Michigan, The Rest

For the next four days, we J. and I visited with G.&N. The details are of no interest to the general public, so I will not get into them here. Suffice it to say that happily, it was much like previous visits, and we did everything I've come to love so much about these trips – used book shops, Ashley's, Zola, the Arboretum (“Putting the 'Arb' in Ann Arbor since 1907”), late-night dinners on the porch, G.'s creative cocktails and delicious wines, lazy mornings outside reading, drinking coffee and watching the groundhogs (apologies for the excessive digital zoom in the photo -- he was a skittish critter).

One brilliant idea of G.'s that's worth mentioning was what he termed the upscale pub crawl. The idea was to visit three, possibly four local restaurants, having a drink and an appetizer or small plate at each. We made it to two – West End Grill and Vinology – before we realized that it was getting late, and more food and drink would be good neither for our stomachs nor our ability to drive home. But the idea was fantastic nevertheless and I hope to repeat it.

We left Monday morning. I for one, would have happily abused our friends' hospitality longer, but politeness and jobs, both theirs and ours, called. We actually drove West, back to Kalamazoo, where we were determined to visit another place I had been trying to get to for several years now – the Gilmore Car Museum. Gilmore is a private museum located in five or so large barns in the middle of rural Kalamazoo County. The collection focuses on American cars, with just a handful of classic European models thrown in for contrast. We went through the exhibits fairly quickly, not wanting to get home too late, but got something out of the visit nevertheless. Highlights included an entire pavilion dedicated to Pierce-Arrow (headquartered in Buffalo, NY, which I had not known), several immaculate Duesenbergs, an example of the DeSoto Suburban (no relation to the modern Chevy Suburban, but in essence America's first minivan, with three rows of reconfigurable seats), a Chrysler Airflow (the first American car developed in a wind tunnel), a Bantam (inspiration for clown cars everywhere), and the last Buick to feature wooden wheel rims, made in 1928. One of the things Gilmore likes to advertise is their muscle car exhibit, which I found good, though not overwhelmingly fascinating. My favorite, improbably, was the 1970 Chrysler 300, not so much a classic muscle car, which were small for their day, but a souped-up luxury dreadnought, absolutely enormous in size and so rare that I have never seen one anywhere else. Most of the cars on display were owned by the museum, but one barn's worth belonged to the Classic Car Club of America, an organization of owners of cars built between 1925 and 1948. It was here that we saw most of the Europeans. My favorites were an immaculate late-1930s Delahaye with custom white-on-red coachwork and a 1938 Mercedes 540K, arguably the most beautiful Mercedes ever designed (toss-up with the 1950s 300SL, I suppose), buried by its German owner during WWII and not discovered until almost 40 years later. We even saw an Auburn Speedster driving around the grounds of the museum. On the way out, I came across a brochure for this outfit. Pricey, but something I absolutely must do before I die.