Between Chicago and Detroit, we made two stops. The first was at the southern tip of Lake Michigan where we visited the Illinois Dunes Visitor Center and drove to the dunes area on Lake Michigan. Our next stop was in Hollard, Michigan. While there we saw the Holland Harbor Lighthouse (seen later on this web site), a windmill near the center of the city, and a tulip farm where they also manufactured wooden shoes. The windmill, shoe factory, and tulip farm are seen above.
While in Detroit, we spent a half day in Greenfield Village. This is a remarkable outdoor museum established by Henry Ford and is adjacent to the Ford Museum. Ford had amazing foresight and spent millions of dollars purchasing historic structures from various places in the United States and relocating them to Detroit's Greenfield Village. The entrance to the Village is shown at the left.
Three sites within Greenfield Village that were impressive to me were 1) the Wright Brothers' bike shop shown at the right (this building is where much of the thinking, experimentation, and fabrication took place as they developed the first airplane); 2) Noah Webster's home shown in the upper right (this building is the one in which he was living when he wrote the famous dictionary); and 3) Thomas Edison's Menlo Park Compound and laboratory shown directly above. Edison's laboratory where he developed the electric light filament was an amazing place. Ford had it created as it was during Edison's day. In fact, Edison visited the site and told Ford that it looked just right except it was too clean. The middle photo above shows the chair Edison sat in while in the laboratory visiting with Ford. Ford later had it nailed to the floor and even captured one of Edison's last breaths in a test tube which is on display in the Ford Museum (exit shown at right).
The Ford Museum was also an incredible place. Cars, trains, machinery, technological innovations - you name it, it was there. Two of the more interesting items, other than Edison's last breath, were the chair Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated and the car in which John F. Kennedy was in when he was assassinated. They are both shown below.
