Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Three Days....

Until the Belle Isle Geocaching Event! I've been looking forward to it all year!

Monday, March 25, 2013

Horsing Around

Saturday was stunning out, and me & the family went for a car ride! We decided to take an auto tour of Detroit architecture and the legacy of Detroit newspaper baron, James Scripps.

All that great architecture and all I have are pictures of Steve and Corey giving me grief!

 

 

Monday, March 11, 2013

Rufus At The Zoo

So that Rufus can appreciate the diverse culture of Detroit, I took him to the zoo, too!










Because it was so cold outside, we spent most of our time inside the various animal houses.

Rufus will be moving along soon, but I think he enjoyed the local hospitality!




Sunday, March 10, 2013

Rufus Came To Detroit

A few weeks ago, I received an email from a cacher in Germany who wanted to send a "trackable" for me to release.  According to Groundspeak:
Simply put, a Travel Bug is a trackable tag that you attach to an item. This allows you to track your item on Geocaching.com. The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online.
About a week later, Rufus arrived!



Wanting to show my little German friend the beauties of the area, my sister and I took him on a grand tour of Detroit (yes, this is how I celebrated my birthday!)

Our first stop was the Belle Isle Aquarium:





Windsor skyline - Ambassador Bridge - Detroit skyline


Detroit Train Station


Municipal Building

Spirit of Detroit


Joe Louis Fist


The RenCen and the statue of Cadillac


The Detroit Skyline


Underground Railroad Statue (Windsor in the background)


Ambassador Bridge and the Boblo Boat


The Ren Cen - Belle Isle - Detroit River



Windsor, Ontario Canada


Lorna photobombed my pic. Run, Rufus, run!


Eastern Market


The OTHER "Big 3" in Detroit: Red Wings (Hockeytown Cafe), Detroit Tigers (Comerica Park), and Detroit Lions (Ford field).


Fox Theater


We also enjoyed lunch at the Green Dot Stables (amazing!), saw the Potted Potter (at City Theater) and then dinner at Roman Village Cafe (in Dearborn).  My sister spoiled me and was an amazing part of this great adventure.

And Rufus?  Took him to the Detroit Zoo the next day.

Happy Spring!

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Hidden Gem in Michigan

For anyone still wondering, I finally found a car this week!  Finally!  Wheels!  I can get around! I owe a great deal of my car success to my friend, renting a car so we can car shop at our own pace.  So, what do you do when you have a rental car with unlimited miles?  EXPLORE!

During one particularly stressful night, Steve insisted we take a break and go for dinner. For those of you familiar with Michigan, you might appreciate the adventure of going to dinner in Fenton from Ferndale via Brighton!  I'm sure there was a more direct route but the road under the wheels had the calming effect!

So, as we were cruising along, we needed to grab my daily geocache.  Scrolling through the listings on my phone, I saw something called the Sunken Cache with 27 favorite points.  Hmmmm..... wonder what this could be?

We pulled in near dusk, to discover that our geocache was along the border of an amazing little cemetery.  This is what greeted us:


Isn't she amazing?  There were just stunning headstones and statues in the Tyrone Memorial Garden.


And a different take on the crucifix:



As we were walking along the hills ridge, we could see more stones in the little valley.  More headstones?  Nope, we had stumbled upon the Tyrone Sunken Garden.  But first, to get there, you must cross the bridge....



And walk under the arch....



From the clippings I found later, Charles Smith was an explorer who travelled the globe four times.  To remember this travels, he created a granite garden in Tyrone, Michigan.




Today, the garden in maintained by volunteers but almost forgotten.  It was quite the amazing feeling walking around the "garden" in the middle of winter and right at dusk.







Now that we have wheels, we're looking forward to exploring the garden again this spring. 

Oh, and dinner?  We did make it to the Fenton Hotel.  It's haunted.