Holy Toledo: Recap

When Kelli and I heard from our friend Carolyn that she was moving up to Michigan to live in July, we immediately started scheming to go up and visit. Well, we didn't make it up there until the first week of November. We drove up to the Pittsburgh area on Thursday night, stayed literally 500 feet from I-76 (noisy ol' road), and drove up to Cleveland the next day.
As we got to the Cleveland Suburbs, we ended up in the express lane, and by the time we realized what we did, the next exit was Kirtland. Kirtland Ohio wasn't even on our radar, but we decided we might as well stop since we had to get off that exit anyway. We found the Kirtland Temple and did the Community of Christ tour. The tour guide did an amazing job and was very knowledgeable about the history of that grand old building. We also ate at a great restaurant and had pierogies and paprikash. Good meal.
As we both were planning to go to the Rock and Roll Museum we headed on down the road. We made it to the Rock and Roll Museum in Cleveland two or three hours before it closed and stayed until closing. The building takes advantage of natural lighting and is pretty good sized. We spent most of our time on the ground floor. As you walk into the museum, the first picture is an Annie Liebowitz of Chuck Berry. On the other side was a Beach Boys exhibit, including film of Brian Wilson performing with the Boys. There was costumes, a great music influences section, early drawings by Lennon, exhibits of the music scene in various cities, Janis Joplin's Porsche and I could go on. We then went up and watched the Hall of Fame inductees video and spent a couple of minutes in an exhibit on the early years of Rock and then it was closing time. After a quick tour of the Gift show we were on the road.
We drove through Toledo and made it to Detroit a little after nine where Carolyn was waiting for us. We talked for a bit and then went to bed.
The next morning we got up, Carolyn made fabulous cinnamon rolls and we decided to go into Detroit since Carolyn hadn't been yet. We first went to Detroit's Eastern Market, which frankly is incomparable to DC's. It was extensive, the produce was cheap and we had a great time. We stopped in a few shops, bought a few things and then ate at one of the many Coney Restaurants that populate Detroit.
After lunch we headed over to the Motown Museum after a bit of a detour in one of Detroit's "finer" neighborhoods. And by neighborhoods I mean, extensive abandoned warehouses. We arrived at the Motown Museum which is actually two houses linked together. We took a tour of the buildings and were awed by the history. We spent a few minutes in the original recording studio and well, wow.
After that we went to Downtown Detroit, saw where the Fox theater was, gawked at the baseball field and then went down to the riverfront. We gazed over at "Canada," and wished we had our passports since Carolyn had never been. We spent some time at the Underground Railroad Memorial and then headed back to Carolyn's. We ordered pizza and then watched Rocky Balboa(Carolyn loves Rocky). I only watched about 30 minutes before I crashed.
The next morning we got up, hugged and thanked Carolyn and headed out. We stopped at Lake Erie, bought a ton of cheese and sandwiches at the "Cheese house," somewhere in Ohio and drove the rest of the way back to DC arriving home about 7:00. Anyway, great trip and thanks Carolyn!