Saturday, July 25, 2009

Day 33: Detroit

We woke up in Detroit on a beautiful, clear day. Aunt Yvonne had gone to work, so Uncle John was going to entertain us. He drove us to nearby Dearborn to Greenfield Village, which is part of the Henry Ford Museum complex (jauntily called "The Henry Ford" in all of the literature).


Greenfield Village is an 80-acre complex of buildings, cars, machinery, and exhibits that Henry Ford intended as museum of history. He had lots of buildings moved there to be preserved on site, like Daniel Webster’s house and Thomas Edison’s laboratory from Menlo Park. It’s very cool. Dave and I went there early on in our “courtship.”


When we arrived at the ticketing window, we realized that it’s super expensive to visit ($22 each), so we opted for something we had NOT done before: tour the Ford Rouge Factory. The Rouge is a fully-operational Ford factory on the Rouge River that currently produces F-150s. Apparently, the building was begun in 1917 and was fully operational by 1928. Ford wanted the Rouge factory to encompass the complete production process from raw materials to completed product. The Rouge has its own docks on the Rouge River where it receives raw materials like steel and iron. Then it makes the parts for the vehicle on site and assembles them on the line, rolling out one truck each minute.

Unfortunately, we were not permitted to take pictures during the factory tour. This seems reasonable because I am in someone’s workplace after all. I would freak out if people were taking pictures of me all day while I was teaching. You’ll have to just trust my description of the factory.

There is a second-story overlook around the inside of about half the factory. We were able to watch workers put the doors together, see the giant robots put the windshield on each truck, watch the cabs of the trucks assembled to the beds, and see the doors being put on. It was super cool. Then we saw them being inspected to drive off to the parking lot. We were not able to see any of the engine assembly or installation, which sort of sucked, but it was still super cool.

Part of the tour was to the top floor of the building overlooking the entire Rouge plant facility. The Rouge’s latest feature is its sustainability and environmental friendliness. This place is all about some LEED certification. They’ve got a “green” roof on one of the factory buildings. It contains something like a bajillion different sedum plants that keep the building warm in the winter and cool in the summer.


There are also lots of solar panels.


We also heard about the paint plant in which they gather the noxious fumes from the paint and use them to somehow make energy. I didn’t understand what kind of Harry Potter magic that was. Of course, they collect all of their rainwater for use in the plant. It was very interesting.

When we were finished with that, we headed back to the Greenfield Village ticket building and roamed around to all of the places we could go into without paying. We found a display of awesome old lunch boxes.



As well, we saw a display previewing exhibits. This one was my favorite little bit.


We had a little snack at the snack bar and then called Uncle John to come back and pick us up.

When we got home, Aunt Yvonne had prepped a ton of food for dinner and had invited folks over for dinner to visit with us. Since we pretty much sprung our visit on her at the last minute, not many of her 9 kids and 17 grandkids were available to come over. Most of the fam was off camping in the Upper Peninsula (UP), but my cousin Veronica’s husband Kevin came over with two of their three adorable kids, the third having gone camping in the UP. Poor little Liam, age 5, was in a soft leg cast because, as he told me, he’d bruised his growth plate. What the hell? Totally adorable. He was shipped around in my Grandma’s wheelchair, too. Tiny child sitting in a huge adult wheelchair is, for the record, totally precious.
Cousin Joe came over after dinner as did Marianne and her two daughters, who are really growing up. They were very charming as well.

While we were there that evening, a tanker truck exploded under a highway overpass at Interstate 75 and 9 Mile. It was quite an ordeal. Apparently, it was a half mile from Marianne’s house, so she was understandably distressed. Word on the street is that the highway is going to be closed there for months to rebuild the overpass, which collapsed.

Somehow, because I’m a total jackass, I made it to bed without having taken a single picture of any of my relatives. What the hell, Kerry? I’ve taken between 100 and 300 pictures a day for a month and I can’t remember to get pictures of my family. Sucks. Well, we had a very good time regardless. You’ll just have to trust me.

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