The Last Leg
So (as its been nearly 2 months) just to remind everyone, we started in Toronto, went to Niagara and are now making our way across the rust belt visiting Pittsburgh, Cleveland and are now in Detroit... Oh and its raining... hard... so hard the baseball match we were due to go to has been called off as the diamond is under 6 inches of water.
When I had been planning this holiday, I was a little disapointed that I couldn't fit in The Henry Ford Museum as our time in Detroit was shorter than originally planned. When our baseball match was cancelled because of the rain we decided to head to Dearborn, the home of Henry Ford, the museum that bears his name and what was once the largest Factory in the world, The Ford River Rouge Complex.
The Museum itself is split into several parts: We did the "Edison Institute of American Innovation" (Edison was a very close friend of Henry Ford) and the Factory Tour. These two alone took us 6 hours and we didn't see everything. We missed the Greenfield Living Villiage as it was outside and wet and we wanted to be indoors.
We started with the tour which has a clever couple of films covering the history of River Rouge site, the surrounding area and the Ford family (including and this impressed me so of the bad publicity the company has had over the years). We were then taken to a viewing point to see the vastness of the site and the world's largest green roof (Detroit as we were finding out was very wet). The plant mix for the roof is unique to the Ford!
We then had a chance to see a working assembly line, no pictures as Unions won't allow them but it was amazing to see how they all come together and how they keep the line fed with the parts. Very little is automated, it all hand assembled.
After we went for a bite to eat at one of the places on site, I had a lovely sandwich and Mr W had a hot dog with all of the trimmings (I mean all of the trimmings). We ate in a refurbished rail carriage underneath golden arches.
There is a wide range of vehicles in main museum, what we didn't expect were full size trains - huge beasts... They won't tell me how they got them in!
There is also a wide range of cars and other road vehicles. Some are famous such as JFK's Limo
The bus that Rosa Parks was arrested in (this was part of a much wider exhibition into Black rights in the USA, big subject in Detroit.
There were some milestone cars. I loved the way they presented the information about the vehicles, such has the cost in terms of a percentage of a then Annual wage so you could compare like for like.
We had to include a picture of a Model T
It was a full on day but we both learnt a lot and enjoyed it. We finished the day at the Steakhouse and Micro-Brewery over the road to the hotel called Granite City. The food was amazing and the beer even more so.
The Next Leg