West Baden Springs Hotel

Posted on January 9, 2020 by admin

Tibetan-style structures and T.C. Steele’s property and all the other places we saw in southern Indiana near the end of December were worth seeing, but none were the main reason we went down that way.

That would be the West Baden Springs Hotel, one of the grand old hotels of the nation, revived in our time to an astonishing degree. Magnificent as the Hotel del Coronado or the Waldorf-Astoria, historic as the Fordyce at Hot Springs National Park or the Boca Raton Resort & Club.

We drove south from Bloomington in intermittent rain on the morning of December 29 to the town of West Baden, in Orange County, Indiana, an otherwise rural place with a county population of a shade less than 20,000. The hotel was impossible to miss driving into town. Even at some distance, it cuts an impressive figure.

More so closer in.

There’s been a hotel on the site since 1855, at first called the Mile Lick Inn. Why in this obscure part of Indiana? The waters, of course. Indians knew about the springs and so did Frenchmen, who lent their national name to the nearby French Lick Springs Hotel, about a mile from the West Baden Springs Hotel.

Eventually a branding impulse kicked in, and Mile Lick became West Baden Springs, to capture some of the Victorian cachet of Baden-Baden in Germany, where the Euro-elite took the waters. I learned pretty quickly, by the way, that the Hoosier way to say the name is West BAY-den, not BAA-den.

The original West Baden Springs burned down just after the turn of the 20th century. The owner, Lee W. Sinclair, wanted something even grander replace it — something to best the rival French Lick Springs Hotel — and so he built the current hotel.

“Sinclair… envisioned a circular building topped with the world’s largest dome, decorated like the grandest spas of Europe,” notes the hotel web site. “Architect Harrison Albright of West Virginia [who designed the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, too] accepted Sinclair’s commission and agreed to complete the project within a year. The new hotel, complete with a 200-foot diameter atrium and fireplace that burned 14-foot logs, opened for business in June of 1902.”

Later, Sinclair’s daughter and son-in-law redesigned the hotel a new level of opulence in the ’20s that characterized West Baden Springs Hotel until the Depression crushed its business model. The rest of the 20th century was unkind to the property, especially the last years of the century.

“In January 1991, a buildup of ice and water on the roof and in drainpipes caused the collapse of a portion of the exterior wall,” the web site says. “In 1992, Indiana Landmarks spent $140,000 to stabilize the hotel, matching a $70,000 contribution from an anonymous donor. In May 1994 the hotel was sold to Minnesota Investment Partners (MIP) for $500,000. Grand Casinos Inc., an investor in the purchase, optioned the hotel from MIP. The Cook Group Inc., a global medical device manufacturing company headquartered nearby in Bloomington, stepped in to preserve both the French Lick and West Baden Springs Hotels.”

That is to say, the Cook family — medical-device billionaires — took an interest in the place. Eventually they oversaw the renovation of West Baden Springs, as well as French Lick Springs, at great expense. But not without what I imagine must be a healthy return, now that a major new Cook-owned casino (next to French Lick Springs) is open for business. All of the properties (West Baden Springs, French Lick Springs and the new casino) are part of the French Lick Resort Casino, an operation licensed by the state of Indiana in 2006.

I’ve read variously that the West Baden Springs Hotel dome was the nation’s largest freestanding structure of its kind until the completion of the Charlotte Coliseum in 1955 or the Astrodome in 1965. Whatever the case, the thing to do in our time is wander into the hotel atrium, stand under the dome, and be amazed. Ordinary photos can’t convey the sweep of the place or the its grand scope, but never mind.

Other parts of the hotel have their own flourishes, such as the stained-glass windows near the front entrance, added by Jesuits when they owned the property in the mid-century. Quite a story.

We rode a trolley over to French Lick Springs for a look. Posh, certainly, and also a historic hotel — that’s where Pluto Water used to come from, and walls are covered with glossy pics of famous guests — but it’s only worth seeing, not worth going to see, like West Baden Springs is.

The Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art

Posted on January 6, 2020 by admin

We didn’t go to St. Louis just after Christmas, much less time travel to St. Louis to see the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. But in a way, we did.

“Occupying two square miles on the western side of St. Louis, the 1904 World’s Fair was the largest in history, with 1,272 acres containing more than 1,500 buildings,” Serious Eats tells us.

“At the heart of the exposition were 11 monumental ‘palaces,’ each dedicated to a subject, such as Electricity, Fine Arts, Horticulture, or Machinery. Sixty-two countries and 42 American states had their own halls or buildings, where they displayed the highest achievements of their cultures and economies… They were designed not to endure for the ages but to captivate the crowds for a brief moment.”

With a few exceptions. The former Palace of Fine Arts is now the St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park, which we visited during one of our trips to St. Louis. The Connecticut Building at the fair is now the Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art in Lafayette, Indiana. That’s where we went during our end-of-December trip.
We arrived about 30 minutes before closing on December 27, but decided pay the admission and look around anyway. Glad we did. Time was short, but one of the volunteers gave us a tour. Spontaneously, since (I think) admission normally gets you a self-guided tour.

She took us from room to room, each well appointed, noting some of the museum’s highlights — paintings by Indiana artists, ceramics, bronzes, towering grandfather clocks, a wide array of other antique furniture, a model train that traversed between two rooms, and this time of the year, Christmas trees and wreaths and other elaborate seasonal decor. Especially prominent on the walls were works by T.C. Steele, Hoosier landscape painter of renown, with numerous other Indiana artists represented as well. Though it’s a fine house museum, the Haan’s specialty is art created in Indiana.

Our guide also told us the story of how the house ended up in Indiana after its stint at the 1904 World’s Fair. The tale began in Connecticut.

“The Charles and Lydia Sigourney mansion in Hartford provided the inspiration for the building,” writes the the Connecticut Historical Society’s Karen DePauw. “The Connecticut commissioners to the Exposition felt the house represented colonial ideas, as well as stood for cultural and social life in present-day Connecticut. Edward T. Hapgood was hired as the architect, and H. Wales Lines Co. served as builders.”

A wealthy fellow from Lafayette, one William Potter, visited the fair and liked the house so much he bought it. Or rather, his wife liked the house so much he bought it and had it rebuilt in Indiana for them to live in: three full floors, a basement, seven fireplaces, five-and-a-half bathrooms, a 26-light brass-and-crystal chandelier, and a double staircase leading to the second floor, among other posh features.

Closer to our time, the Haans, who made their money selling sewing kits to junior high schools, acquired the property in the 1980s as a residence. They’re also collectors of Indiana art, which accumulated over the decades — as things do in a house — and a few years ago they deeded the house to a nonprofit to display their collection.

Behind the house is more art: a sculpture garden sporting Indiana-created work. Such as “Venus Rising” by Tuck Langland of Granger.
“The Miner” by Peter Rujuwa.
Rujuwa, originally from Zimbabwe, now of Indianapolis, also did “The Guitarist.”
“Metal Menagerie” by Roy Patrick of Lafayette.
“Garden Art” by Kathleen Kitch of Lafayette.
Pretty soon we noticed something moving in the sculpture garden. A little cat.
He followed us around for a while, but then lost interest and spent time climbing trees behind the artwork.

Southern Indiana at the End of the 2010s

Posted on January 5, 2020 by admin

A new decade is underway, and don’t let nitpickers tell you otherwise. At midnight as 2020 began — the beginning of the 2020s — I stepped outside for a listen, as I do most years. Pop-pop-pop went the fireworks in the freezing air.

If you know where to look in southern Indiana, about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis, you’ll find yourself standing near a Tibetan stupa. I did that myself ahead of the New Year.
We wanted to take a trip between Christmas and New Year’s, but nowhere too far or expensive. In that case, weather is the main variable. A blizzard, or even heavy snow or subzero temps, would have kept us home. But post-Christmas forecasts called for mild temps until December 30 throughout our part of the Midwest.

So on December 27, we drove to southern Indiana by way of Lafayette and Indianapolis, stopping in the former but not the latter. We arrived in Lafayette just in time to visit the Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art, and take a look at the sculpture garden and nature walk behind it.

That evening we arrived in Bloomington, Indiana, where we spent the next three nights. Bloomington is home of the largest branch of Indiana University, one boasting nearly 50,000 students and the Kinsey Institute besides. But just after Christmas, the place is practically deserted. A ghost university.

On December 28, we spent much of the morning at the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center, which is out on the edge of Bloomington. We saw the stupas and the prayer wheels and flags and the Kumbum Chamtse Ling Monastery. We also happened to be there in time to see a fire puja ceremony.

We spent most of the afternoon that day in rural Brown County at the T.C. Steele State Historic Site, hilltop home and studio of the landscape painter of that name in the early 20th century. We also popped over to Nashville, Indiana, where we’d been in 2002. Instead of artwork, we bought lunch there this time.

The day was good for walking around outside — nearly 60 degrees F. and cloudy, but no rain. About as pleasant as you’re going to get in late December. The next day was nearly as warm, but rain fell on and off all day, sometimes heavily.

A good day for indoor sites. On the morning of the 29th, we headed south, deep into the rolling hills of southern Indiana, to visit the striking West Baden Springs Hotel, a grand hotel of the past revived only in recent years, along with its former rival and current sister property, the French Lick Springs Hotel, one-time home of Pluto Water.

After a lunch stop in Paoli, Indiana, we went to Marengo Cave, a limestone show cave under the small town of Marengo, and spent more than an hour among the stalagmites and -tites and flowstone. Near the cave’s entrance, a bonus site: a 19th-century Hoosier cemetery, whose weather-beaten stores were picturesquely wet with the most recent weather.

The 30th proved to be cold, though not quite cold enough for snow or ice. We drove home in the morning, stopping only for gas and rest stops. Strong winds blew. Sometimes strong enough to push the car slightly to the side. I white-knuckled the steering wheel a few times as a result.

The wind gusts also captured flags and pulled them straight. Here is Indiana’s flag at a rest stop. Better than those with a state seal slapped on: a golden torch and 19 stars, to symbolize Hoosier enlightenment and the state’s place as 19th to join the union.

Twelve Pictures ’19

Posted on December 19, 2019 by admin

I always take many more pictures than I post in any given year. Here are some from this year to close out the decade. Back to posting around January 5, 2020. That year sounds so far in the future, at least for those of us who vaguely remember Sealab 2020 — and yet here it is.

Near North Side Chicago, January 2019

San Antonio, February 2019

Downtown Chicago, March 2019

Elmhurst, Illinois, April 2019

New Orleans, May 2019

Arcola, Illinois, June 2019

Pittsburgh, July 2019

Oak Park, Illinois, August 2019

Midland, Michigan, September 2019

Charlottesville, Virginia, October 2019

Schaumburg, Illinois, November 2019

Millennium Park, Chicago, December 2019Good Christmas and New Year to all.

St. Lorenz Lutheran Church, Frankenmuth

Posted on September 15, 2019 by admin

For all its faux Bavarian tourist appeal, Frankenmuth, Michigan has an actual Bavarian history, beginning with St. Lorenz Lutheran Church, about a half a mile from crowded Main Street.

We were the only ones there for about half an hour around noon on Labor Day.
The church was founded at the same time as the town. “Pastor Wilhelm Loehe of Neuendettelsau, Bavaria, was inspired to establish a German Lutheran colony by Michigan circuit riders who requested aid in bringing the Gospel of Christ to Saginaw Valley Chippewa Indians,” the site’s historic plaque says, as reproduced here.

“Directed by Loehe in 1845, Pastor August Craemer and fourteen other immigrants began clearing forests in this area south to the Cass River. They built log houses and dedicated a log church on Christmas Day 1846. The second church, a frame structure, was erected in 1852 and enlarged in 1864, serving until the completion of the present church in 1880.”

A Cleveland architect named C.H. Griese designed the current Gothic Revival church. Traces of him are online, such as in the context of another Lutheran church.

We were glad to find out that the building was open. That’s not always the case, often for good reason. The interior’s handsome indeed.

Excellent stained glass as well, signed by Hollman City Glass of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Pastor Loehe makes an appearance in glass.
I suspect this depiction of him is unique in all the world.

C.F.W. Walther, first president of the Missouri Synod, is also in glass. He’s probably englassed in other Lutheran churches.
The settlers came to the Saginaw Valley, built their homes, farmed the land, attended St. Lorenz, and when the time came, were buried in its churchyard.

St Lorenz Lutheran Church Frankenmuth cemetery Those are almost all 19th-century stones, near the site of the first two church buildings, and across the street from the current church. A larger cemetery with newer stones is on the same side of the street as the current church.
The permanent residents are every bit as German as you’d expect: Bauer, Bicker, Fischer, Herzog, Hochthanner, Hubinger, Kern, Roth, Reinert, Weiss, usw. Loehe and Craemer aren’t among them, Find a Grave tells me. Loehe is in Bavaria and Craemer is in St. Louis.

Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland

Posted on September 12, 2019 by admin

Not far south of the activity on Main Street in Frankenmuth, which is also the two-lane highway Michigan 83, is Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland. We arrived early in the afternoon on Labor Day, just as rain started to pour.

The store actually styles itself Bronner’s CHRISTmas Wonderland, such as on this sign over one of the entrances.
No doubt the owners’ religious feelings are sincere — the Bronner family, since founder Wally Bronner died in 2008 — but my editorial instincts and experience kick in at this point, telling me not to style it that way. Allow every irregular brand-style or oddball marketing spelling and you’ll start seeing them everywhere, all the time. That would be an on-ramp to editorial perdition.

Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland asserts that it’s the world’s largest Christmas store, and I believe it. Over 50,000 items are for sale in a store of over 85,000 square feet — one and a half football fields, or about two acres — including Christmas ornaments, lights, Nativity scenes, Christmas trees, gifts, stockings, Santa paraphernalia, and other decor.

There are a lot of specialized ornaments, featuring animals, celebrities, entertainers, farm equipment, food and beverage, hobbies, hunting and fishing, music, miniatures, romantic themes, patriotism, professions, religious themes, Santas, snowmen, sports, various nationalities and much more. Something to look at everywhere you go in that store.

For nurses.
Cops.
For fans of assorted national parks.
Or turtles.
Wonder if the store stocks a gila monster ornament. If anywhere does, this place would.

If you want to be reminded of the Day of the Dead around Christmas.
Or if the King has to be part of your holiday.
I wasn’t expecting Jimi Hendrix, but there he was.

Naturally, various states and countries are represented as well.
Bronner's Christmas Wonderland That last one is the Japan-themed ornament section. The red balls in the middle feature a phonemic approximation of “Merry Christmas” in katakana.

Main Street, Frankenmuth, Michigan

Posted on September 11, 2019 by admin

One thing I didn’t expect while we strolled along Main Street in Frankenmuth, Michigan, on Labor Day — yet another walkable main street — was a life-sized bronze of a fudge maker. Yet there he is.
According to the plaque, it’s Gary F. McClellan (1940-2015), “entrepreneur, leader, friend, husband and father.” He must have had something to do with Zak & Mac’s Chocolate Haus, which is behind the statue. That’s one of a string of small stores along the street whose customers are the tourists who come to Frankenmuth, a farm town settled by Bavarians in the 19th century that eventually added a tourist component.
A successful component, I’d say. Lots of people had come to town on Labor Day.
I’d read a little about the settlement of the area by Bavarians, interestingly before 1848, as an Indian mission that never really panned out because most of the Indians were already gone by then. Even so, the doughty colonists stayed. Their descendants are probably pretty thick on the ground in this part of the state.

Modern visitors come to wander through the shops, many with that Bavarian look. That’s what we did.

Also they come to eat.
So did we. In fact we had Zehnder’s chicken, though we took a to-go family pack to a picnic table behind the restaurant: fried chicken, beans, macaroni, potato salad, rolls. Aside from a few interrupting bees, we enjoyed it.

Frankenmuth also sports such sights as a maypole fountain, a popular place for posing.
Later I read a little about Bavarian maypoles. The idea is similar to English maypoles, but not quite the same. Maybe that’s the real source of dispute between the UK and the EU — the regulation of maypoles. Just a thought.

In the various sources that I’ve consulted — skimmed — the early history of Frankenmuth gets some attention, such as in this short history of the place. But modern Frankenmuth, that is, its invention as a tourist town after World War II, gets short shrift. To my way of thinking, that’s as interesting as its history as a German colony in Michigan.

There are some hints here, however, in the Frankenmuth media kit, of all places. From the “significant dates,” you learn that Zehnder’s Restaurant, which is a sprawling place with a lot of dining rooms, got its start as the Exchange Hotel in 1856. Another 19th-century hotel, Fischer House, later became the Bavarian Inn, also with a large restaurant.

When did Frankenmuth start playing up its Bavarian-ness? Looks like the 1950s.
From the timeline: 1957: Rupprecht’s Sausage was the first building decorated in the “Bavarian” architecture. 1958/59: Zehnder family… redecorates the Fischer Hotel in Bavarian architectural style. 1960 & Current: More buildings adopt “Bavarian” architecture.

A Bavarian Festival started in 1963 but the town didn’t around to an Oktoberfest until 1990. In 2001, a Bavarian-themed mall opened south of the Cass River along Main Street.

Sounds like a few places — the chicken restaurants — were long-time draws. After all, metro Detroit and the once-prosperous Flint aren’t that far. But in the postwar age of auto tourism, the town’s merchants happened on a winning formula of more than just chicken, one that dovetailed with the town’s origin: faux Bavaria.

That might sound like criticism of Frankenmuth as “inauthentic,” a vague epithet if there ever was one, but I refuse to go down that road.

Of course the place isn’t really Bavarian. No one thinks that. Visitors respond to it as a pleasant place to be. People were out and about on a summer day, having an innocuous good time, and supporting businesses that exist here and nowhere else. You could call it an homage to Bavaria, but in any case it’s an authentic American town with a popular theme.

Main Street, Midland, Michigan

Posted on September 10, 2019 by admin

Midland, Michigan, seems like a prosperous town. That would probably be the impact of Dow Chemicals and related businesses — note that the city seal makes no bones about better living through chemistry — but in any case prosperity makes for a pleasant main street.

Main Street runs more-or-less parallel to the Tittabawasee River more than a block away. We arrived around lunchtime on September 1.

We had lunch outdoors at a Mexican restaurant on Main Street. The food was good and a few of the other patrons were dressed for some occasion or other.
I didn’t ask. We noticed during our Main Street stroll various golf-ball-based artworks.
Those are part of the Downtown Midland Summer Sculpture Series. As usual for such displays, the works will be around in the summer, then auctioned for charity come fall. Chicago’s Cows on Parade in 1999 kicked that sort of thing off in the U.S., with the idea borrowed from Europe.

According to Downtown Midland, the golf ball theme is because the inaugural Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational was held this summer in Midland by the LPGA.

A few more. This one’s mildly unsettling.
Candy, eh?
This counts as golf-ball based?
Looks to me like a cold-environment creature that floats in the upper atmosphere of Neptune. That’s something I would think of, anyway.

A few blocks to the northwest of the golf balls, but still on Main Street, is the Midland County Courthouse, unlike any other I’ve seen.
Not just a Tudor-style courthouse, a colorful one dating from the 1920s.
Bloodgood Tuttle of Cleveland, who did work in Shaker Heights, is credited with designing the building, and apparently there are murals inside.

I’ve been conditioned by illustrations and movies, of course, but I couldn’t shake the idea that if Faerieland needed a court to dispense Faerie justice, it would look like this.

Divers Michigan Gardens

Posted on September 5, 2019 by admin

Michigan State University, which we visited on Saturday, is almost as big as they come in academia, in enrollment and acreage. Tucked away on campus is the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden — and I mean that almost literally, since the garden occupies a five-acre, near-circular depression in the earth. You need to go down an outdoor staircase to reach it.

The garden is meticulously organized. I’ve never seen a botanical garden so thoroughly arrayed by categories important to botanists (and the rest of us, if you care about the difference between, say, edible plants and poisonous ones).

Long curving and straight beds separated by a fair amount of grass form the basis of the garden.

Each bed belongs to a category of plant. According to a sign posted in the garden, categories include perfume plants, fiber plants, dye plants, fixed oil plants, honey plants, flavoring plants, injurious plants, indigenous American plants, weeds, vegetables, grains and medicinal plants. There are also geographic categories: Southeast U.S. forest, European forest, northern Michigan, southern Michigan, and so on.

“This garden,” the sign says, “functions as an outdoor laboratory, a repository of plant genetics, a resource for research and teaching, and a place for the community to appreciate the beauty and biology of plants. There are over 2,500 plants in the labeled beds alone… established in 1873, this is one of the oldest continually operated gardens of its kind in the United States.”

The place wows with variety. I have to like a garden that includes weeds on purpose. Such as the weedy-looking Cardoon.
Among the medicinal plants, there’s belladonna, though I would have thought it went in the injurious category.
Injurious plants, according to the garden, include mechanically injurious (guess that would be by thorns and such), milk-tainting, those that inspire hay fever and contact dermatitis, cyanogenic and poisonous seed, among others.

One handsome plant I’d never heard of before — there are a lot of those in the world — was the Princess Tree (Paulownia tomentosa).
On Sunday, we visited two gardens, both in Midland. One was the compact but a-bloom Dahlia Hill, which sports about 3,000 dahlia plants arranged on eight stone terraces. According to the garden, there are over 300 varieties of dahlias there, with an example of each variety planted and labeled along gravel pathways.

A local artist and dahlia enthusiast, Charles Breed (d. 2018), founded the garden in 1992 and oversaw its terracing some years later to control erosion.

Dahlias are another example of I-had-no-idea-that. As in, that there are so many varieties. Who knew? Not me.
No Black Dahlias that I could see. Some wag of a horticulturist might have bred such.

We visited the big Dow Gardens separately, Yuriko and Ann first, then me, since ordinary dogs aren’t allowed in.
I spent about two hours there under overcast skies that always threatened rain but seldom even drizzled. That must have kept the crowds away. For minutes at a time, I was by myself on the large lawns and among the countless trees, passing by lush bushes and flower beds.

Water features figure prominently in the garden’s design.
All together there are 1,700 varieties of plant in the garden suitable for cultivation in central Michigan. Now at 110 acres, the garden started out as a private eight-acre garden of chemical mogul Herbert Dow, founder of Dow Chemical. Later generations of Dows enlarged the place and set up the foundation that runs it now.

Dow has a fine rose garden, too.
What do you do in a rose garden, whether you’ve been promised one or not? Stop and smell the roses, of course.

My own skills at gardening are meager, but I like a stroll through a well-executed garden. That’s no different than a lot of things. I can’t sing worth a damn, but I sure like listening to a good singer.

To Lake Huron and Back

Posted on September 3, 2019 by admin

On Saturday we left town remarkably early (for us) and drove across the Lower Peninsula of Michigan so that on Sunday morning, I could stick my feet in Lake Huron.Saginaw Bay in particular. Of course that wasn’t the entirety of the trip. But it was the inspiration. Sometime years ago, I realized that I’d never really gotten a look at Lake Huron. I’ve crossed the Mackinac Bridge a number of times, which offers a view of the lake to the east, but somehow that doesn’t count. I wanted to see Lake Huron from outside a car, moving at zero miles an hour, and hear the waves and smell the water and feel the sand and pebbles.

So Labor Day weekend was the time. We all went, including the dog. First stop on Saturday morning was at one of the Sweetwater’s Donut Mills in Kalamazoo because I hadn’t forgotten them.
Near Battle Creek, we stopped at a novel local spot: Historic Bridge Park. I’ve seen open-air museums devoted to houses and other buildings, but this is the only place I know that functions as an open-air museum featuring bridges.

Heading northeast, we arrived in Lansing in time to visit the Michigan State Capitol. Or so I thought. There are usually Saturday hours, but not on Labor Day weekend. Still, we had a good walk around the grounds and Washington Square to the east, along with an al fresco lunch of Cuban sandwiches.

Michigan State University is in East Lansing. After some wandering around the sprawling campus, we found the W.J. Beal Botanical Garden, the first of three gardens we visited.

We made it to Midland, Michigan, before dark and spent the next two nights there. On Sunday morning, we visited Bay City State Park on the lakeshore, walking on the beach and a path around a large lagoon. By lunchtime, we were back in Midland, eating al fresco again — the thing to do with a dog in tow.

Midland has a lot of large parks accessible from its small downtown, but that’s not the distinctive feature. That would be the Tridge, a three-way bridge across the confluence of the Chippewa and Tittabawassee rivers. Naturally we had to cross that.

Next we visited Midland’s Dahlia Hill, which is planted with thousands of dahlias and open to wander around. After that, Yuriko and Ann visited the much larger Dow Gardens, while I took a drive with the dog to Bay City. No dogs allowed at Dow Gardens.

During my driving look-see in Bay City, I noticed a Huron Circle Tour sign. Like Superior, that would be a drive.
Lake Huron Circle Tour sign Want. To. Do. It. But not now. While everyone else rested in the room early in the evening, I visited the expansive and exhausting Dow Gardens, along with the adjacent Whiting Forest. Open till 8:30 in the evening until Labor Day, fortunately.

On Labor Day we drove home, but not the most direct way. We passed through parts of Saginaw — parts beaten down by the contraction of U.S. manufacturing, it looked like — and then on to Michigan’s faux Bavarian tourist town, Frankenmuth.

Had a good time and a chicken lunch there, but the overstimulation of it all made the dog as nervous as I’ve ever seen her, so we headed home. Riding in the back seat seems to be as calming for her as parking herself on the couch at home.

As far as I can tell, she enjoyed the trip and the many new smells.

That last one almost instantly became a favorite picture of her.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Small Town USA