Let's Go Places: A Quick Sweep of Toledo, Ann Arbor, and Grand Rapids

It's travel time again!  If you're new here, the rest of my family is heavily involved in Boy Scouts, and I'm not.  That means a lot of time on my hands while they're off doing Scout Things, which I've channeled into local tourism.  When they go away I go away - far enough from home to justify staying overnight, but not so far away that I can't get back in case of emergency.

Normally I do a long weekend trip during their monthly camp outs, but September didn't work for a few reasons.  For the September camp out, we had family coming in from out of town, so home was where I wanted to be that weekend.  Then something unexpected came up that had me making a during-the-week-trip in early October (story coming soon).

But I still wanted to "go somewhere" in September.  I didn't have a long weekend, but I did have something that I wanted to squeeze into this year's travels that required an overnight stay.

So a few weeks ago I made a very rushed trip to Toledo, Ann Arbor, and Grand Rapids.

How This Trip Came About

I have a thing for visiting Frank Lloyd Wright houses and I've been trying to go to the Meyer May house in Grand Rapids for a while.  It's a bit of a haul from where I live, but Detroit falls within day trip distance so plan A was a Michigan long weekend.

I've made a few trips to Detroit this year, but on each occasion the Meyer May house was booked solid, so the stars were just not aligned.  I really did want to go sometime this year, and I finally put my foot down and made it happen.  As of late August there was exactly one slot open on their September Saturday weekend schedule, so I snapped it up.

The next step was to figure out what else to do to make it worth the drive...everyone always tells me that Ann Arbor is cool, and surely there are things left for me to do in Detroit.

But after tossing around ideas I wasn't coming up with much.  The generic statement "Ann Arbor is cool" wasn't leading to a list of "OMG here are all the cool things to do in Ann Arbor".  In theory there are more things that I want to do in Detroit, but google wasn't giving me warm fuzzies on anything specific.  Hey, no problem, there are other things to do in Grand Rapids.  

I started looking for a place to stay and WHAT THE HECK GRAND RAPIDS?????? You are not Chicago, so why was I seeing Chicago prices everywhere that I looked????  Grrr, did I really want to see the house that badly?

So now I am very proud of myself because I get to use a two dollar word on the blog: geoarbitrage.  That's when it's costs too much to stay in the place that you want to stay so you stay somewhere else that's within your price range.  I channeled my inner Purple and expanded my search area outside of Grand Rapids.  Rural Michigan does not have itself confused with Chicago, and I found a host of cute Airbnbs at prices that I was willing to pay.

From there I went through my list of things to do and came up with a very random itinerary.  

• There was nothing that I wanted to do in Detroit but there was something seasonal that I wanted to do in Toledo.  
• I like to eat at vegan restaurants when I travel (not because I'm vegan but because I like good food and it's something that I can't get at home).  When I started looking at what Michigan had to offer, I was SHOCKED.  No I wasn't shocked because there was nothing, I was shocked because there was a wealth to choose from.  I picked out a place in Ann Arbor for dinner on Saturday on the way in.
• I have a thing for visiting presidential museums, and Grand Rapids is the hometown of a president.
• I read Engie's recaps of her trip to Grand Rapids (here and here).  I didn't have time to do All the Things, but it was clear that Meijer Gardens needed to be on my list.
  

Saturday - wheels up

I didn't have very many stops to make on Saturday, so I took my sweet time about getting on the road.  My first stop was The National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo.  I'd actually been there in January, so excuse my continuity fail of snow and ice for the next picture.  They have two ships as part of the museum exhibits, but the boats are only open from May to October.  Yes I've been to Detroit several times over the summer but just never had enough time to make the stop to tour the boats.

The boats are well worth the tour if you're in the area.

Now it was dinner time, so I headed to Ann Arbor to the Detroit Filling Station - I believe the backstory on the name is that the restaurant operates on the site of an old gas station that was called the Detroit Filling Station though yes we are in Ann Arbor.

I had a vegan reuben and was a happy camper.

I got back on the road and tucked into my Airbnb in the middle of nowhere, which turned out to be a very cute small town that made for a lovely evening walk.  But the best was yet to come, because on impulse I'd gotten a slice of vegan, gluten free cheesecake from the Detroit Filling Station.  I made a joke to myself that vegan and gluten free are two ways to ruin cheesecake, but the joke was on me when I took that first bite.  It was exquisite.  If my path ever takes me back to Ann Arbor, you'll find me back at the filling station.

Sunday - action time!

After a very peaceful night I got back on the road and arrived in the fair city of Grand Rapids.  It was a classic case of having too much to do in too little time, so I had to speed through my first two stops.

Stop 1 of 3: Meijer Gardens

I arrived at Meijer Gardens when they opened at 11:00.  This is not a place that you can just breeze through in an hour, but an hour is all that I had.  I spent most of my time at the Japanese gardens, took in the boardwalk, and then raced around to see as many sculptures as I could.

Stop 2 of 3: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

Presidential museums...a thing that I'm into that I never in a million years thought that I would be into.  

My interest in President Ford going in: he was the President the year I was born.

My interest in President Ford that I gained from visiting the museum: he was the only Eagle Scout to ever be president.  Currently two of the three other members of my household are Eagle Scouts, with the number expected to climb to three out of the three other members.

I had enough time after the museum to walk around the grounds a bit and cross the bridge to downtown before my final stop.

Stop 3 of 3: The Meyer May House

 

At last I arrived at my ultimate destination, the Meyer May House.

Every FLW house that I've ever visited claims to be "the best" of some aspect of FLW's legacy, and the claim has always been true.  Meyer May's claim to fame is that it's the most authentically restored house.  The story is similar to several other FLW houses: lived in by the original owner for many years, then it was passed around and eventually converted into apartments, then it fell into disrepair and was scheduled to be demolished, and then a superhero stepped in to save it.

In this case the superhero is the Steelcase Corporation and they dumped some serious Fat Cat Corporate Cash into restoring the house, and put some serious Fat Cat Corporate Goodwill into the community with an admission price of $0.00 per visit.  That's why the tour calendar is booked solid.

Fun fact: Steelcase is a Grand Rapids company, but they didn't just randomly decide to adopt their local FLW house.  They manufactured the office furniture for the very famous FLW designed SC Johnson Administration Building in Racine Wisconsin, so they have legit ties to FLW.

I can't properly put into words what it's like to visit a FLW site, except to say that it's the experience of being inside of a work of art and here's a list of public sites in 22 states if you'd like to find your nearest FLW site.

For me it's enough simply to be in these buildings, but I am starting to absorb some Proper Architecture terms.  One that comes up a lot with FLW is "organic architecture" - harmony between buildings and the natural world.

A praying mantis stopped by the window in the children's bedroom to illustrate the point.

With that my time in Grand Rapids was drawing to a close.  It was time to go home but it was also time to eat.  Google steered me to Gita Pita, which was a quick stop for a heavenly gyro.

Let's Wrap it Up

• The Meyer May house was a 10/10.  I'm glad that I made the trip now instead of waiting for it to fit in with something else.
• Making a rushed overnight trip instead of no trip at all: 10/10.
  
• Staying in a random small town for cheap instead of paying big city lodging: 10/10.

That's all for my big September adventure!  I'll be back in a bit with the rest of the story on my during-the-week trip that took place in early October.