We usually take three days and two nights to drive from Massachusetts to Minnesota but this time we took six nights. Most of the time was spent in Michigan because we have accumulated a list of things we wanted to see when we had the time.
Our first stop was in Dearborn to go to The Henry Ford. We spent a whole day at the museum, starting off at Greenfield Village in the morning and the museum in the afternoon. The kids loved the Village, not least because of the rides: Model Ts around the village, an antique carousel, and a train. We also spend a good amount of time in the various labs learning how things were made: between Edison, the Wright Brothers, and Ford himself, there was a lot of beautiful metal-and-wood laboratory equipment, overhead-belt-driven lathes and machine tools, and exhibits about prototypes and early models. Rides for the kids, antique engineering equipment for me.
In the afternoon we were in the museum, where we found the exhibits around road-tripping and car camping in American history especially interesting for obvious reasons. Audrey would very much like a split-windscreen Westfalia camper; Syd thinks we should be doing this trip in a converted Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Neither of them are wrong.
The food in Dearborn was also great. We love Middle Eastern food in general, but Saudi coffee in the morning was a particular treat. The kids were intrigued so we let them try some as well.
The next day was an easy day, visiting friends before ending up at Ludington State Park. We had been hearing that the western coast of Lake Michigan was worth a visit, but apart from camping in the UP we’ve never really stopped in the Lower Peninsula. We had planned to spend a night at Ludington and then head up to Sleeping Bear Dunes, and while we did that a day was not enough. Ludington was lovely and climbed over the dunes to the old lifeboat station and hiked out to Big Sable Point Lighthouse. We drove up to Sleeping Bear Dunes the next day but didn’t really leave ourselves enough time. We had lunch at the Dune Climb and made it up to the first ridge in the dunes, but then had to move on.
A change of plans caused us to do some backtracking the next day. We had planned on spending the entire next day in the UP and had camped in Tahquamenon Falls State Park, but we decided to visit Colonial Michilimackinac instead. That meant an extra hour in the car and two more trips across the Mackinac Bridge, but we’re big on forts and history in general. We have been to a lot of exhibits around life in the 18th century so the kids are pretty knowledgeable around those things, but any time there is a reconstruction of a communal military latrine you can expect to amuse children. Talking to docents who were representing (and were themselves) Native Americans was a new experience and gave us more details on what life would have been like for them outside of the European walls.
We spent our last night in Michigan in Escanaba visiting friends and now we’re with family in Minnesota. We’ve put in just under 2000 miles in, which is considerably more than we expect to be doing over the next year. It was a really busy week but it was also a good test of our setup and supplies. More on that to come.