MACKINAC ISLAND MICHIGAN

Mackinac Island is a beautiful place. It reminded us of Cape May without the cars. You can only get there by ferry from Mackinaw City on the "mainland" or from St. Ignace on the Upper Penninsula (the UP). Once you get to the island you travel by bike or horse drawn carriage. It has been a resort since the mid-1800's so it pre-dates Cape May and was a fur trading center since the 1600's. We toured the island by carriage (that is our carriage in the picture) and visited a butterfly conservatory as well as the state park (which used to be a national park), Arch Rock and a carriage museum. The hearse is still used but the island does have a motorized fire engine as well as a police car and an ambulance.
The largest hotel on the island is the Grand Hotel. It looked beautiful but we did not go inside since they charge $10.00/person for that. Since the movie "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeves was filmed there, the hotel has been over run by tourists.

The 3 very plain buildings in the pictures below are from the fur trading era. The more ornate buildings in the pictures are some of the Bed and Breakfasts on the island.

THE HENRY FORD, DEARBORN MICHIGAN

Well here I am next to Henry Ford at "The Henry Ford". Yes it is a museum but the name is as I said, The Henry Ford. All kinds of neat stuff. We also visited the Rouge Ford Factory. It is a new assembly plant for the F-150 pick-up truck. It is state of the art inside and out. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside. The three pictures below are of the growing roof, cistern and grounds. The roof has a heck of an R factor supposedly keeps the inside of the plant 10 deg. cooler in summer and warmer in winter than without it. The plant has no runoff - all the roof water goes into cisterns for industrial use as well as grounds irrigation. You can also note the very large skylites which reduce lighting costs. Also not seen are the arrays of photovoltaic panels for producting electricity. The other very interesting history of the plant is that the original plant on this site was Henry Ford's first assembly line plant in the 1920s. However this plant was much more than just an assembly line. It made everything from raw materials. All the steel, castings, wood parts etc as he did not want to be dependent on suppliers for parts.



The museum pictures start with Janis Joplin's Porsche and the rest are self explanitory, except for the second picture. That picture is of the only remaining all aluminum prefab Dynomatic Home. It was supposedly going to be affordable housing for returning GI's after WW II however the designer could never get funding to produce the homes and as everyone from Long Island knows Levitt and Sons solved the housing problem.

The Henry Ford

This was Henry Fords very first automobile the rest is history

HANNIBAL MISSOURI

Hannibal, MO - another visit to a famous person's boyhood home. This time it is Mark Twain's (aka Samuel Clemmens). A quaint little town on the Mississippi River so we started the day by taking a riverboat ride. Did you all remember that Mark Twain was a river boat captain before he began writing? That was actually how he got the name Mark Twain. He also modeled his characters after boyhood friends. So we got to visit Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer's houses and saw Becky Thatcher's (it is the one being remodeled) and also saw the famous fence that got whitewashed.

MARCELLINE, MISSOURI & ENROUTE

While in route from Kansas City to Marcelline Missouri I punched in NO interstates in the GPS sooooooooo we found ourselves on US 24. After a while we found that this route through Missouri follows the Lewis & Clark trail. We stopped at a little rest area for lunch and found the below stone marker and historical sign. Apparently a settlement Fort Orleans was established in 1723 by the French which was way before revolution or the Lewis & Clark expedition. It only survived a couple of years.

The purpose of our visit to Marcelline was to visit Walt Disney's boyhood home and museum. Walt, Roy and their sister lived in the house below on the right. We were not able to stop and get a good picture due to traffic. The house has been drastically altered since they lived there in mid 1920's for about five years. Walt was five to ten years old during that time but these were formative years for him and he never forgot the town. Mainstreet, the picture below left, was eventually how he designed Mainstreet at Disneyland. In later years He and Roy stayed involved with the town. He built the municipal pool and subsequently the town named the recreation area for him. Later on he gave the original Auto ride from Disneyland called Autotopia to the town and it was rebuilt at the rec area and ran many years. It was finally disassembled and stored due to requiring a major overhaul. The reason it was removed from Disneyland was that the cars were too small for adults and his idea for Disneyland was to be a family park that all the family could participate together. The bottom right picture is part of the roadway and the left is one of the original cars. The town hopes to restore the ride and expand the displays in the museum. Unfortunately money is the problem and since Walt's death there has been little help from the Disney Corporation. It was a short but interesting stop for us because we are both Disney nuts. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures of the artifacts so you will have to visit to see them for youselves.