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The staff at Otels hope you enjoy the following Travel Ideas
from travel writer (and enthusiastic naturalist)
Mark Kolakowski
Best wishes on your next trip to Michigan!
2 days
visiting Dearborn and metro
Detroit
By Mark
Kolakowski
Copyright © 2009 by the author
I had the opportunity to visit Michigan in mid-October
2009 and spent two enjoyable days in the metro Detroit area.
(Michigan’s north country had provided spectacular
scenery earlier in the week, as described in my
travel
report for that part of the state.)
I arrived in the
Detroit
suburb of Dearborn
on a Sunday
in late afternoon. Organizers of a conference in Dearborn had arranged a special evening tour
of the Ford Rouge Factory,
and had invited me along. Tours for the general public depart via
special bus Monday-Friday from
The Henry Ford Museum in
Dearborn. (Note: no visitor parking is
allowed at the Rouge plant.)
For dinner, some friends and I made an excellent choice in the
Al-Ameer Lebanese restaurant on Warren Avenue in Dearborn, our choice guided by chef Anthony
Bourdain’s visit there on his Travel Channel Show
No Reservations. The family combination platters were a screaming
bargain, and everything served was excellent.
There were five stops for me in
metro Detroit the
following day:
-
The
Polish Art Center in Hamtramck
features art and crafts imported from
Poland. An odd memento inside is a
signed photo of Clint Eastwood, who visited while filming
Grand Torino in nearby
towns.
- Meadow
Brook Hall at Oakland
University
in Rochester
is an imposing castle built by Matilda Dodge Wilson
(widow of the founder of Dodge Motors) and her second husband, a
lumber baron. There was only one daily tour of the interior, at 1:30
PM, but that did not fit my schedule, so I admired the exterior (see
photo below).
Don’t miss the Knole Cottage, a playhouse that Mrs. Wilson’s daughter
received on her 12th birthday.
- The Kirk
in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills is modeled on Melrose Abbey in
Scotland, and is in a beautiful,
tranquil lakeside setting. Don’t miss St. Andrew’s refectory hall,
with its cycle of paintings by N.C. Wyeth on New Testament stories.
- Marvin’s
Marvelous Mechanical Museum in
Farmington Hills is a retro arcade in a mall
that features a number of vintage games, gizmos and magic show
bric-a-brac.
- The
Detroit Zoo in Royal
Oak is one of the best in the country. From
its opening in 1928, this incarnation of the Detroit Zoo was
way ahead of the curve in zoo design, putting animals in
naturalistic habitats rather than cages. I spent a highly
enjoyable 2 hours there, encountering several species that I
have not seen elsewhere and suggest allowing even more time for
this attraction.
On my last day, knowing my flight home was at 7:00 PM out of nearby
(14 miles) DTW airport, I decided to confine myself to the vicinity
of my hotel in Dearborn. I spent the
morning at The Henry Ford
Estate – Fairlane which has beautiful landscaped grounds along
the Rouge River,
and excellent guided tours of the house. The highlight of the tour
was the powerhouse, which supplied the estate with its own source of
hydroelectric power. Ford also had an ingenious system whereby
machinery driven by the water turbines supplied the main house with
warm, dry air for hairdryers, cold air for room cooling and
refrigeration, and suction for vacuuming.
In the afternoon, I took a brisk 2-hour tour of Greenfield
Village, which opened on October 21, 1929 to
commemorate the 50th anniversary of
Edison’s electric light. In fact, Greenfield Village
and the adjacent Henry
Ford Museum
are officially still incorporated as The Edison Institute, such was
Ford’s admiration for his friend Edison.
Greenfield
Village is a collection of original and
reproduced buildings offering a slice of Americana, especially regarding significant
figures in American history.
A Note
on Highways in Michigan
Michigan
has received a huge amount of federal stimulus money, and has
applied much of it to road repair. As a result, virtually wherever
you turn in the state, especially in metro
Detroit, you are bound to encounter road
closures, lane closures and detours that may add significantly to
your travel time, and which make planning a tight itinerary
virtually impossible.
In metro Detroit, particularly problematic are
I-96, I-696, I-94 near DTW airport, Michigan Avenue in Dearborn near
state route 39 (Southfield Freeway) and I-75 north of exit 79 in
Rochester, to name just a few.
To make
hotel reservations
in towns in
Dearborn and the metro Detroit area of Michigan state, please
visit
MichiganHotels.com.
We welcome your comments or suggestions
about this
Travel Report:
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