So Kate (my girlfriend) and myself thought we would saddle up the MINI and take off for a destination unknown. I had a couple of ideas where I wanted to go and I ultimately wanted to end up in Grand Rapids where my aunt lives. Yesterday morning around 9 we headed off.

Our first stop was Hell, yes Hell. Hell is not recognised by the USPS as a town however, but it's a tourist attraction for anyone that comes to the area and the town actually does quite well for itself despite have virtually no one in it. There is a general store, ice cream parlor, a restaurant, and a dam. No the river that runs through Hell is not called the River Styx.




Another fun fact is that the "Highway to Hell" is actually called Darwin Rd. Possibly a cruel joke by some irritated Creationist ? Whatever the reasoning it wasn't as exciting as I would have hoped but I did play the AC/DC song while driving down the road...on repeat. I thought Kate was going to shoot me.



After leaving Hell because it wasn't all that interesting we headed for another town with an equally funny or impossible to believe name. Climax, and yes while driving down I-96 you can get off at Climax, which for the sheet novelty we did. Another funny note is that it's sister city is Intercourse, Pennsylvania. If that's not an awesome sexual innuendo I don't know what is!



Not surprising the town of Climax was anticlimactic so I didn't bother taking a photo or even really caring to explore it. It was simply a street and nothing else. We then headed for another funny named town called Kalamazoo, yes it's a real town as well even though most people from outside of Michigan think we are making it up. It is the home of Western Michigan University and the Detroit Red Wings farm team. There isn't really much of interest there since it's a college town, although there was an awesome air and space museum called Air Zoo...ok well I shouldn't say there isn't much of interest because that is unfair. Kalamazoo is where Gibson guitars was founded, Checker Cab's Headquarter is, and chalked full of micro breweries.

Air Zoo was quite cool and houses the only remaining SR-71B in the world, which is a modified training version of the SR-71A with a raised cockpit canopy above the main one. Such an awesome plane and you don't realise how big it is until you get near it. There was also many other antique aircraft. I don't really know much about planes but it was still cool walking around and having a bit of a look. It was hard to take photos in there because it was so dark but here are a sample of some pictures.






From there we drove around Kalamazoo for a bit and got a hotel at a Hampton End...which was stupidly expensive. Why on earth does a King sized bed room cost most than a room with two queen sized beds in it? It was a nice hotel, very clean and the staff was overly friendly, but $134 for one night seemed a bit high...although it was cheap compared to other area hotels that I called.

After being disappointed by the price of the hotel it was still only 3pm so we took off for a town to the north called Cooper. I just had to get a photograph of my car buy welcome to sign, but as I made my way into town...which like all small Michigan towns was nothing more than a road with a fuel station, a church, and a party store I found numerous photo ops. My favourite though was the face that I found a little storage unit area called Cooper Mini Storage.




From there I needed some water, so we headed off for the little tourist town of South Haven. The town would have been great if it had not been the 4th of July weekend. It was packed with out of towners from Illinois and Indiana who acted as if they've never seen a giant body of water before. I didn't even bother snapping photos because of the disappointment in it all. I love Smalltown, USA, it's one thing about this country I adore, but they are getting ruined by people who come there en mass to get away from whatever it is they are getting away from and the worst part is they don't bother to support the economy there. They park their cars and walk to the beach, they don't eat in the town's restaurants, drink in their pubs, or shop in their stores. I found a lovely little roadhouse off the beaten path where I had the best burger in my entire life and then I ended up buying a giant wall clock for my parents from a little shop next to it. Without supporting the locals these little towns will no longer be there for people to enjoy.

After leaving South Haven we made our way back to the hotel via back roads. Michigan is sad to have boring back roads most of the time. Now let me show you just how right you are! This is more or less what I endured for 45 miles back to the hotel. Corn and other farm crops, with a scattering of small towns with names like Glendale and Bangor...there was elevation changes though!!!





Upon heading back into Kalamazoo I found this which made me laugh...Lovers Lane! I looked but could not find one of those adult fun stores on it though.



We arrived back to the hotel via some little Mexican place that had pretty good burritos.

We woke up the next morning (today) and headed for Grand Rapids, which is a very nice city and one of my favourite urban areas to visit in Michigan. Since I had been there numerous times and I was on a bit of a time crunch I didn't stop but I do plan on going back soon. Anyways here are just a couple shots from the area. Oh and I thought it was funny there was a Shelbyville as well near buy, too bad it wasn't next to Springfield.





After spending some time with my aunt we headed back home and I began writing this up.

Here is a rough idea of the route we traveled. a total of 475 miles in two days!

 

Turn off your GPS and you will find Michigan is loaded with great back roads. That area inside the blue lines on your map is saturated with curvy blacktop.