August 7

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We just got home from 10 days in Chicago.  We had a lovely time.  I will be editing and posting pics, pics, pics, and more pics...................

Here is our trip to Chicago.  On the train.

Waiting for the train.  It was about half an hour late getting to Ann Arbor.  It was pleasant outside, aside from the cigarettes, which drove us inside.

Bound for Chicago.  Huron River, just west of Ann Arbor.

Views from the train.

See the birds, above?  They are in the middle, up-and-down-wise, left of center, above.

Wikipedia reports this next thing is the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center, formerly the Battle Creek Federal Center is a complex of federal buildings located in Battle Creek, Michigan.  (So excellent that it is so easy to find out this stuff -- I asked Google about brick tower battle creek, and looked at the images, and there it was.)

They were working on the track.  They told us that was why the train was late to Ann Arbor, and we could see evidence of work in many places along the line.  Here we are, waiting, which gives plenty of time for taking pics of stuff that is not moving.  Note flowers in upper right corner -- we saw lots of flowers along the way.

The scribbles above the track are metal straps which I bet are left over from holding bundles of railroad ties together.  I liked their shapes....

On our way again.

We saw a number of cute little train stations.  The one in Niles, Michigan (spelled out in red flowers), is still in use.

I suspect this is the St. Joseph river, just west of Niles.

Ah, if only this were a better exposure....  The sky, the clouds, the corduroy texture of the corn fields....

I think this may be New Buffalo, Indiana.

And this is Michigan City, Indiana.  We sat here for a while.  We were told there had been a medical emergency, and that medical personnel had boarded the train to help the person.  We hope they are ok!

Isn't this a nice place to sit?  With a nice view of Lake Michigan (one of the biggest bodies of fresh water on the planet)?

Looks rather idyllic, doesn't it?  If you like boats?

Let's draw back just a little.  Crane?

Looking more to the left........  Hmmm...........  And you can see yellow smoke above that biggest chimney.....

Here's where we are...............

And the nuke plant is just west of here.  Just barely west of here; I saw it in one of these Google street views, just a hair west of here.



One of the things that is interesting about taking the train is that you tend to see the underbelly of things a lot more than you do on the roads.  There are a lot of dead factories between Detroit and Chicago.  Lots of down and out neighborhoods.

But there is new construction, like that in New Buffalo, above, and plenty of evidence of live factories.  We passed Jiffy in Chelsea, and Kellogg's in Battle Creek.  Both look well-tended and healthy.

Casinos appear to be thriving, in Indiana.  I didn't see any along our route through Michigan or Illinois.

We passed steel plants that are clearly operating, with rolls of sheet steel in railroad cars outside.  (I'll show you some of that on the going-home trip; it was too dark on the way there.)



So -- we can enjoy the idyllic views, but we should remember the energy it takes to build (and run!) all of those boats, and build all of that housing, and maintain all of those people, and we should remember the cost of that energy for the planet (and thus for our descendants..................).

And then, it was dark.  We saw lots of lit-up enormous complexes of ... factory? ... but it was too dark for pics.

At last, we arrived in Chicago, about an hour late.

We easily caught a cab to our hotel, and that was the end of the excitement for August 7.

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