For our second day in Detroit I got a pretty late start, but managed to leave enough time to check out Greenfield Village before it closed. After a short drive across the city I arrived at the Henry Ford Museum complex where I entered the village. It's meant to be a replica of a turn of the century town and houses historically significant buildings that were literally moved from their original locations to be made available for viewing in the "living museum." Model T's sputtered around the narrow streets alongside horse-drawn carriages as villagers dressed in period clothing passed me on the sidewalk.
I walked by a working farm where men were baling hay on my way through the streets before I arrived at Orville and Wilbur Wright's cycle shop. More striking than the diminutive size of the shop was how little bike parts have changed in nearly a century. All of the parts in the display cases and lining the walls looked like they could just have easily replaced something on my bike right now. It was a stark contrast to how much aircraft have changed from the replica of the Wright brothers' first plane design that sat in the back room of the shop.
Next was the part of the village that I was most excited about. I'm more of a Tesla fan, so I didn't quite agree with the village staff's constant assertions that Edison was the greatest electrical engineer of his time, but nonetheless he was an incredible inventor and I was looking forward to seeing his workspace. In that respect, Greenfield Village didn't disappoint, holding the entire Menlo Park complex where Edison did much of his most important work. With hundreds of jars and contraptions filling shelves that lined every inch of wall space and heavy machinery in every corner, all run by belts driven from a colossal steam engine in the back room, the work space looked like something a mad scientist would envy. Just being in the space was a cool experience, but also revealed the problem with the premise of the village. In Edison's workshop I felt a kind of fragile closeness to the history, like a Magic Eye where if you squint and concentrate hard enough an image begins to emerge, but the smallest things like an overweight tourist creaking the floorboards or the overenthusiastic grinning of the village staff broke the illusion in an instant. I suppose that's something inherent in any museum, but the distractions became especially apparent at Greenfield Village. In any case, it was definitely a worthwhile experience, although for the price I think I may have enjoyed the Henry Ford museum more. I'll just have to check that out on my next visit to Detroit.
When I returned to the house I sat around outside with my grandparents for a while as we waited for Geries to return from his adventures. Once he got back, we headed out for some dinner at Outback before retiring for the night to get some sleep before heading out for our long drive the next day. We got up pretty early and set out on our way to Boston.
The drive to Boston was pretty uneventful aside from some ridiculous tolls along the way through Ohio and New York, and a bit of uncertainty as to where we were staying at our destination. We hadn't gotten any responses from couchsurfing by the time we were on the road, and it didn't seem like there were any forthcoming. Thankfully Robyn, a friend we met in San Francisco while we were all couchsurfing with Lance, hooked us up with a friend of a friend who could let us stay with her in Boston. All of this got arranged while we were on the road, and we ended up being all set by the time we got in town. It was late when we arrived, so after a brief introduction we took out spots on the couches and promptly fell asleep.
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