CARS AND MORE CARS

 Close to Kalamazoo is the Gilmore Car Museum.

 The first car.

 A.J. Foyt race car.

 Buildings full of beautiful old cars.

 The Green Book was a guide book for blacks to know where they could get gas, food and lodging, since not every place would serve them until the 1964 Civil rights bill made it illegal to discriminate against customers.

 The Beach Boys Little Deuce Coupe. The actual car that was used on the cover of the album.

 A mustang.

 This museum covers acres with many buildings full of cars. There is even a functional diner and a gas station (not functional.)

 A building dedicated to the Hudson.

 A building of motorcycles.

 Even  a building full of those little peddle cars for children.

 The 1930 Rolls Royce used in Walt Disney movie the Gnome Mobile. ( We got the movie from Netflix and enjoyed watching it)

 The special effects mock up of the car. I am a gnome now.

 Milk truck

 fire truck

and even some old RV's.  So much to see and we even missed one building that was full of  miniature
items, and I was told it was the most fascinating and unusual exhibit.

AIR ZOO IN KALAMAZOO

 Kalamazoo has a great Air Zoo.

 Rooms and rooms of planes to look at, from the beginning of flight to the present day.

 Interactive exhibits like this infinity room. How many Dotties and Larrys are there?

 Larry found this plane with my name on it.

 Larry inspecting the contolls on the helicopter.

This plane has been recovered from Lake Michigan and the Navy asked the Air Zoo to restore it.

 Looks like a big job to me.

 Larry has always said he would have liked to have been a pilot, so here was his opportunity to take a lesson.

 Ready to take off. Larry in the front and his instructor in the back.

 He did turns, and dives and had a ball. He has a video of his flight and a certificate for 1/2 hour of flying time. It was an experience he will always remember.

ART PRIZE

 We arrived in Michigan on Wednesday. On Thursday we went to Grand Rapids for Art Prize.

 It is the world's largest art competition. with art displayed through out the city. The dots on the map show where some art can be viewed.The art can be found all over in galleries, restaurants, shops, police station, store windows, etc.. Part of the fun was finding the art. There was over 1500 works of art (we only saw about 200), You get to vote for your favorite art piece and a grand prize is $200,000

 This wooden ball was as tall as I am, and when you put your ear against it it made a humming noise.

 Theses Native American portraits were made with little squares of paint.

 You had to use a magnifying glass to see what this artist had drawn and written.

 Here he is doing it on a circle of paper. Some of the artist were around to talk with.

 This is made out of Lego's

 A chess board of wood, each piece had gears and moved.

 This sculpture was carved from the trunk of a wild black cherry tree that had blown down in 1995. It took the artist 825 hours to create it.

 This building was three stories tall and this wooden chain went from ceiling to floor several times. It was carved from one piece of wood.

 This beautiful butterfly was made from paper dots.

 There was some beautiful stain glass pieces. The lights they used behind them really showed the glass off.

It was a fun and unique trip to start our visit here in Michigan.