Scotland-London April 2010

Chicago, Springfield, Indianapolis, and Detroit

After passing through O'Hare Int'l Airport (ORD) many times over the years on our travels, we decided to actually visit the city itself. My Dad had taken me there when I was about 8 yrs. old and the only thing I remembered was the Field Museum and Natural History Museum and the dinosaur skeletons.

We took a shuttle into downtown and stayed in the heart of the Theatre District. It was convenient to get around downtown and to use public transport. Chicago is great city for ethnic food, and we overdid the pizza and hot dogs for several days. We did the usual city bus tour which is always a great way to get the lay on the land in a new city. For us, the highlight of the trip was our visit to the Museum of Science and Technology. It is a pretty long ride on the train, and transfer to a bus, or direct bus along Shoreline Drive, but well worth the effort. They have the only extant WW II German submarine which was captured off the coast of Africa! They towed it to America, brought it through the St. Lawrence Seaway and through the Great Lakes to Chicago! There is a wonderful time lapse video of how they trucked the sub to the site they had built to house it: The museum built a new wing and had dug out space for the sub. When that was complete, the brought the sub to the site and lowered it into its new home, and then proceeded to complete the building walls and roof over the submarine! Pretty clever and quite an engineering feat. The exhibit itself is very educational and if you desire, you can pay a small fee and tour the interior of the sub.

From Chicago, we picked up a rental car downtown and drive South to Salem, IL. It is a State Park and home of Abraham Lincoln as young man. Salem was a small town of a river which could not be used for navigation by the big paddle wheel steam boats which came along in the 1830's and early 1840's, and town slowly died. During the Depression, the town was rebuilt by the CCC, and it is intriguing to visit. They have docents in period costume who are very knowledgeable. It was an educational experience.

From there, on to Springfield, the state capital where Lincoln practiced law and from where he got elected President in 1860. There is a park where Lincoln's house if beautifully preserved, and several surrounding blocks have been acquired by the Park Service and it is now a true step back in time to the 1850's. There is Park Hdq. and Rangers put on educational programs. The Lincoln Presidential Library is located within a few blocks, but is mainly for scholarly research and not casual tourists. Across the street from the Library is the Lincoln Museum. It is a somewhat commercial operation, but is very interesting with some wonderful presentations on the Civil War, and many artifacts.

From Springfield, we drove essentially East to Indianapolis, IN. The idea here was to see the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Museum on the Speedway grounds. I'm a fan of auto racing and have never attended the race and this was a wonderful but short one day visit. The Museum is nirvana for fans of the Indy 500, and there docents ready and willing to help with any questions you may have. We opted to take the bus tour of one lap of the track with a recorded narration. To think the racers reach speeds as high as 230 mph is a scary prospect!

From Indianapolis, we drove to Dearborn, MI to visit the Henry Ford Museum. There is a complete complex collectively called "The Henry Ford". There is the massive Museum itself, the Village, which is an amazing recreation of America in the early 1900's. You can tour the Village on foot or you can also get a ride in a Model T, of which they have 13! Henry Ford's home is there, as is the Wright Brother's Bicycle shop from Dayton, Ohio. It is truly a wonderful historical re-creation. Adjacent to the Museum is an IMAX theater. From the Museum, you can proceed via bus to the Rouge Plant where they currently build Ford F-150 pickup trucks. Part of Ford's genius was to have a completely integrated manufacturing facility. Iron ore would arrive on boats on the Rouge River adjacent to the plant, and that would be made into steel for engines, frames, brakes, and bodies and other mechanical components. A very interesting tour which takes several hours. The only automated operation we saw was the installation of windshields by a computer operated machine. Five years ago, we toured the Mercedes Benz plant at historic Sindelfingen outside of Stuttgart as part of our purchase of new Mercedes and many of the operations there were computerized such as installation of dashboards, sunroofs and windshields. An interesting comparison of manufacturing techniques.

We flew home from Detroit Metro airport (DTW), which is very large and modern. An interesting trip through what is "flyover country" for a lot of travelers.

In Agra, we stayed at the Oberoi property which was luxurious as usual and only six hundred yards from the Taj. We proceeded to the property via electric buses designed to save the environment, and for good reason. The haze and smog was pretty thick in the area. Getting into the property requires two lines, one for women and another for men. I was told by our guide to not even bother bringing my Prosumer camera. I had a Canon GL-1 and I've had problems in other places trying to get this camera into some historic places. The powers that be think I am a professional photographer and they want you to pay a fee and do all types of other things, and of course I'm not a professional. I reluctantly left the camera and Ellie brought her Canon 35MM slr.

Having said that, it is worth the hassle! Up close it is a work of art. They have inset black marble arabic words into the white marble and you are left breathless by the workmanship. This is a MUST see if you ever get to India.