Moving out of Michigan -- What I Will Miss

What I will miss about Novi 

A number of years ago, I attended the farewell dinner for a pastor who was leaving the area.  I had asked him, “What will you miss about your city?  And you can’t say ‘the people.’’  That’s too easy and too obvious.  It is for me, too.

So, what will I miss about living in Novi and in Michigan in general?

I will miss Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford.  We had a membership there for years, including the all-you-can-ride package.  So, in addition, I will miss the Model-T rides we took as often as we could.

I will miss going to Frankenmuth, walking through Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland, and having a large German meal at the Bavarian Inn.  Sauerbraten was my meal of choice, along with a mandatory side order of Bavarian red cabbage.  Those meals did not happen often, but they were always glorious!

Honorable mention on the German meal was Metzger’s in Ann Arbor.  Also very good.

I will miss going into downtown Detroit to enjoy some world-class architecture.  The Guardian Building and the Fisher Building are amazing.  I will miss the Detroit Institute of Arts.  I wish I could have gotten downtown more often to enjoy more of it.  We never did get to the restored train station or to the Book Tower.  We got to the Riverwalk a few times.  There were also many restaurants and pubs that would have been nice to get to, but time and money stood in the way.

I will miss attending concerts by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and productions at the Fisher and Fox Theaters. 

I will miss Mexican meals at Border Cantina (although, they closed a few months before we left).  I will miss Saturday morning breakfast at the Early Bird restaurant in Northville, only recently discovered by us.  I will miss Tim Hortons and Guernsey’s ice cream.

I will miss Meijer being only two miles down the road.  I will miss the dedication of the people at Firestone on Haggerty Road in Northville.  (When they know you by name when you walk in, is that bad or good?  At least they did not have my phone number memorized.)

I will miss the Michigan state parks.  I will miss Traverse City, Sleeping Bear Dunes, and the Mackinac Bridge.  I will miss Laura’s and my recent end-of-summer trips to Port Huron where we watched Great Lakes freighters float under the Blue Water Bridge.

Although I will miss many things about Michigan, I am looking forward to discovering many things to love about Lake City and Minnesota.  Of course, it will be the people that I will learn to love the most.  And that is easy and obvious to say.

Local Tourist -- Port Huron

This past week, the Local Tourist and the Mrs. took a trip to Port Huron for an overnight stay.  Perhaps Port Huron rests a little outside the "local" definition, but it was not much more than an hour away, so I contend it qualifies.

We enjoyed a nice meal at Vintage Tavern, opting for interior dining instead of the roof top experience.  According to their website, we would have had a nice view of the St. Clair River from there, but the first floor also seemed a little quieter.

We enjoyed a nice walk along the St. Clair River under the Blue Water Bridge.  We appreciated seeing a Great Lakes freighter float by, the Algoma Guardian.  Then we drove to the downtown area and walked a few blocks to enjoy the older buildings.  We spent a bit of time in an antiques store that just seemed to go on and on.  It is a bit unsettling to count the items I knew from childhood in an antique store.  Staff at a different antique store I had visited some years ago assured me that those are "collectibles," not old enough to be antiques.

Finally, before the return trip home, we enjoyed some fish at the Black and Blue Brewery on the Black River.

Local Tourist -- Port Huron

Port Huron kind of breaks the bounds of "local", but the Local Tourist needed to get out of town for mental health purposes.  So, Laura, Peter, and I went to Port Huron on Saturday.  First we walked around the vacant campground at Lakeport State Park and walked along the shore of Port Huron.

After Peter skipped some rocks, we moved on to the city of Port Huron and walked around the Blue Water Bridge area.  We saw the monument to young Thomas Edison who lived in the area for a while and sold newspapers and candy on the railroad from Port Huron to Detroit.  As a bonus, we also got to see a Great Lakes Freighter pass from the St. Clair River northbound into Lake Huron.

A shout-out goes to Meijer and Wal-Mart for giving people a place to use the bathroom; and a plea goes out to the state of Michigan to open up the state parks.

Here are some photos from the day.