Our flight out of Detroit was set to leave at 8:15 pm, so we had plenty of time to explore on our way back. Unfortunately the day started gray and rainy, so any thoughts of looking at the Kirtland's Warblers one more time were out the window, and we headed south toward Detroit.
Since we had extra time, we decided to stop at a couple of touristy looking places that we came across. One was The Cheesehouse in Pinconning, Michigan.
We went in and took a quick look around finding that they not only sold dozens of varieties of cheese but also smoked fish, candy, and jellies. Next door looked like the cheese factory and we walked over hoping to get a glimpse of the operation, but no luck. We didn't buy anything since we were flying and had limited room.
From the Cheesehouse we headed just down the road to Northwoods Wholesale Outlet, which was a huge outdoor store with unbelievable amounts of fishing tackle, boat gear, outdoor clothing, food, outdoor furniture, etc. Kind of a Cabela's on steroids.
By this time the rain had stopped, so we made a quick birding stop at Nayanquing Point State Wildlife Area, a marshy area right on Lake Huron. We explored a few gravel roads and ended up at a wooden observation platform overlooking a beautiful marsh. It was certainly the type of area that we'd like to explore on a nice sunny morning, but not so much today. I did get a couple of images of the swallows.
We also spotted a Muskrat swimming quickly through the water.
We'd talked about visiting the Henry Ford Museum on our very first day, but decided instead to head to the cabin. Since we had time today, we drove to the Henry Ford Museum complex in Dearborn.
We arrived around 2:00, and were shocked to find a packed parking lot and dozens of school buses lined up along the curb in front of the museum. The end-of-school tours had caught us again! We did find a parking place and headed into the ticket area to find it nearly empty. It turned out that all of the school tours were leaving, as were most of the other visitors as the facility closes at 5:00 pm. We were told that we would not have time to see much so we opted for the last tour to the Rouge Factory where F-150's were assembled by the thousands every week.
Construction on "The Rouge" was begun in 1917 and completed in 1928. At the time it was the largest integrated factory in the world and had its own steel mill, lumber mill, and power plant. It was totally self-contained, requiring only basic raw materials. It has been remodeled and reconstructed a number of times, most recently in 2014 to accommodate the new aluminum bodied Ford trucks. The factory now has many environmentally friendly features like a 10 acre Living Roof, planted with plants and filtering rainwater that is collected for use in factory. They even have birds nesting on it!
The factory tour started out with a video about the history of the factory, and then a second very high-tech presentation about the new Ford F-150, including 3-D projections of incredibly detailed images onto a "blank" truck body. Very Hollywood!
We then entered a series of elevated walkways looking down onto the production floor, where unfortunately pictures were prohibited!! Every F-150 built is now a custom truck, so each truck on the line was a different color, with different options. The delivery of the correct components, wiring harnesses, computers, engines, etc. was amazing. Every truck that we saw being produced was a crew-cab (four full doors) short-bed truck so they must be very popular. They complete a truck every 57 seconds, and work two, 10-hour shifts each day. They have a second F-150 plant outside of Kansas City, Missouri.
The tour finished and we got back to our car around 5:00 pm and headed to the airport. We turned in our rental, went through security and arrived at our gate at 6:00 pm, which we felt was reasonable for our 8:15 flight. Until they moved it to 9:00, then 9:45, and finally 10:30. We landed in San Antonio a bit after midnight, headed to the La Quinta where we'd parked the car, and checked in for a good nights sleep.
Next time: The "bet", final thoughts, and souvenirs
That is a whole lot of F150s! That sounds like it would have been a really interesting tour/museum.
ReplyDeleteWe couldn't buy many things on our trip either because of those suitcase pounds!
It was a great factory tour. It was self-guided so we could watch each station as long as we wanted as long as we were back on the bus at 4:30. There were only 6 other people there.
DeleteI’m glad I collect magnets – there’s always room for a few!