May 29, 2019-Great Lakes Day 11

(click here for today's pictures)


Everyone was sleeping peacefully at 2 this morning when I got up to go to the bathroom. That is they were sleeping peacefully UNTIL I got up to go to the bathroom. I turned to go into the bathroom and wasn’t quite at the bathroom door.  I walked right into the refrigerator which was fine. What was not fine was that when I did this, I knocked over all of our water bottles. It made a huge crash and people were moaning and sitting up all over the room.

Once I finally got back into bed, everyone did go back to sleep and we rested well until time to wake up. We had our breakfast here-Robby always says that hotel breakfast could be a little bit better. However, he never knows exactly what else he is wanting. I did try a different kind of bagel today so I did branch out from my normal hotel breakfast routine.

We arrived at Greenfield Village about 15 minutes before opening. We picked up our ride tickets and waited on the Heltz. While we waited, we saw group after group of school kids. We later heard that there were 4,000 field trippers at the Village today. I certainly believe that number, but it never affected us at all.

The day was supposed to be rainy all day but as we waited on the Heltz, the drizzle slowed and soon it had stopped. The day turned out to be absolutely gorgeous-weather wise and everything else wise as well.

My heart pitter pattered as we walked into the Village. We walked right on to the Model Ts and seemed to be the first group in line to ride them. After our ride around the village, we then headed towards the Porches and Parlors district of the Village.

The first highlight was watching Wilbur, Orville and Katherine Wright do a 15 minutes presentation. From there, it was on to see Elijah McCoy talk about his life-bet you haven’t heard of him. I do think that he was one of my favorite parts of the day. The old gentleman actor was so good-the kids were wide eyed through the entire thing.

We then explored some more houses including the plantation and windmill. At the plantation, an actress there was telling a story about a rabbit and wolf. Then she started singing old slave songs. Afterwards, she had some of the kids line up with her like they were escaping slavery. Whitman jumped up to help and stood there listening intently to everything that she said to do. Then as we went through the windmill, the workers were sitting down to eat their lunch that they had prepared in the fireplace. So, so neat.

Next up was a ride around the village on the old steam train. It is pretty amazing that all of the things at the museum still work despite being so very old. After the train, we walked through some more houses and ended up at the Taste of History cafe.

Robby ordered some mac and cheese along with chicken pot pie which was served in a baked potato. We devoured that-it was just a snack. We had already eaten a few packs of crackers and were about to head back to the car for our lunch.

We were headed to hear Huck Finn talk but missed him. However, we did walk past the round house to see when we would be able to push the turntable later in the day. It wasn’t too far to our car so we sat on the sidewalk and had our lunches-today we opened up the bean dip and cheese spread so it was a big day! It’s the little things!

Then we headed back inside the village after meeting back up with the Heltz. We went through more houses-my absolute favorite is the sharecroppers house. His walls are covered in newspaper and his ceiling is made of cardboard. The man there was so informative-actually all of the people today have been wonderful.

If you love history, Greenfield Village is the place to go. I was always a good student during school, but after one of trips years ago, Robby bought me a history for dummies type book. Seriously, I couldn’t keep anything straight. I am not that much better now, but since starting homeschooling, I have read more children’s history books and history textbooks out loud than I ever did in school. Now, I find all of this history stuff so fascinating. I am sure that the kids will eventually learn to appreciate it too. Hopefully all of our trips just wets their appetites to be lifelong learners.

Before we knew it, it was 3:40 and we had to dash to the train area and round house. The kids all had a turn pushing the incredibly heavy turntable. I think that will be a memory that Whitman will not soon forget.

It was already 4 by this time, so headed straight to the Model Ts for one last ride around the village. Then the kids headed off to play in the playground for the last 15 minutes that the park was open. It was again a spectacular day. Robby always leaves Greenfield Village trying to figure out a way to come back sooner rather than later.

From there, we had originally planned to head on the hotel room to eat our homemade pizzas or even hot dogs. However, Robby found the most popular restaurant in Dearborn and realized that we haven’t tried Detroit style pizza yet. So we stopped at Buddy’s Pizzas and since they had a huge group coming in, we opted for take out.

And since we had to wait on our take out, we thought that we might as well walk down the road to the shop called Cannolis and Pastries. We are still on vacation after all. Back in the hotel, we ate our pizza and lasagna in the breakfast area. Then we worked on our cannolis and cupcakes that we had bought at the pastry place.

The final big even of the night was laundry and swimming. Reagan opted to not swim tonight because she isn’t a huge fan of swimming, and she also knows that there will be lots of swimming coming up when we get home.

I’m going to post the blog a bit early tonight because in just a few minutes, the three Dennie’s that are left will be taking showers, and I will be folding laundry. We are getting a bit sad here because our vacation is all to quickly coming to an end.

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