The Henry Ford Rouge Tour With Distinguished Visitors

I traveled once again to the Henry Ford Museum yesterday.

MrGarabaldi and his heir apparent had come to town to visit the Museum.

They arrived late Friday night so we met up at the museum Saturday morning at 9 when it opened.

First thing we did was the Rouge Factory Tour. The tour takes you to where they are currently building F-150 trucks.

The historic and storied Rouge Factory Complex is huge.

 This picture taken from the observation deck of the F-150 assembly building gives you an idea of the size of the complex - every building you see in this picture is a part of it.

They've made the site more green, with living roofs on some buildings and transforming what were slag-heaps into green-spaces.

We then entered the building.  The tour begins with you traveling to two different theaters.  The first gives a short film with the history of the Factory and Henry Ford. The second is an impressive show complete with lights, lasers, and robots,  that demonstrates how an F-150 is made.  Both were impressively well-done and set the tone of the tour very nicely.

You then head up to the observation deck, and we chatted with a knowledgeable and friendly docent who was a retired Ford employee, who gave a really informative chat as we  saw what was there.

Each F-150 gets driven on a test track after assembly:

Every 58 seconds while the factory is working, a new F-150 is born.

We then walked a catwalk above the factory floor and got to see the trucks being assembled, as they were working on Saturday.  No pictures or cell phone usage was permitted.  Watching the trucks being built on the assembly line was very impressive.  MrGarabaldi, with a background in automotive, provided some very knowledgeable color commentary about the process that made it even more interesting. The catwalk tour was 1/3 of a mile long and was only a portion of a side of the factory, which gives you an idea of how big the building is. Real big is an understatement. We got to see the line shut down for the lunch break, which was interesting to see everything go from humming alone to a dead stop in an instant.

After the catwalk, we got to examine a Ford F-150 cutaway that was neat to poke around.

MrGarabaldi's heir left the tour wanting to buy an F-150, and I understand that completely.

After the tour, we left the museum grounds briefly and I took them to a coney restaurant so they could get some local flavor.  The Coney Dogs were pronounced good and the Gyros received MrGarabaldis' stamp of approval.

We then returned to the museum and toured it until it closed. Lots to see.

From Ford's Quadracylce, the first commercial vehicle he made:

 

To the first Mustang and Taurus-

We saw the sweep of automotive history.

Not neglecting aviation, we also saw the Ford Tri-Motor and many other flying machines in the museum.

To complete the Planes, Trains, and Automobiles set, we of course, had to checkout the railroad section.

Once the museum closed, we exited and then headed off to Buddy's Pizza so the intrepid travelers could experience some Detroit Pizza, which was excellent as always at Buddy's.

It was a great short trip and great to see MrGarabaldi and his heir in person again.

The Father's Day Weekend Cousins Visit

My uncle, cousin, and my cousin's kids came to town on their return road trip to Chicago on their way back to Toronto.

They've been doing a Guy Baseball Trip yearly, except during the Covid shutdown and this year it was to see the Cubs play at home. Cubs won which was nice especially as it was the first time they had the kids in tow.

They also got some Chicago pizza.

So I arranged to take them to The Henry Ford Museum and then to get some authentic Detroit pizza so they could compare and contrast.

The Henry Ford is a great place to take kids.

After all, what kid doesn't love huge trains?

And what kid doesn't love the Wienermobile?

Yes, yes they do.  And it will always be the Wienermobile not the Frankmobile, just sayin'.

They then also got to build cars and race them after admiring real race cars.

And make paper airplanes and test them too.

It turns out that the plans for making a paper airplane are (unintentionally) dual usage and can also turn into paper hats when not being flight tested.

We spent hours at the museum and had a great time.  Great to see them all, as it's been awhile.

Then we headed to Buddy's Pizza for some real Detroit pizza. Pizza there is always top notch and it was yesterday night as well.

They declared the Detroit square pizza was clearly superior to the Chicago deep dish, which is obvious. 

Then this morning, we met up at the airport and I got to let the kids play with the airplane.

I had the older kid do the full-walk around pre-flight, following the checklist  with his younger brother in tow, and showed how everything worked and let them climb in and play away.  I unfortunately didn't take them flying, as the younger one was kinda tuckered out, and the older boys had failed to get She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed's permission for the kids to go flying. Next time.

Then I headed off to meet the family at  a restaurant and we had a nice Father's Day lunch together.

So it was a great weekend.

Saturday Fun Day - To The Henry Ford Museum

So my dad came in for a visit this week, arriving on Thursday evening.

This weekend has been marked by rain that would not cease, and it was full on overcast, windy and wet the whole weekend.

To entertain him, I took him to the Henry Ford Museum Saturday afternoon as he had not been there before. 

We entered, paid the admission fee, and started looking around.

First, to see the finer things:

The 1931 Model J Dusenberg:

Behind the Dusenberg, the  Bugatti Type 41 Royale:

At $43,000 in 1931 it would, per the helpful information sign,  take a worker at the time with an average wage of $1,388/year a total of 31 years to buy the car - assuming they put all their money towards it.

We then went to check out the performance car section,

Having been a racing physician (he would drive the medical chase car during Formula One races in Ontario), he has quite an interest in race cars.  Truth to be told, he still drives like he's in a chase car all the time.

They've got quite a display of race cars, including the winning Ford GT from Le Mans, 1967:

 

The winning car from the Hoosier Hundred in 1960:

 And of course, Formula One cars drew interest:

We then went by quite a well-done display of the history of the consumer automobile and we found this particular car, which made him exceptionally happy:

Yes, his first car was a 1966 Chevy Corvair (the floor model here is a 1960).  His had air conditioning and he noted that the car would eat fan belts like they were going out of style due to the lousy routing design of the belt.

Definitely a nice trip for him down memory lane.  His Corvair, for the record, was red rather than blue.

We then checked out the aviation section, because, airplanes!

Henry Ford's 1926 Flivver, his attempt to make airplanes like he made Model Ts.  Unfortunately, the Flivver was a Flop, and dangerous to fly, killing its test pilot.

A more successful Ford flying product was the Ford Trimotor:

 

 

A quality passenger and cargo aircraft. Some are still flying and giving rides today - complete with the original wood-and-wicker-type passenger seats for passengers.

We then headed out as the museum was closing and met up with the rest of the family for dinner.  It was a great outing.

Thursday Was A Beautiful Day At The Henry Ford Museum

My cousin Matt had a brief stop over in Detroit in between flights so I had a few hours to get together with him and show him around.

I decided to take him to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, as it is a true gem, and relatively close to the airport. That way I could be sure to get him there and back in time for his flight.

The Henry Ford Museum is quite huge with all sorts of technological and historical exhibits, focusing on, as expected, a fine collection of automobiles.

There's cars from the early days:

There's even a racing car made out of a World War Two fighter's fuel drop tank.

There's a vertiable catalog of Ford's triumphs through the years, including this race wining 2011 Ford Fusion:

And there are Ford's failures like the Edsel.

 Not only the car, but the marketing campaign for it wasn't quite on target:

The Museum even has (gasp) Japanese cars:

But it has much more than cars.

Aircraft, including Ford's Flivver are on display.

 Technology through the ages was showcased. Here's an old but still working electric generator  among the display of steam engines and generators that is still powering light bulbs around the display:

One display had some items exhibited during various World's Fairs, including some that are somewhat creepy in a futuristic welcome-your-robot-overlords kind of way:

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto....

 And they had another technological masterpiece on display: Firearms.

Here's the Smith and Wesson Revolver Display. Tam can probably point at the display and go: "Got it, got it, need it, got it..."

Close ups of a S&W .45 Schofield and a Model 2  The light in and around the cabinet was quite poor so that's the best I was able to get:

 

 There was also a display of Colt revolvers, and there were rifles from flinlocks to lever actions. and black powder to almost modern shotguns.

 Knives were also on display, including this most peculiar piece:

Dagnabbit Lester, I told you not to bring a knife to a gunfight........

Seeing a few Mustangs on display, I took some pictures for Keads to enjoy:

The Mustangs included one that I'm pretty sure is not in his collection, a 1962 Mustang I Roadster:

And of course, you can't visit the Henry Ford without taking a picture of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile:

If I Drove An Oscar Mayer Wiener....

After walking all around the museum, we were quite hungry for lunch, so we went to Buddy's Pizza so he could try the Detroit style of this most versatile of foods. It was, as always with Buddy's Pizza, delicious.

After lunch we headed back to the airport, enjoying the spectacle of a truck having its tire blow two cars in front of us. This was rather exciting at highway speed -  a big bang, a big black cloud and flying rubber all over the place.

Highway excitement notwithstanding, we made it back in plenty of time after having a great but brief visit.