of downtown and west of the freeway, I was somewhat confident that I was headed the right way.

I fantasize throwing my phone to the ground and grinding it under my heel, but I need it for other things than Google Maps.

So anyway: I got to the British Transportation Museum and met its director, Pete Stroble. He and I talked for probably 45 minutes before we started looking at the cars that were all around the floor. He told me the history of the museum, which has been going on a little over 25 years now. Its membership consists of people, mostly local, who are afficionados of this or that make of British car -- his personal love is the Morris Mini. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, just northeast of town, brings a lot of people to Dayton who have also been posted to England and there developed an interest in British cars. 

an MG restoration under way

This is not a pristine collection of finely restored gems of motoring. While there are some cars in top condition, most are in more ordinary shape. Unlike many museums, this one actually owns most of the vehicles on display. They get donated to the museum, and restored as time and money allow. Much of the work is done by various car clubs in the area; for example, I saw an MG coupe (it may have been a hard-top convertible) undergoing complete restoration by the local MG club. Its body panels have been removed and laid out on the floor prior to painting. 

MGB

Elsewhere there are cars that leak fluids, cars that need brakes, cars that run and cars that don't. The museum -- "car-rich and cash-poor," Pete calls it -- does what it can when it can. There is a core of about a dozen guys with varying degrees of technical expertise (Pete himself is a retired engineer) who put out fires left and right and then devote themselves to particular projects until they're completed. As we went around the display floor, I heard about what they've done to this car, what they need to do to that car, and what they couldn't do with a car that is no longer there. One of the ways the museum raises revenue for the expensive work of car restoration is to fix up a car they don't need in their collection -- a donated vehicle of a type they already have on hand --restore it and then sell it. Naturally, the most common British vehicles are the ones that get fixed up and sold: MGAs, MGBs, Triumph Spitfires. Rarer cars, they keep.

1960 Ford Consul

And they've ended up with a fascinating collection of cars that are unfamiliar to me, along with some interesting examples of familiar cars. A bright yellow Spitfire (a kind of car I nearly bought in the late 1970s) and a couple of bright red Triumph TR-3s (one on loan, one owned by the museum); an MG TD and a couple of rare MG saloons; a 1926 Rolls needing a lot of work; a 1936 Daimler that took part in the coronation parade for King George VI; and of course the cars I always want to see, the Jaguars: only one E-Type, a 3.8, a couple of XJ-6s. There were two Humber saloons from around 1960, big American-style family cars that seem somehow out of place in England. A 1960 Ford Consul convertible also looks like it belonged on an American street in the Kennedy years. A 1960 Peerless GT that looks English to the core. A Morris Oxford estate car ("all-steel," a big selling point in post-war Britain) and a pair of Triumph Herald sedans, which I'd never seen before.

As we went around the floor, Pete shared all kinds of stories about the cars, pointing out things that I probably would never have noticed. How the door on an MG saloon is misaligned because the frame of the car is made of wood that has warped (still, it's a beautiful car); how the US Ambassador's 1936 Packard (with right-hand drive) ended up in their museum; how they came to have an old Vauxhall DHC, and what still needs to be done on it; and so on. 

If I had just gone around looking at the cars on my own and taking pictures, I probably would have spent about an hour and a half in this fascinating museum. With Pete telling stories as we went, I ended up staying a full five hours without noticing the time. (On the downside, I often forgot to take pictures of the cars, or to note the details for my photo captions.) He may regret spending his day that way, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anything that makes me forget to eat lunch is a great experience.

When I left, it was with the thought that the weather in Cincinnati was going to determine whether I followed my planned route through the unexplored counties of Kentucky; but the persistent problems I'm having with Google Maps foreclosed that option. I can't trust the app to route me the way I want to go. So I just told it to take me home, and it showed me that I was 19 hours away. I got a paper map of Kentucky at a rest area on I-65 south of Louisville, and saw that, with a relatively short detour to the east I could still get the 3 counties in the middle of the state; it would probably add no more than an hour to the return trip. But what's the point? Those three counties are on the way to the other 5 I would need to finish the state, so I might as well wait until they're on my course. Likewise the two in Tennessee, although that would finish that state.... With my paper map of Kentucky I can plan out a route that gets me to those to somewhat remote counties. But then what? I can't count on Google Maps to get me to Memphis afterwards, and I have only the vaguest idea of how I'd get there on my own. So I'll likely skip that little diversion, too, and just stay on the goddamn freeway all the way home. I won't get there tomorrow, but might get to Dallas, and then home on Friday. Either way, there won't be anything to tell about the rest of the trip, so this is going to be the final post from the 2022 KC/MI Wander.

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.

2022 KC/MI Wander, Day 13: Into the Wild

 

This is Part 11 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.

 Sojourner Truth, it turns out, lived the last 20-plus years of her life in Battle Creek, Michigan; so before I went back out to the Gilmore Museum this morning, I stopped downtown to see her monument. It's a twelve-foot-tall statue of her preaching, which she did a lot of, in a small park near the City Hall.

That's pretty much the only point of interest in the city of Battle Creek. Well, there's a Historical Bridge somewhere on the east side of town, and an arboretum, but I wasn't willing to make time for either of those things. I suppose if I ever come back here with my wife, I'll have to go to the arboretum, and maybe I'll go see the bridge, too. But there were cars to see, lots of 'em, so back up to Hickory Corners.

I did, as expected, go back to the Model A Museum, mainly to get a picture of the Model A Town Car, marketed to women "of a certain position in society" who didn't give a shit about what people thought. And to those who insist on being dropped off right in front of places where a bigger limo won't fit. You would have to really not care about the opinion of others to be seen being driven around by a chauffeur in that little limo. That's kind of like taking a sack lunch to Maxim's.

I started today where I'd left of yesterday, and finished photographing the newer Lincolns. 

You know what, I'm going to just be brief. I spent 6 hours today, walking around the immense grounds of the Gilmore museum complex; I went to the Lincoln Museum, the Model A Museum, the Cadillac-LaSalle Museum, the Steam Room (horseless carriages, mostly), the something-or-other Barn, the Classic Car Club of America Museum ("full classics," meaning cars for snobs from a long time ago -- according to them, there have been no classics made since 1948), the Pierce-Arrow Museum, and a couple of others that I don't remember the name of. I saw cars. Hundreds and hundreds of cars. I took hundreds and hundreds of pictures, most of which I'm disappointed with because of the lighting in all those buildings, but some are good. Look in my picture album from this trip if it interests you. At this point, at 11PM in a motel room in Cadillac, Michigan, where it's 48 degrees and I'm ready for bed, I'm not going to elaborate. I loved it. I'm glad I went there, I'm glad I went back, and I'm glad I'm done with it and now I'm going to wander around the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and then head home. 

1948 Jaguar 3.5 Litre coupe

(I will say that there was one Jaguar car the CCCA calls a "full classic," the 1948 3.5 Litre. I can think of two later ones: the 1949 XK-120 and the 1961 E-Type. Oh, and the Mark X, but I don't recall what year that came out. In the '60s, I believe. Hell, if they can call the 1949 Cadillac a "full classic," then anything can be a "full classic.")

Click on "Newer Posts" below to continue