On Tuesday, June 30, we headed north up through western Ohio headed to Detroit. This was the stop that I was a little nervous about considering the reputation that Detroit has. I was not exactly looking forward to dealing with the city. We booked a room in Dearborn, MI which is just outside of Detroit. After finding our hotel and checking in, we were on our way to Comerica Park to see the Tigers host the Pittsburgh Pirates. We decided ahead of time to park as close to the stadium as we could so we wouldn't have a long walk back to the car after a night game. And after driving through Detroit in the daytime, I sure didn't want to walk in parts of downtown.
We arrived at the stadium and parked right next to Ford Field which is where the Detroit Lions play and is right beside Comerica Park. It was a 2 minute walk to the stadium so I was ok. When we got inside, "oh my!". What a beautiful ballpark. It was a very nice stadium, full of rich Detroit Tiger history. After all the negative things I had heard about Detroit, I was surprised to see such a nice facility. The boys were excited because we would get to see Miguel Cabrera, Yoenis Cespedis, and Justin Verlander pitching for the Tigers. They were playing the Pirates who featured some former Hickory Crawdad players like Andrew McCutcheon and Neil Walker. The game turned out to be very entertaining with J.D. Martinez hitting a home run to tie the game and send it to extra innings. Now extra innings is usually pretty exciting for me because it means free baseball, but after a long day of driving and stressing out about being in Detroit, my family was very tired so we only made it through the 10 inning before we decided to leave. We did listen to some of it on the radio as we were leaving but we were already back at the hotel and in the bed before the game ended. It turned out that the game went fourteen innings with the Pirates winning.
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| Trey and Tate waiting outside the stadium to go in. |
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| A panoramic view of the stadium. |
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At the game. Notice the boys sporting their new Tiger Tees.
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The next day was going to be another one of my field trips. While doing research about Detroit, I read a lot about the Henry Ford Museum and the many other attractions associated with it. As an American History teacher and a parent, I just had to take the family to see it.
Henry Ford was also a big fan of American History and went to great lengths to try to preserve it. So he created Greenfield Village, which is an attraction where visitors feel like they have gone back in time to see actual historic sights and home places.
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The boys at the Liberty Craftworks section of Greenfield Village.
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For example, we saw a working farm where Harvey Firestone, the great tire king, grew up. We also saw working craft shops where potters, weavers, glass blowers were doing thing that were done over 200 years ago. We saw the home places of Noah Webster, George Washington Carver, and the Wright Brothers. There was a one room schoolhouse where William McGuffey actually taught using his famous McGuffey Reader.
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Tate just inside the one room school of William McGuffey.
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Tate conducting class!
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There were several exhibits showcasing the workshops of Thomas Edison. And of course we saw an exhibit that showcased Henry Ford's workshop where he created his famous automobiles. The highlight for all of us was to actually take a ride in a Model T.
