Today we explored Battle Creek, and even drove over to neighboring town Marshall. Dave and Mazie accompanied us on our exploration today, and we started with breakfast at Lake's Sunrise Cafe, a little family owned place off the main street, but I had a coupon and an address, so we drove right to it. After we stuffed ourselves, we headed downtown to the Farmers Market. It was a fairly small market, but they had local produce. Joe bought some more cherries, I bought 2 ears of corn and some cookies, and Mazie bought some rhubarb.
Then we headed over to the Kimball House Museum, which was supposed to have a history of Battle Creek, but it was closed. So we tried to locate the buildings listed on the "Heritage Mile," and we found most of them. Some were just buildings, and we weren't able to get in any of them, so it was more of a drive-by. It started with Monument Park, a statue erected to honor cereal magnate C. W. Post. At one time, Battle Creek was the cereal capital of the U.S. On the inside of this wall is a 12-foot sculpture of Sojourner Truth. There's a lot of history about Sojourner Truth, "
an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York,
but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to
court to recover her son, in 1828 she became the first black woman to
win such a case against a white man."
Monuments:
Sojourner Truth
This statute was down by the police station, a police officer and a little girl.
Several churches were also listed on the Heritage Mile, and they were huge.
Churches:
We checked off most of the rest of the buildings listed, then drove over to the building that was the sanitariam that Kellogg built here. It is huge, and after he lost it during the depression, the government took it over and it became a hospital for the Army. Our friend Arnie (Brenda's dad) served here as a medic in 1952.
But when Dr. Kellogg ran it, it was more like a health spa for the rich and famous, including kings and queens, millionaires, movie stars, and the big names of the day (Edison, Ford). The building is now called the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center, and we were told that it houses a lot of veterans' records.
We happened upon a little museum still in the building stages, but it was interesting and the two guys running it were very nice. One of the board members' wife, who has passed away, had a collection of wool ready to be woven, and they intend to get that up and running in the near future.
They have a spinning wheel in here too. Most of their current collection are items from the Kellogg cereal days.
We left here and drove over to Marshall, to Turkeyville, sort of a gift shop, flea market, and dinner show place, but they happened to have an arts and crafts show today, so we walked through that. Here are a few of the craft items that caught my eye.
I happened to have an address (and a coupon) for a paper store that also had scrapbook supplies, so we drove down the main street and I checked that out. Then we came back to Battle Creek and went back out to the Adventist Village to finish that tour. Dave had missed that yesterday, so we thought he needed to see that. We listened to the tour guide again, then toured three of the buildings, but it was getting late and we were getting tired, so we didn't stay with that very long. We did see a home, the school, and a log cabin. Each building had an Adventist inside to tell a little about the building and how it related to their beliefs.
These are some of the exercise equipment and tools Dr. Kellogg created, which are amazingly similar to things found in work-out gyms today.
The school.
Log cabin
Other buildings in the village.
We left here, stopped at the grocery store, and headed back to camp. After dinner, we played cards for a while. The weather was perfect here today, probably in the 70s although it did get a little cloudy in the afternoon. I heard some local say something about summer having arrived, and I thought, boy, could I tell you a thing or two about summer! But the mosquitoes are bad here at the campground. We are parked on grass and we have to hustle in and out the door. I'm afraid we are going to be in mosquito territory for quite some time.
One of the brochures we picked up at the Visitor Center was a geocache challenge of the underground railroad. If we had time, that would be a fun thing to try to do. The brochure gives the GPS coordinates, as well as "Difficulty", "Terrain", "Size", and a "Hint". We haven't done any geocaching for a couple of years, but this sounded intriguing. I'll keep that in case we ever pass this way again.
No comments:
Post a Comment