Great Lakes Road Trip Day 2; Hunting memory lane in western Metro Detroit and Greenfield Village

The second day of the trip was spent locally with some family. The day started out with a trip down M-5 to find my Grand Parents house off of Grand River Avenue which was once US 16.

Specifically my Grand Parents lived off of Grand River Avenue in Redford. I want to say they bought their house back in the 1950s or 1960s but the exact date eludes me. I remember actually walking to the grocery store and McDonald's with my Grand Parents when the neighborhood was still decent. A lot of the blight that has taken over Detroit really has migrated northwest on Grand River, there was essentially almost no activity or people moving about.

I had some family members with me who wanted to look at old houses that they lived in decades ago. This involved crossing back over Telegraph Road on 6 Mile to return to Grand River Avenue. I liked the Michigan Left diagram on this guide sign in particular.

I took Grand River Avenue on M-5 down to the M-39 on the Southfield Freeway. I haven't been on the Southfield Freeway since maybe 1990 and really it didn't look any different than it did back in that era. The interchange with I-96 always was something that was amusing to me given how complex the design was. I jumped off on Michigan Avenue/US 12 in Dearborn and headed over to the Henry Ford.

I haven't been to The Henry Ford since the mid-1980s and it was nice to see a museum about engineering that is this high in quality. The irony for me is that I've found so many of the buildings and machinery rotting away in mining camps out west that was fully operational in Greenfield Village, it was a little of surreal site for me. I really enjoyed some of the Edison displays and the rail features most out of everything we went to see.

On the way back north to I took US 12 west on Michigan Avenue, US 24 north on Telegraph, and I-96/I-275. I had to make a stop in Farmington Hills to drop off a family member which didn't help with traffic but at least allowed me an opportunity to take a picture of the I-696 "Ends" shield and placard.

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