Touristing to Cranbrook

Remember when I was posting regularly and I had a series called “Touristing“? If you don’t, I’ll refresh your memory: Basically I found sights around my own town that I had never seen or visited. It was a nice way to see my city (that I didn’t love) with fresh eyes. I was thinking I should pick up this series again now that we live in Michigan and everything is new. 

The weather today was heavenly. Like…magical. Sunny. Bright. Warm. Blue skies. Refreshing. It was definitely an outdoor day. Earlier this week we decided that we would venture outside this weekend. After being indoors for the past few months, it was time to attack the outdoors! 

We decided to check off Cranbrook from our list of things to see since the name has come up on more than one occasion from friends. Currently, the grounds is home to a boarding school, an art museum, Academy of Art, a science center and the founder’s house and gardens. Here are a couple of facts that might help you win the next game of Trivial Pursuit: the Eames brothers are graduates of the Cranbrook Art Institute (oh, how I would love to have a house filled with Eames furniture!) and Leonard Bernstein wrote portions of The West Side Story while staying on the grounds. Given that it’s early spring, the scenery really wasn’t anything too exciting. Trees were still bare, grass was still brown, fountains remained off and even one of the waterfalls was still frozen. But it was glorious to be out and about. I thought ahead and brought my camera but regretfully left my memory card at home. Mind you, this was not the first time I’ve done this. When will I learn? Oh well, that’s why God invented the iPhone. 

Here are a few photos from our day: 

This is a man after my own heart. Not for the car decor, but for the travel. I’m sure whoever owns this car is full of stories. The rare self-portrait. It’s acceptable when a cutie in the photograph draws attention away from me. 

I saw these rocks all lined up and had this video in my head. It didn’t turn out like I hoped it would; I’m thinking a tripod would have come in handy. I’ll have to remember that next time.

I can’t imagine how pretty this is in the summer or at the height of spring:Now that it’s officially spring, what have you been doing? And where are some other places in the Metro Detroit Area that we should put on our Touristing list? 

Visitors!

We had our very first non family visitors come to see us last month. Anthony and Melissa came to see during her spring break. You might remember them: they’re the goofballs that followed us all the way to Georgia last year. Yes, they came to Michigan on spring break. Yes, they live in Florida. Yes, they were warned what Michigan weather is like in February. But they came anyway. Don’t you just love friends like that? Here’s a short video of a few things we did while they were here. Thank you guys for coming to see us. We’ve missed seeing our friends’ faces and it was such a nice way to break up the winter blahs!