Detour into Michigan

June 5, 2012




One of the joys of this kind of travel is the ability to be flexible. When you don't have to depend on airline schedules and hotel reservations, you can change your plans at a momment's notice. If the weather report looks bad at your intended destination, don't go. If you find out about a place you didn't know about along the way, make a detour. The next place that we "have" to be is my nephew Carlos' graduation party on June 23rd in New Hampshire. That gives us 18 days to make it up as we go along. Neither of us had ever been to Michigan, so we decided to take a peek.

In addition to the AAA tour books, a wonderful source for ideas for things to do in the individual states are the highway welcome centers. When we crossed the border into Michigan we stopped at the welcome center and talked to a very helpful ambassador for the state of Michigan. He loaded us up with brochures for wineries, craft breweries, golf courses, historical sites, natural wonders, and campgounds.





Our first stop was the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids. The museum was directly off the highway in the middle of downtown Grand Rapids. Normally we leave the Liberty in a campground and drive the Hyundai to our daily destinations, but we were driving right by the museum in late morning, so it made sense to stop. We called first to confirm that they had a parking lot that would accomodate us. The Liberty with the Hyundai in tow just fit within two back to back spaces on their surface lot. SiSi held down the fort while we toured the museum.

In 1976, during the summer between my junior and senior years at George Washington, I had a job working for the Reagan campaign for the Republican nomination. Reagan was challenging the incumbent President, Ford, and it was a hard fought race that went all the way to the convention. Eventually, Ford got the nomination. All the Reagan campaign workers were offered jobs with the Ford campaign, but I chose, instead, to take a semester off from college and work for the campaign for the Libertarian Party candidate, Roger McBride. Between the bicentennial celebration that year and the two campaigns, it was a wonderful time to be in Washington.

To review the history, Richard Nixon and his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, had won by a landslide in the 1972 election against George McGovern. This was the election with the watergate break-in, and the country was embroiled in that scandal, not to mention opposition to the war in Vietnam. To make matters worse, Agnew was being investigated for taking kickbacks from contractors during the time he was governor of Maryland. When it became clear that he would be indicted, Agnew resigned. For the first time in history, Nixon chose Ford as a replacement VP, and he was confirmed by the House of Representatives. Ford was chosen because of his reputation for honesty and integrity, which was sorely needed between the Agnew indictment and the watergate scandal.

Shorty after Ford became VP, the watergate scandal came to a head, and Nixon was going to be impeached. Instead, he resigned, leaving the country with its first president who had not been elected to either the preidency or the vice-presidency. Several months later, before Nixon had been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, Ford pardoned Nixon, sparking speculation that there had been a deal: Nixon would resign, making Ford president if he agreed to pardon Nixon.

Ford always denied any sort of deal and said the he had decided to pardon Nixon so that the country could get on with its real problems: out if control inflation, high unemployment, and ending the war. But his popularity plummeted after the pardon, and he was defeated by Jimmy Carter in the next election.

Replica of Ford's Oval Office

The guy at the welcome center recommended that we visit the Traverse City area in NW Michigan. We landed at a nice RV park on the Leelanau peninsula. The photo below is taken from our campsite which is directly on Lake Leelanau. It's pricey, but NO TRAINS!