I forgot the big highlight of yesterday. Last winter, in December I think, Joe's key fob for the Explorer broke and it wouldn't keep the key on it anymore, although the brain in the key fob still unlocked the doors. So he ordered a new fob. But by the time it came in, we had lost the old one. We looked high and low, many times, for that broken fob, inside the house, in both garages, all to no avail. Well, yesterday, Joe had put up the third seat in the Explorer so we could all ride to Ft. Wayne together, and Mazie laid her jacket in the backseat and there was that broken key fob, in the third seat of the car. She asked if that was anything we needed, and Joe and I both wanted to leap for joy (well, use your imagination here). Mystery solved!!! I'm tempted to mail it home so we don't lose it again before we match it up with the new one he order (which we left at home, of course). Anyhow, that made it a great day. Something I can quit looking for in my spare time.
It was sunny when I woke up this morning, but a little later I noticed that it had gotten really dark in the kitchen, and then it started raining, a little thunder and lightning with it. We hadn't planned on leaving before 10:00, so we tried to wait out the rain a little before de-camping. But Marilyn came over and suggested we head on out and stop at the Heritage Car Museum about 12 miles away in Hickory Corners. Yeah, another day in Michigan, another car museum. But Joe headed out with his raincoat on and got us ready to leave. I drove up the road to the Shell station and got his soda and picked up some donuts for the crew, then we got on the road about 10:25.
We drove along Fine Lake, with houses on one side, and the lake with boat docks on the other. Looked like a great place to spend a few weeks in the summer.
They even had boat covers on some of the docks to protect their boats from the rains. (You have to look through the rain drops.)
We arrived at the Heritage Automotive Heritage Center about 11:00, and spent the next 4 hours looking at cars, cars, and more cars.
For any car buffs, this is a must-see. It is the most extensive car museum we've seen, and even Marilyn said it is the best one they've seen, and they've seen a lot of car museums. Of course we took lots of pictures, so I'll have to post a few. The first one is the world's first automobile.
And here are some cars!
There were lots of different buildings and the collection was broken up into several different categories: Steam Barn, Franklin Collection, Model A Ford Museum, Campania Barn, Pierce-Arrow, Classic Car Club of America Museum, Pedal Cars, Motorcycles, and a few others.
Here were my 2 favorites: a 57 Chevy convertible (we had one like this, same color, but not a convertible, when I was 17), and 1 beautiful 55 T-Bird. I loved the paint job on that one.
All the cars in this museum were beautiful, almost all had been restored into prime condition, with lovely paint jobs. This next one is the Little Deuce Coupe that the Beach Boys sang about.
We came out of this building, and old Abe was sitting there on the bench. Joe shared his raincoat to keep him dry.
They tried wooden tires during the war, when supplies were so limited.
They also had a few campers on exhibit. It's hard to realize that campers came along so early in the days of automobiles.
There was also a significant collection of emblems, or motoring mascots, here.
There was also an old-fashioned filling station, including the drive-way "hose" that rings when someone runs over it, which I remembered once I heard it.
There was also a building full of old pedal cars, which were all in excellent condition. Some were very cute.
Also on exhibit was the Gnome-mobile, from the old Disney movie. The "set" was huge.
After walking a couple miles or more, we finally headed back to our RV's.
We drove through the country over to highway 131, toward Grand Rapids. We are staying right outside Grand Rapids at Dorr, in a city park. There was a slight mix-up in getting set up to camp. Someone had parked their pick-up in the space we were assigned, so I had to go back up to the office and get a different site. And Joe dumped our tanks when we got here, since he didn't want to get wet this morning dumping them in the rain. But we got here about 4:00, and were pretty well set up by 4:30. The rain had quit not long after we arrived at the car museum, and the day cleared off and was beautiful, in the low 80s. After dinner, we played cards for a while, then called it a night. We are planning a full day tomorrow in Lansing, so we all hope to get a good night's sleep and an early start tomorrow.
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