On Sunday, August 21, we spend the whole day in Ann Arbor. Lena suggested an early morning walk to the Greenview Nature Area, and it was a total delight!
Several more things are left from last weekend’s trip to Michigan. We had two great positive experiences in Detroit: Michigan Central and Ford Plant, and one-and-a-half bad experiences. A “half-experience” was that, once again, it appeared to be challenging to find any relatively fast and decent quality food, and one really bad – it appeared to be impossible to find a coffee place in the afternoon. I ended up having the second coffee of the day when we returned to Lena’s place.
On Sunday, we stayed in Ann Arbor and spent most of the day in the Downtown area. Lena was sure that coffee wouldn’t be a problem there, but the place where we stopped to get coffee turned out to be really bad. Lena went back to the coffee shop and asked for a new one, but it was only marginally better.
Finally, Lena spotted Roos Roaster and said that they should be good. When we entered, I told a barista that I had to have one positive coffee experience and what he would recommend. He recommended a long, and it was perfect.
Both I and the reputation of Ann Arbor were saved!
I still wanted to post more photos from our last weekend’s visit to Greenfield Village. We saw more houses than we had seen last year with Lena. Boris said he didn’t care that much about famous people’s houses, but as for me, 1) I do if I know something about this person, 2) there were a lot of houses which showed in great detail how people had lived two hundred years ago, and unlike many other museums of that kind, they had not just “some artifacts,” but a very detailed reconstruction of how people actually lived. For example, not just a washing pitch, but a complete set of teeth hygiene pieces, chamber pots under each bed, and so on.
Dugget Farmhouse
Henry Fords’ house, Wright’s house or boarding house – does not really matter 🙂
We went to Ann Arbor to visit my friend Lena. We took the Wolverine train, which was supported to arrive in Ann Arbor t 11-04 PM local time but was significantly delayed, and ended up arriving at 12-50 AM! Lena had to go to bed and then wake up to pick us up at the train station, and we were completely frozen on the train because the air conditioner was running very low! Fortunately, the dining car was open, and we went to grab some hot tea.
Today, we went kayaking, which I wanted to do for Boris – he enjoyed it a lot last summer when I booked the Field Museum kayaking experience.
It started very dramatically because, if you remember, I’ve done kayaking only once in my life – last summer, and I already forgot everything they taught us. The first thing I did when my kayak was pushed into the river I almost hit Boris in the head with my ore. While he was trying to avoid this encounter, I hit his core, and his kayak turned upside down, and he was completely under the water!
I do not know why, but he didn’t get mad at me, and he was given a new kayak, and we continued our journey. I was struggling with pretty much everything, running into the shore every three minutes. It didn’t help that for the first half of our journey, we went against the current. Lena took a lot of pictures and videos of me losing the hold of the kayak, but she didn’t send them to me yet, so I only have pictures of beautiful water lilies and of a swan. While I was busy taking pictures of him, I drifted too close to him and could not correct my course fast enough, so I was afraid he would bite me.
After lunch, we went to Parker Mill Park. Lena has found information in their local newspaper about the tour which was supposedly starting at 1 PM, so she planned our day accordingly. When we arrived, there was no information about any tours neither in the parking lot nor by the visitors center which was closed. We saw the sign pointing to the mill and headed in that direction.
We entered the mill (although there was no sign on the door), and there was nobody around. We observed lots of tools and mechanisms, all labeled and being in perfect order.
We were planning to start from the Botanic garden, but it was not opened till 10 AM, so we went to Bandemer Park first. The views of the river were stunning! We saw lots of people walking the trails, and some even biking, although I thought there is not enough room on these tiny narrow trails.
This weekend I am in Ann Arbor visiting my dear friend Lena. Lena used to live in Palatine; five minutes drive from me. She is a great person and a true friend, and we have a lot in common, no matter 20 years age difference, me being a crazy workaholic, and her being a homemaker for a long time. I was very sad when they moved to Ann Arbor because of her husband’s work. She visits me from time to time, but it’s not the same. Now, two years after she moved I finally came to visit her.
On Friday after work, I took a Wolverine train from the Union station.
This train moves with speed over 110 mph, but due to the issues with its computer, we were one hour and fifteen minutes late. Lena had to stay up late to meet me at the train station, and we didn’t go to bed till 1 AM, but at 6-30 AM today we were up and ready for adventure.
Hettie's Reflections 