Hello Everyone! I am back on the road and very happy to be here. It’s been a week with some ups and downs, but overall it feels really good to be back in my van and back out on the open roads of America. I’m thrilled to get back to This Week on the Road and am writing to you this week from Dearborn, Michigan. It’s been hot here – like, really hot – and that’s definitely caused some struggles living the vanlife, but it’s supposed to cool off this week to something more reasonable which will be good. So let me tell you all about my week and what I’ve been getting up to.
First, the struggles! The heat has been oppressive, reaching the low 90s with high humidity, and because the sun sets after 9pm here in June in the north it doesn’t cool off until pretty late in the day. I’ve often said as long as it gets down to the low 70s by the time I go to bed, I’m okay. This week it hasn’t done that. I did plan ahead for this and brought an extra fan with me to use in case it got hot. Unfortunately, my house batteries just sat idle too long this year and don’t have anywhere near the staying power they used to. That’s okay, I can afford to replace them, but because I want the exact same batteries, I can’t just run to the store and pick them up, Because they’re so heavy I can’t send them to an Amazon Locker and get them there. That means they’ll have to wait until I visit a friend sometime next week and can get them sent to his house. It’s one of those things I wish I had known at home because it would have been a quick and painless fix. Same goes for my bathroom door which I rehung just before leaving. There was only one latch as opposed to the two there used to be, and I wanted an exact match so I didn’t have to drill new holes but I can’t seem to find one. That one latch wasn’t nearly enough to hold that heavy door closed so it’s been swinging around like crazy. It’s bungee corded to its neighbor so it’s not opening far, but it bangs around a lot. Again – this would have been an easy fix at home, and one I really should have done, but out here I will have to rent a drill this week and take care of it. It’s just more of a problem than it should be. Lastly, I’m leaking transmission fluid which I would have loved to have had my mechanics at home take care of a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t notice it then. Now I will have to find a shop to do the work which is always a pain, especially because I have to wait with it and can’t just leave it somewhere. These are all challenges to living this lifestyle, and I will get them fixed, but it’s a pain to have to deal with them right out of the gate.
Point Place Light on the Way North
The roads in Michigan so far have been terrible. I’m not saying this lightly, but I’ve seen better roads in most of the developing countries I’ve visited in the world. They are beyond bad and desperately need repair. It seems our politicians can’t get a bill passed because it’s too big and all-encompassing. I wish they would pass a roads and bridges bill and then continue to argue about the rest. We all know that we need it and even if it passed tomorrow, these roads wouldn’t get repaired for years, but I sure wish they’d get on it. Everywhere I’ve been in this country has had disgraceful roads which need repair and I think it’s something we could all agree on. Taxes are an investment, and one of the returns on that investment should be decent roads for us to drive on.
Beyond those things, I’ve been having a really good time. I wanted to write to y’all last week, but my last day in D.C. was a struggle. I stayed an extra day to be there when the internet men came to run my folks’ new internet cable into the house. Even though I knew it would be a challenge, I hoped it would take them less than 2 hours. It took them 6½. I was trying to help and pack and finish up some things and it all just became a bit much. I finally left about 6:30 and made it as far as Cumberland, Maryland where I crashed for the night. It rained the whole way.
Thursday was better though as I made my way north, through Pittsburg and western PA, and into Ohio via Youngstown. I got in to Chagrin Falls right at 4:30 to meet my good friend Mike Vasko, at whose house I was staying that night. We went out with a couple of his old friends from school for some amazing (and huge) sandwiches and a few beers. Then we went back to his house and played video games with his kids for a while and then chatted until way too late. I did pay off the bet I owed him from last year’s Penn State – Ohio State game though, with some Pennsylvania beer!
I had been to Chagrin Falls before, during my visit to Ohio, and thought it was such a cool little town that I went in in the morning to take some photos and have a wander around the downtown area. You can see the photos I took while I was there at the link here.
From there, I headed up to the shores of Lake Erie and started heading west. It was a sunny day and taking a long, leisurely drive along the coast was blissful. I stopped often, got out to take photos and wander around, listened to some great tunes and smiled a lot. It was great. I finally crossed the border into Michigan in the late afternoon and headed straight for the Welcome Center. Unfortunately they were closed (and looked like they have been for quite some time), so I got my picture in front of the Michigan sign and kept going. I headed out to the tiny town of Luna Pier to walk along the beach for a minute and get my feet wet. It was a quaint little town with a few bars and restaurants and a nice lakefront area. While I was taking some photos, a nice older gentleman approached and we chatted for a while. He told me about a restaurant he liked in the next town up and told me I should check it out. I was hungry, so I did just that. It was a cute little waterfront bar and grill called the Sandbar, plopped right on the marina but definitely hidden away. I ordered some fried shrimp and a cold beer and both went down a treat. Then I headed off to my final destination: Monroe, formerly Frenchtown, and one of the oldest towns in the state. It was just about dusk when I arrived, but I did take a stroll around downtown which was quiet and pleasant.
Saturday I got up and headed to the local Farmer’s Market hoping to pick up some local fruit and vegetables. There wasn’t much on offer, but I got some delicious cookies and a great little strawberry-rhubarb pie. Then I headed on to River Raisin National Battlefield, a relatively new addition to the National Park System. There I met Pam, one of the volunteers, who took me on a wonderful tour of the battlefield. I also watched a really great film on the battle and enjoyed the excellent diorama on display in the Visitors Center. The Battle of the River Raisin took place on a cold January morning in 1813 between the British and their Native American allies, and the United States Army and local militia. It was one of the costliest battles of the War of 1812 for the Americans. The battle left a roomful of soldiers too wounded to be moved who were summarily executed. When word of this got around, American soldiers would rally around the cry “Remember the Raisin” in subsequent battles in the area. It was a fascinating place, and I certainly knew very little about it when I arrived but left knowing a whole lot more. I also found it interesting that George Armstrong Custer went to school in Monroe and grew up hearing stories of the Indians who executed wounded men – it’s hard to imagine that didn’t shape his opinions on Native Americans.
When I finished my visit to the battlefield, I followed the River Raising to tiny Tecumseh, Michigan – named for the Shawnee chief who formed a Native American coalition to fight against the Americans in the War of 1812. It was a very quaint little town which reminded me of days gone by. There wasn’t a chain store in sight, and the downtown had a bakery, a grocer, a shoemaker, a brewery, a winery, and plenty of antique stores and little restaurants. It was quite refreshing to see, and to see it still seemingly doing well. It takes effort and cooperation to keep these towns afloat and not cave to cheaper prices that big box stores can offer. I commend Tecumseh for persevering in that regard. You can see all of my photos from Tecumseh in this post.
From Tecumseh, I headed on to Ann Arbor. I got there in time for a stroll around the downtown area which was quite busy on a Saturday night. I took some photos at the Michigan Theater and then headed down to Pizza Bob’s for their famous Chipati. Many people who went to the University of Michigan have told me that I had to try one, and I’m glad I did. It was essentially a nice fresh salad stuffed inside a freshly baked, split pizza crust with their own secret sauce. It was delicious. After that I stopped for a quick beer at Townies Brewery before calling it a day (and quite a day it was).
My hope is to be able to take Sundays as quiet days to catch up, sit still, cook, clean and relax and this past week kicked that off. I stopped at the grocery store and then found a good-enough park to spend the day in. I pulled up to a nice picnic table in the shade, cooked some meals for this week, read, napped and generally had a relaxing afternoon. It was nice. As the day was fading, I headed back downtown to try and track down some of Ann Arbor’s Fairy Doors. You may remember I wrote a piece last year about Greenwood, Mississippi’s Fairy Doors (you can find it here), and I’m a big fan of towns that put out things for little kids (and very big kids) to discover. I tracked down 5 of them and then called it a night.
Monday I went to see the University of Michigan’s enormous football stadium before heading out of town. I went to Huron Meadows Metropark to do the permanent orienteering course laid out by the Southern Michigan Orienteering Club (SMOC). I really enjoyed being out there in the woods, not committed to any trail but running around looking for hidden markers using my map and compass skills. Along the way I found a ton of frogs and toads, a turtle and even a couple of raccoons, all of which put a smile on my face. I only wished my little buddy, Mason, had been along to see them. I got caught in a pretty heavy downpour and decided to call it a day, having only completed about half the course. It was hot and I was tired and it seemed like a good call. I rested a bit and then headed on to Farmington Hills in the suburbs of Detroit. I had heard about a place called Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum and definitely wanted to check it out. It was sort of like an arcade, but with a lot of machines that you watched instead of played. I got $10 worth of quarters and could watch most of the old ones for that. Some were funny, some were weird and some were just plain bizarre (like a hanging, a guillotining and a torture chamber). Many of these were very old though and predated World War II, so I won’t be one to judge. It was very cool to see them all in working order though and to know someone was working to keep them going. I left with a huge smile on my face.
Yesterday I spent wandering around Detroit, a city I have never been to before. I spent the morning out on Belle Isle, catching some city views and wading in the Detroit River. It’s a nice city park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and people from Detroit love it out there. Their big car race, the Detroit Grand Prix, is happening this weekend, so some of the island was closed off, but I enjoyed what I saw of it. Like the roads, it could use some work and TLC though.
In the afternoon I went for a Coney Dog at Lafayette’s, a legendary Detroit spot. It was good, but nothing mind-blowing or particularly different from many chili dogs I’ve had in my life though, to be honest. But I’m glad I tried it. I wanted to taste one from their competitor next door, but they were closed at 3pm for some reason? Oh well. I spent the rest of the day wandering around downtown, taking a few photos and getting the lay of the land. I stopped for some baklava at the Astoria Bakery in Greektown which was definitely worth a visit and picked up tickets for tonight’s Detroit Tigers baseball game, which I’m really looking forward to.
So it’s definitely been a busy first week back on the road, but a good one as well. Today I’m going to finish this post and then head over to The Henry Ford museum for the day which I’m really excited about. Then I’m heading back downtown for some Detroit Style Pizza and a baseball game. I’ll be in Greater Detroit for a few days yet before I head back to the lake and start making my way north. I’m not sure where I’ll be by this time next week, but I’ll definitely fill you in when I get there. I feel good, y’all. I feel healthy and vibrant and excited for the road ahead. I will overcome the minor obstacles this week has thrown my way and continue to explore the great state of Michigan. I hope you’ll come along for the ride. I hope you’re all having a good week out there and I’ll see you right back here, same time next week. Take care and thanks for reading.
-Mike