Detroit Zoo

Despite living in Michigan for the better part of a decade, I’d never been to the Detroit Zoo. Nick and Margaret hadn’t been there in years either, so we spent a day at the zoo!

The Detroit Zoo is a bit bigger than Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. Detroit has about 3 times as many animals, but WPZ has more species.

Probably the coolest (ha ha, pun) exhibit at the Detroit Zoo is the Arctic Ring of Life, which opened in 2001. It is the largest polar bear exhibit in North America and is also a home for arctic foxes and seals. Visitors can walk through a large transparent underwater tunnel and watch the animals swim. Unfortunately, the polar bears were not cooperating while we were there! We didn’t get to see them at all!

I also liked the prairie dog exhibit. You can walk all the way around the exhibit and watch the prairie dogs burrow. Kids can go underneath and look out from inside two glass viewing areas in the middle of the exhibit.

I think everyone’s favorite were the rhinos, though. We don’t have any at Woodland Park Zoo and they are massive animals. Pretty cool to see in person.

See the rest of the photos in our Detroit Zoo album on Flickr.

Stahls Auto Museum

We also went to Stahls Auto Museum, which is a vintage car museum that opened a few years ago in Chesterfield.

Stahls has over 80 cars on display, the oldest being an 1886 Daimler prototype. The cars aren’t roped off, so visitors can go up to them and look inside. There are a few cars they let you climb inside, too.

The most expensive car in the museum is the 1948 Tucker Torpedo Sedan, which is worth about $3 million. Only 51 of these cars were ever produced. The car was in the 1988 Jeff Bridges movie, Tucker: The Man and His Dream.

At the front of the museum, there is also a collection of automated musical instruments from the early 20th century. A docent told us about the various instruments and played several of them for us.

There’s also a 1924 theater organ that an organist plays periodically. It has more than 1500 pipes, which are distributed throughout the museum. The biggest pipe is about 17 feet tall and the smallest pipe is smaller than a pencil. There is a video of the organ below:

If you Michiganders want to go, Stahls is open on Tuesdays 1-4 pm and the first Saturday of the month 11 am – 4 pm. Admission is free, but a donation is appreciated.

See the rest of the photos in our Stahls Auto Museum album on Flickr.

Bonus Photos

We had a fun project during our trip. A ceramic lawn gnome we had gotten for Margaret years ago had lost almost all of its color, so we chose new colors and painted him by hand. He turned out SO cute! His name is Marickine, an anagram of Nick and Marie.

When we got back from our trip, we stopped at my mom’s to see the litter of beagle puppies that had been born earlier that day. It’s Mom’s first litter in 6 years and, if you’re interested, you can read more about the litter on her blog.

With Donna

With Grandpa

With Marickine

With Marickine

Marickine

At Detroit Zoo

Teschi

At Stahls Auto Museum

Tiny and Puppies

Hi, everybody! Sorry it’s been so long since Nick and I blogged last. We’ve settled in at home and haven’t really had anything blog-worthy to talk about lately. We’re both very happy and doing well, though!

The weather was beautiful yesterday (sunny and cloudless, temperature in the mid 50’s), so we went for a walk to nearby Meadowbrook Park (pictured above). It’s a peaceful little sanctuary that’s home to diverse wildlife (ducks, beavers, cranes, geese, otters, etc.) and interesting architecture. We saw lots of ducks and a handful of Canadian geese while we were there.

Homemade square pizza with pepperoni and basil

In Seattle, we are surrounded by mountains. There are the Cascade Mountains to the east and the Olympic Mountains to the west. The mountains are absolutely stunning on clear days — especially this time of year, when they’re still covered in snow. There’s a scenic spot nearby that we went to yesterday that has a great view of the mountains. I didn’t have my camera on me, but I’ll try to get a picture another time.

Nick has been craving Jet’s Pizza lately. It’s a Michigan pizza company that makes deep dish, square pizzas… and there isn’t anything like it (that we’ve found) in the Seattle area. So, Nick decided we should make our own! He ordered some pizza pans online from a company in Michigan (the same or similar to the ones Jet’s uses) and we found a “foolproof pan pizza” recipe. We made the dough and sauce from scratch and had our homemade Jet’s-inspired pizza for dinner tonight. It turned out really, really good!

The awesome folks we work with made this for us to remember them by.

The MAC Staff

They printed and matted it so we’ll have to pick up a frame once we get to Seattle. I’m sure going to miss everyone here, but I’ll be in touch on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, instant messenger, email, phone, etc. From what I know so far, it seems like the folks at the UW iSchool are as awesome as my current coworkers, so I think I’ll feel as at home and welcome there there as I do here at Wayne.

Since I’m such a geek, I setup a webcam pointed out our window that takes pictures on movement detection. (Geek notes: I’m using a mac mini + Periscope + a logitech c910. The picture quality is normally better with that webcam, but it’s behind a screen). Here’s a shot from the cam of the cubes and us (we’re in the smart car) leaving for work this morning. The pictures from the cam are pretty boring… If they were more exciting I think I would have made a time lapse video from them, but I don’t think it’d be worth looking at right now.

Our going away party at Dad’s place went well. Marie and I both had a ton of fun in spite of the Relocube delay.  It was great having everyone together, and the weather was perfect. We’ll definitely miss our family and friends here in Michigan, but luckily the internet will make that more bearable than the pre-internet days (seriously, what did people do back then?).

Tonight is loading day so we’ll be packing the cubes and getting them ready to go across the country tonight. We’ve already recruited some helpers and we plan to feed them pizza too. I bet you’re all jealous that you don’t get to help now, aren’t you?

Fish flies

Well, we sure aren’t going to miss fish flies. Most of you probably don’t know what a fish fly is, so I’ll get to that in a minute.

Today, we went to Sammy’s (Paul’s daughter’s) graduation party with Nick’s mom and her boyfriend, Harry. Paul always throws great parties and this one had a Chinese theme.

The bugs in the picture are called fish flies (or, apparently, mayflies). They come around in swarms for a few weeks at the beginning of summer each year. Each fish fly only lives for a day or two. They don’t sting or bite, but they sure get everywhere. Nick’s mom tells a story about driving on a road covered in dead fish flies and hearing an unending “crunch, crunch, crunch.” Ick!

Nick and I live (at least for another week!) just far enough away from the water that we don’t encounter fish flies, but Paul lives right on the water, so he gets a ton of them at his place. They weren’t as bad today as they have been in years past, but there were still plenty of fish flies at the party today and I’m not sure this picture quite does it justice. In spite of the fish flies, it was still a good party… good food, good weather, and good people.

Jobbie Nooner

Another Michigan oddity is Jobbie Nooner, which took place yesterday. Jobbie Nooner is sort of a Mardi Gras-style party in which people take their boats out to an island and spend the day partying. Needless to say, Nick and I have never taken part in it.

No Need for Maps

Probably my favorite Michigan oddity is how people from Michigan use their hands as maps. When you take your right hand and turn it palm-side up, it resembles the state of Michigan. So, it’s not at all uncommon for Michiganders to point at their hands to indicate where in the state places are.

In other news, Nick and I started to tackle the kitchen today. We gave his mom most of our perishables, we packed up our pots and pans and a set of dishes, and we packed a couple boxes of pantry items. Tomorrow, we have all day to pack. Hurrah!