We’ve said our goodbyes to Reg and are now on our road trip to New York, it’s a very different experience driving a Toyota Corolla weighing 1.25 tons (I find this hard to believe for such a little car) to our 30-foot, 7.25 tons (I can’t quite believe this figure either from the Forest River website) RV!

First Sunday post-Reg we spent with the Craigs, went to see Murder on the Orient Express at their swanky cinema with reclining seats, drinks and food delivered during the film.  Have to say the food was better than the film with Kenneth Branagh overacting as Poirot and the rest of the cast with almost cameos, although Johnny Depp was his most coherent in a role for a while.

We had a Thanksgiving Dinner afterwards which Barbara cooked for us all and her friend Christine, which had all the trimmings although Alex and I passed on the pumpkin pie for dessert.  It was beautifully cooked and with a bottle of champagne to celebrate our trip, it was an enjoyable way to give thanks for our fortune, although not sure who we were thanking, not the indigenous inhabitants who possibly regret helping the pilgrims in the first place.

On Monday, despite a bit of a hangover, we ran along Lakeshore Drive past a number of attractive houses looking over Lake Michigan including one built by Frank Lloyd-Wright, which I completely missed!  Alex looked more carefully on Tuesday and it is a beautiful example of his residences (although not as beautiful as Fallingwater which Alex will give more on next week). 

Tuesday, we cycled around St Joseph, stopping for lunch downtown, then across to the lighthouse and around Benton Harbor across the St Joe river.  We went to a Mexican for an early birthday dinner for Marty, eating way too much without the discipline of being stuck in a campground miles from the nearest fast food restaurant!  This was our farewell to the Thompsons who we have had since the beginning of our trip and have ridden up mountain, down valley and across the 42 states we’ve visited on our trip.

Alex walked the two miles plus to Enterprise Car Rentals to pick up the Toyota (I didn’t do the walk as I pulled my calf muscle running). We packed for the trip and were brutal about discarding clothes and items we didn’t need which we took to the Goodwill charity shop and sadly we had to trash the B’s as, with each having a puncture, we couldn’t give them away.  We went to lunch with Barbara at a great organic café in downtown Benton Harbor, sad to say goodbye as they have helped us with our journey, including the offer to drive to Philadelphia to drive Reg back to Michigan after my dad died.

We set off to Detroit along the I-94 and checked into our first hotel on the road, we chose the Motor City Casino which was a great choice as it was a very large comfortable room close to downtown, well for two Brits who are happy to walk a mile to the centre of Detroit.  The casino floors were enormous and filled with smokers and rather depressing, however as we didn’t have any desire to gamble we were content to leave them to it.

On Thursday we caught up with Stacey, who was over from Australia for her daughter Antonia’s wedding to Zack.  We went to Hitsville USA, the original home of Motown records. Berry Gordy Jr. started the company with an $800 loan from his family, which he used to purchase the first of several houses on the block that he fitted out as a recording studio.  It’s quite a small museum but filled with information on the acts he signed and the process he instigated to make them into stars, including hiring someone to instruct the acts in how to dress and present themselves to improve impressions of many who were still teenagers when they signed.  The tour was interesting, if a little sanitised, the guide wasn’t allowed to answer questions about money, e.g. why many acts left the label, or the personal lives of the key figures.

After Motown we walked into downtown.  Detroit has changed further since we were here last year, the renovation of the downtown areas old skyscrapers continues apace with new shops and restaurants opening.  We popped into a Bank of America branch in the Guardian building by the river that had an incredible interior with a design inspired by Native American and Aztec art with the centrepiece a map of Michigan highlighting the industry of the state.

Friday, we visited Ann Arbor, the home of the University of Michigan, which has 44 thousand students with seemingly a stadium for every variety of team sport you can think of, including ice hockey and lacrosse.  Nice town but not as nice as Hanover (home of Dartmouth) or Oxford (home of Ole Miss) which both seemed older and more attractive.  From Ann Arbor we drove up to Lake Erie and alongside the water past several summer vacation towns with a variety of housing, ranging from mansions overlooking the water to trailer parks for everyone else.  We arrived in Cleveland after dark and had a Japanese meal in a restaurant near the hotel, I’m not sure anyone else had ever walked from our hotel to it as there were no sidewalks for the short half mile walk.

Saturday dawned bright, however it’s getting colder so we rugged up and drove into downtown Cleveland for the main event, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  This turned out to be so good that Alex and I spent even more time here, four and a half hours, than we had at the ABBA museum in Stockholm. a mere three.  It is well curated, starting with a gallery of musicians who influenced early ‘Rock and Roll’, i.e. blues, jazz, gospel and country music, moving on to a series of exhibits on different cities influence, e.g. Liverpool, Detroit, LA etc, with individual galleries for the Beatles, Stones and Elvis.  The museum is also currently running an exhibition to mark the 50^th anniversary of Rolling Stone magazine which was really interesting on it’s genesis and growth, including an ongoing ‘feud’ with the Rolling Stones over the magazines name, Mick is obviously a big fan as he appears in a vox pop alongside Taylor Swift and Lenny Kravitz ribbing Jann Wenner, the publisher, about it still.

We went to dinner in The Butcher and The Brewer, which continued hip America’s obsession with ‘small’ plates that are difficult to gauge if you’ve ordered too little or too much.

M