Leg 3 Epilogue: Detroit

We had another day off today in Detroit.

Downtown Detroit is kinda awesome. Lots of great architecture. I think this was a silver lining to Detroit's decline between the 60s and 00s -- they still have lots of handsome large masonry buildings from before WW2 that have not been replaced by larger steel-and-glass buildings.

Streets are very wide in Michigan cities, as compared with home. That's really bad in places like Lansing, where you've got 4-to-5-lane roads with 1-to-2-story buildings on them. Even if the buildings/businesses are fun/cool/interesting, the dominant feature is always the road. However, here in (Downtown) Detroit, the buildings are tall enough, and the sidewalks are wide enough, that the road does not dominate your field of vision, and the experience of walking around is much much nicer.

So, we spent most of our time here just kinda wandering around and gawking. They have a downtown elevated monorail here. It's derided as a "gadgetbahn", because it's pretty terrible at being public transportation. But, it is pretty good for giving dramatic views of the city!

We also went to a museum at the site of Ford's Paquette St. Factory. This was Ford's first building, and it's where the very first Model T cars were built. The building was surprisingly small! In this building, they assembled each car in its own space. Eventually, they pioneered the moving assembly line instead, and at that point, they moved into a newer/bigger facility. The factory then made Studebakers for a few decades, but eventually was abandoned. It was purchased and restored about 20 years ago.

Across the street is an old Fisher factory (if you're my age, you'll remember the "Body By Fisher" logos on door sills of old GM cars). That's also been abandoned for decades, but it looks like there is some construction happening there. Further down the road is the old Packard plant, which also is abandoned and derelict.

We also spent a significant portion of the day today doing recon and strategizing about how in the world we are going to get our bikes over the border tomorrow. I'll write more about this tomorrow if/when we actually make it across into Canada. Wish us luck!