July 23, 2017 -- on the way to Toronto

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The 2017 summer ACBL bridge tournament was in Toronto.  There is, alas, no easy way to take the train from Ann Arbor to Toronto.  (There's a rather substantial river between Detroit and Windsor, Canada.  There's a tunnel for cars, as well as a bridge, but no accommodation for getting trains across the border around here.)  We hired a car service to drive us to Windsor, whence we took the train to Toronto.

We left plenty of time to get to Windsor and catch our train on July 23, 2017.

We had a snack in the train station.  (Note Space Cat Adventure sox....)

My spoon came from a euro store (like a dollar store, only euros), in Venice, Italy.  I keep it handy, in case I suddenly need to eat yogurt.  Or something else.  It may have traveled more than its siblings, but I'm sure I'm not the only tourist who bought a spoon in that euro store.  Who knows where the others may have ventured.........



On the train.  They gave passengers litter bags.  Isn't that smart?

I like assigned seats.........

It's been almost 7 months since I took these pics.  As I remember it, the landscape was very suburban as we left Windsor.....

Eventually, it was rural.

The bridge tournament was near the Royal York, which is conveniently right across the street from the train station.  (We might have driven, but I believe the hotel parking was outrageous.  Something like $50 a night?  We like trains, and it was cheaper than driving, given the parking expense........)

I think this is where our room was.  Not a good view, alas.  We could stand in a corner and manage to see some sky, if we worked at it.

We checked into the hotel, and wandered out in search of dinner.  We came across this fun fountain/park.

Closer.

Of course there's a bone at the top of the fountain.  :-)

There were lots of real dogs at the park, too.  (Though I don't know that there are any in this pic.)

Excellent mural on the end of a building.

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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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