Midwest Guest

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part Four

The Covered Bridge Festival in Ohio's Ashtabula County happens the second full weekend in October, but you can tour the area's 17 covered bridges any time of the year.

The Covered Bridge Driving Tour map I ordered from the Covered Bridge Festival web site showed up in my mail box within a couple of days of ordering it, and it conveniently splits the tour into two legs that each cover about 70 miles. The map's set up means you can easily set up your own leisurely self-guided tour over a weekend.

Today, I'm posting the stories and photos of four more bridges. This group represents the final few bridges of the map's "Tour A" (which ends with the Giddings Road span) and the start of "Tour B" at the Doyle Road Bridge.

• Benetka Road Bridge

   The 138-foot-long Benetka Road Bridge is a Town lattice bridge spanning the Ashtabula River. A water-powered saw, grist, and flour mill reportedly sat on this site in the mid-1800s.

  The bridge, originally built around 1900, underwent renovation in 1985 and the addition of a laminated arch. The 9-inch wide, 38-inch thick arches run the length of the bridge, as you can see from my photo.

  
  
  
  

• Olin Bridge

  The 115-foot Town lattice Olin Bridge spans the Ashtabula River and takes its name from a pioneering family in the area. The bridge has an 1873 construction date, although it underwent renovations in the mid-1980s and in 1993.

  The Olin Family arrived in the area in 1832 from New York. In 1860, an Olin family member bought the property next to the eventual bridge site. Olin family members still own the property and operate a small museum and gift shop within walking distance of the bridge. The museum opened in 2003 in tribute to family covered bridge preservationist Naomi Olin Bottorf and houses her collection of covered bridge memorabilia.

  The museum has a vintage covered bridge postcard collection, which sounded interesting to me, but the museum and shop weren't open when we visited (leaving something new to do the next time we visit the area).   

  Museum hours are 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, with extended hours of 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. on the Saturday and Sunday during the annual Covered Bridge Festival October.






• Giddings Road Bridge

   The Giddings Road Bridge is a 107-foot-long Pratt truss bridge spanning Mill Creek. This bridge, built in 1995 with an Ohio Department of Transportation Timber Grant, is another bridge designed and built by former Ashtabula County Engineer and covered bridge advocate John Smolen.

  
  
  

• Doyle Road Bridge

  The Doyle Road Bridge is a 94-foot-long Town lattice bridge built in 1868. It spans Mill Creek, which is a tributary of Ohio's Grand River. The Doyle Road Bridge received a new laminated arch during its 1987 renovation (similar to the arch added to the Benetka Road Bridge in 1985).

  
  
  
  

Note: There is some disagreement among sources for some bridge lengths and/or constructions dates. In those cases, I went with the lengths and dates from the covered bridge festival site.

Check out my earlier stories in this series (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) and check back here next week for the final installment of my Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County series.

 

Want to learn more about covered bridges in Ohio?

Check out Ohio's Covered Bridges (Postcard History) by Elma Lee Moore. This book contains many images of historic bridges in the state, and includes photos of what appear to be the pre-renovation era Olin, Benetka, and Doyle bridges.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Ashtabula

Eating pizza in a covered bridge in Ohio's Ashtabula County

Eating dinner in a covered bridge? I couldn't think of a better way to end a day of touring and photographing Ashtabula County's covered bridges than having pizza in the Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor, which is inside half of a restored covered bridge in North Kingsville, Ohio!

This cute little eatery is part of a three-restaurant chain in this northeast Ohio county where owners established two of the three pizza parlors in two halves of a restored covered bridge.

The Forman Road Covered Bridge, a Town lattice bridge built in 1862, spanned Mill Creek in nearby Eagleville until county officials wanting to remove it put it up for auction to the highest bidder in 1972.

Owners of the Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor successfully bid $5 for the old bridge, the oldest known existing bridge in Ohio at that time according to the history printed on the restaurant's menu.

The new bridge owners carefully dismantled the 126-foot-long, 55-ton span. Workers numbered each piece of lumber and took photographs before removing them from the bridge as a guide for its eventual reconstruction.

The pieces lay in storage for several years, waiting for finalized plans to reconstruct it as two pizza parlors and permit approvals to reassemble the bridge in two separate Ashtabula County locations.

In 1975, owners of the Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor moved from their original restaurant in a white frame house in North Kingsville, replacing it with a new restaurant containing half of the reassembled bridge.

In 1977, they opened a second Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor in a building utilizing the other half of their reassembled bridge in nearby Andover.

The North Kingsville and Andover restaurants use the vintage bridge as their main dining areas, while more modern additions house the kitchens. The original lattice construction is a major feature in the dining areas, as you can see from these photos I shot in North Kingsville.

The third Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor is in an Ashtabula storefront.

The menu includes sandwiches and spaghetti, but we opted for the house specialty-pizza.

We don't see good, crispy thin crust pizza around home a lot. We wanted something a little different from our usual order of a thick-crust pizza, so we tried the garlic (or "white") pizza on a thin crust. The no-sauce pizza featured garlic and several cheeses, and we took our server's suggestion to add white meat chicken as a topping and order the pie with Ranch dressing spread on the homemade crust before the cook added the garlic, cheese, and chunks of chicken meat.

We loved the pizza with its crispy, thin crust, and we really loved the price (we dropped less than $20 for dinner for two here).

The novelty of eating in a covered bridge makes visiting here fun for bridge enthusiasts and families. The dining room configuration of a long, narrow space lined with booths with a long bank of two-topper tables means it easily accommodates large and small groups.

Lack of a liquor license means you cannot order a beer with your meal, but the ambience, good food, friendly service, and great price more than make up for that.

NOTES: I found several different lengths listed for the original Forman Covered Bridge, so I went with the length listed on the Covered Bridge Pizza Parlor menu and web site as they were the folks who disassembled and reassembled the bridge.

The bridge name is variously listed as "Forman" and Foreman", depending on the source you consult. I opted for "Forman" as that is the spelling I found on current area maps (including the map of the covered bridge tour I ordered from the Covered Bridge Festival site).

 

Check out my Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County series:

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part One-an introduction to the county's bridges and the story of the nation's longest covered bridge

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part Two-the first four stops along the county's suggested driving tour of its covered bridges

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part Three-pictures and stories about four more stops along the county's suggested driving tour of its covered bridges

I also reviewed this restaurant on Yelp.

Want to learn more about some of Ashtabula's long-gone covered bridges? Check out Ohio's Covered Bridges (Postcard History) by Elma Lee Moore. This book contains postcard images of more than 200 historic bridges in the state, and includes an image of the Forman Road Bridge in its original location across Mill Creek.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Ashtabula

Photo Friday: Revisiting Michigan's Isle Royale National Park

Isle Royale National Park sits in the cold waters of Lake Superior, quite close to northern Michigan and Minnesota. This isolated and beautiful park is one of the least visited of our nation's National Parks, but those of us fortunate enough to spend at least a few days there don't easily forget the experience.

Here's a view of Tobin Harbor, a sheltered inlet where we spent time canoeing. I took this shot near the beginning of the September we visited, but Isle Royale is far enough north that this photo always makes me think of a crisp morning in very early autumn.

Nope, it's not quite winter, but the white moss we found on the ground as we walked the trails on Isle Royale vaguely reminds me of the first kiss of winter when dried leaves peek through a light dusting of snow on the ground.

I wanted to share these last couple of photos from Isle Royale, as the park begins winding down its season in early September, and completely closes for the winter by November 1.

 

Check out some of my earlier stories about our Isle Royale adventure: Day adventures at Isle Royale National Park and Isle Royale National Park, Michigan's isolated an beautiful wilderness.

 

Of course, you can always spend some of those cold winter days planning your trip to Isle Royale! Want to learn more about Isle Royale history, wildlife, hiking, canoeing, kayaking, camping, backpacking, fishing and other activities in the park? Check out Isle Royale National Park Foot Trails and Water Routes by Jim DuFresne.

 

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part Three

Covered bridge enthusiasts know Ashtabula County in northeast Ohio for one of the largest concentrations of covered bridges in the state, if not the nation.

This week, I'm continuing my tour of the county's vintage and new covered bridges with photos and stories of four more spans.

 

• Root Road Bridge

  The 114-foot-long Root Road Bridge crosses the west branch of the Ashtabula River and, like many of the covered bridges I saw in Ashtabula County, features the classic Town lattice design. The bridge, originally built in 1868, underwent renovation in 1982/83 to raise the span 18 inches and add a concrete support pier in the center.

  The bridge and road may take its name from an area family (Dwight and Gertrude Root) whose son (Herbert) married the daughter (Frances) of John H. Whitlam, one of the first road superintendents in Ashtabula County.

  
  
  

• Middle Road Bridge

  The 136-foot-long Middle Road Bridge is another vintage span with an 1868 construction date. It crosses Conneaut Creek and features the relatively rare Howe truss. The Howe truss, patented in 1840 by millwright William Howe, has vertical members and diagonals sloping upwards toward the center of the bridge (the opposite of the Pratt truss system in other Ashtabula spans like the Smolen-Gulf and Caine Road Bridges). Volunteers and area college students helped renovate and reconstruct this bridge in 1984.

  
  
  
  

• State Road Bridge

  The State Road Bridge is the first bridge designed and built by former Ashtabula County Engineer John Smolen in 1983. The dedication of this bridge evolved into the county's Covered Bridge Festival, which happens each October.

  This 152-foot-long bridge spans Conneaut Creek. A four-foot high window running the length of the bridge showcases the bridge's now-familiar Town lattice system.

  It took 97,000 feet of southern pine and oak to construct this span, which replaced a steel bridge dating from 1898. This covered bridge is actually the second such span at this location, as the 1898 steel bridge replaced a covered bridge reportedly built in 1831 by Ira Benton and David Niles for a cost of $100.

  
  
  
  

• Creek Road Bridge

  No one seems to know the construction date for the Creek Road Bridge, although the county renovated it extensively in 1994. The 125-foot-long Town lattice-style bridge spans Conneaut Creek.

  
  
  
  

 

Note: There is some disagreement among sources for some bridge lengths and/or constructions dates. In those cases, I went with the lengths and dates from the covered bridge festival site.

 

Check out my earlier stories in this series:

 

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part One-an introduction to the county's bridges and the story of the nation's longest covered bridge

 

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part Two-the first four stops along the county's suggested driving tour of its covered bridges

 

Want to learn more about Ohio's covered bridges? Check out The Covered Bridges of Ohio: A Photo Guide-A Portfolio by Jack R. Perry. This book includes photos, as well as a lot of great information about Ohio's covered bridges. Perry also answers a lot of questions about covered bridge construction and gives readers a few tips for planning their own Ohio covered bridge road trip.

 

I always find the Delorme Gazetteers invaluable when it comes to planning my Midwest road trips. Plan your next Ohio road trip with the help of Delorme's Ohio Atlas & Gazetteer.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Ashtabula

Where I live: Alloy Orchestra returns to the Detroit Film Theater September 24-26

Fans of classic films are in for a treat as the Alloy Orchestra returns to the Detroit Film Theater September 24, 25, and 26 to accompany silent classics that include an experimental Russian feature, the complete version of the masterpiece "Metropolis", and a rarely seen silent film from Alfred Hitchcock.

The Boston-based Alloy Orchestra is a trio that composes and performs soundtracks for an eclectic selection of silent films. Performances feature traditional percussion instruments, electronic synthesizers and keyboards, as well as banjo, accordion, a musical saw, and a variety of found objects.

The Alloy Orchestra describes their sound as "the Berlin Philharmonic meets Godzilla" or "the sound of water dripping into a sink". Both descriptions may be accurate at least in part, but the music produced by this trio on their amazing "rack of junk" and assorted instruments defies easy categorization. Maybe this is one of the reasons Alloy Orchestra gigs continue to surprise and delight me after hearing them perform many times at the DFT.

Although we'd heard Alloy Orchestra perform in a darkened movie theater many times, we never saw them perform until a special pre-movie performance in the Detroit Institute of Arts' Rivera Court last year (where I took the photos accompanying this article).

The original group line-up of Caleb Sampson, Terry Donahue, and Ken Winokur first performed together as the Alloy Orchestra at a First Night event in Boston on New Year's Eve in 1990.

The manager of a local art movie house caught the show and approached the trio about accompanying a showing "Metropolis". This particular version of "Metropolis" was a 1984 reissue with a soundtrack by music producer Giorgio Moroder (a version featuring 1980s pop/rock that I described here as "somewhat bizarre" when I previewed the DFT's summer season, featuring the newest restoration of the film).

The trio, by now named the Alloy Orchestra for their collection of weird musical instruments and found objects, had only two weeks to produce a suitable soundtrack for the film. Their soundtrack was a hit, and the group looked for other chances to accompany silent films.

This year Winokur and Donahue, along with keyboardist Roger Miller (who joined the group after Sampson's 1999 death), celebrate the Alloy Orchestra's twentieth anniversary with a tour of "The Best of Alloy Orchestra".

Over the years, Alloy Orchestra created scores for nearly 30 feature-length films and many silent shorts. They usually premiere new scores at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado (playing there every year since 1993) and perform in theaters, museums, cultural events and other venues around the world.

This weekend with the Alloy Orchestra at the DFT kicks off on Friday, September 24, with "Man with a Movie Camera". This 1929 film directed by Dziga Vertov, originally intended as a Russian propaganda flick, offers an impressionist view of life through a photographer's eye. We saw this film with its Alloy Orchestra accompaniment last year. The stunning cinematography and editing in this film make it surprisingly cutting-edge, and it's a must-see with the always inventive Alloy Orchestra soundtrack.

The Alloy Orchestra accompanies the newly restored "Metropolis" on Saturday, September 25. I saw this particular version this summer, without the Alloy accompaniment, and it should be a highlight of this weekend's Alloy Orchestra gig at the DFT.

Families may enjoy a special Alloy Orchestra program called "Masters of Slapstick" on Sunday afternoon (September 26). This hour-long show features a selection of short comedies featuring Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Catch the Alloy Orchestra's accompaniment to the 1929 Alfred Hitchcock film, "Blackmail" on Sunday evening (September 26). Hitchcock made two versions of this film, a sound version considered to be the first talking picture made in England, and the seldom-shown silent version featured in this showing.

The DFT's Autumn 2010 schedule continues through November 2010. Check out the DFT online for a complete film schedule, times and ticket prices.

Want to listen to the Alloy Orchestra in your own home theater? Check out the DVD of "Man with the Movie Camera" with the Alloy Orchestra soundtrack, or hear samples of the group's music for several different films on the album New Music for Silent Films in CD or MP3 format.

 

Note: "Where I live" posts are part of a series of periodic stories about special events and people in, and around, metro Detroit. "Where I live" posts are stories I'll post in addition to my regular schedule of stories about attractions around the larger Midwestern region. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

The Kalamazoo House: An urban B&B in southwest Michigan

I wrote to a friend in Kalamazoo, Michigan, asking for bed-and-breakfast recommendations when we recently decided to drive across the state for a spur-of-the-moment visit.

We booked a couple of nights at The Kalamazoo House based on her advice and had a wonderful stay at this urban oasis within easy walking distance of a downtown pedestrian mall, dozens of restaurants and stores, art galleries, historic sites, and Bronson Park. The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts is literally steps away from the inn, and guests staying in a couple of the inn's rooms have a spectacular nighttime view of the lighted piece by renown glass artist Dale Chihuly suspended in the museum's lobby.

You should instantly feel at home when you walk into a great B&B, and we instantly felt like cherished friends as innkeeper Laurel Parrott greeted us, showed us to our room, and invited us down to the front porch for the inn's daily social hour.

Elegant antique furnishings and a jewel-tone color palette give the rooms a dignified look without the excessive ruffles and cluttered feeling of some Victorian-era B&Bs. Fully modern features like individual air-conditioning and heating controls in each room and wireless access throughout the house give guests the best of both worlds-vintage and modern.

Plus, starting each day off with a full, cooked-to-order breakfast and ending each evening with a fresh-baked chocolate cookie for a bedtime snack made our stay feel especially homey.

We wandered downstairs after settling into our room to check out the inn's collection of local menus and join Laurel and her husband Terry, along with other inn guests, on the front porch for drinks, snacks, and conversation.

The building in the background is the art museum-it is that close!

Laurel and Terry asked about our preferences, making dinner suggestions, telling us about the house, the town, and things to do in town. We spent a pleasant hour with everyone before setting out on our own to eat dinner, take some photos, and do a little window shopping downtown.

Both of us are history buffs, so we found the history of the house fascinating. Businessman and cigar maker David Lilienfeld built the Queen Anne/Eastlake-style house 1878. The building, like several others in this historic section of the city, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Lilienfeld came to American from Germany in 1860, first working as a clerk at the M. Israel and Company dry goods store.

Israel settled in Kalamazoo in 1843 after falling ill there while working as a traveling salesman. Israel was so impressed with Kalamazoo and opportunities he saw there, that when he returned to Germany to marry, he brought his bride Tilly back to Kalamazoo and persuaded many other young Germans to follow him to southwestern Michigan to seek their own fortunes.

David Lilienfeld and his brother, William, started a cigar store a few years after arriving in America. William moved to Chicago, but David stayed on in Kalamazoo, expanding his shop and becoming a cigar manufacturer.

By the late 1880s, Kalamazoo was one of the country's leading producers of cigars, with nearly 40 firms producing about 150,000 cigars per day. The Lilienfeld Company produced about 2,000,000 cigars per year at this time with 25 employees.

Cigar making in Kalamazoo largely came to an end in 1908 in the wake of worker strikes, and Lilienfeld moved his company to Detroit.

It's easy to imagine the Lilienfelds and their business associates meeting in David's large parlor with its wooden bar and high ceilings. Today the cigar smokers are long gone, but the parlor retains its original opulence.

The parlor is one of the spacious common rooms on The Kalamazoo House's main floor. We found it a nice place to relax and read or watch a bit of television at the end of the day, but the main floor common area is also large enough to book for parties, business meetings or small weddings.

For us, The Kalamazoo House is the perfect place for a relaxing and romantic getaway. We're hoping to return very soon!

I also reviewed this property on Yelp.

Want to learn a bit more about Kalamazoo and its history? Check out Kalamazoo Michigan by David Kohrman, an Arcadia Press book with lots of vintage photos of the city, or Kalamazoo: The Place Behind the Products, an Illustrated History by Peter J. Schmitt, which covers the many of the businesses and people important to Kalamazoo's development (including the Lilienfeld family and Kalamazoo cigar makers).

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Hotel Review
Kalamazoo

Romantic Vacation
Kalamazoo

Photo Friday: Patterns at Port Oneida

We love visiting the northern Michigan ghost town of Port Oneida and imagining about the lives of the rural farmers that called the community home before most earthly residents left the area by the 1930s.

I became particularly enthralled with the patterns formed by the weathered wood of some of the structures like the rough whitewashed siding at some of the homes and the barn wood weathered to a beautiful grey.

The Port Oneida Rural Historic District is part of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, so it pleased me to find this little bear (look closely, do you see in him in the photo below?) checking things out during our last visit there.

Be sure to check out my story about our winter visit to the town, Port Oneida Rural Historic District Celebrates Northern Michigan's Agricultural Heritage, and an account of our recent summer visit, Northern Michigan's Port Oneida Rural Historic District revisited.

Want more details about Port Oneida's history? Check out Farming at the Water's Edge by Marla McEnaney, a National Park Service publication with maps, photos, and old census records.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County, Part Two

Covered bridges are big in Ashtabula County, Ohio, both in the figurative and literal sense of the word "big".

I wrote about the biggest covered bridge in Ashtabula last week in part one of this series, when I shared the story of the Smolen-Gulf covered bridge. The Smolen-Gulf span is the longest covered bridge in the nation, and Ashtabula County's collection of 17 vintage and new covered bridges is one of the largest concentrations of such spans in Ohio and in the country.

I'll share pictures and stories about the rest of the county's covered bridges over coming weeks as the county readies for its annual Covered Bridge Festival in October.

Let's get started with the bridge tour!

• Netcher Road Bridge

  The Netcher Road Bridge in Jefferson Township is one of the county's newer covered bridges, built in 1999 in a "Neo Victorian" style. This 110-foot-long span over Mill Creek features a truss system inspired by engineer Herman Haupt's late-1830s design with a massive double laminated arch bolted to a lattice configuration of lighter timbers.

  
  
  
  
  



• South Denmark Road Bridge

  The 81-foot-long South Denmark Road Bridge in Pierpont Township also spans Mill Creek. Built in 1890, the simple white bridge features Town Lattice construction patented by architect Ithiel Town in 1820 and 1835.Town's lattice system construction uses lighter timbers than the large squared beams used in other bridge construction at the time, saving costs by allowing the use of unskilled labor to work with the more easily moved boards. This bridge sits side-by-side with a more modern iron bridge spanning the creek on a bypass constructed in 1975, although you can turn off of the main road and cross the creek on the old wooden span, too.

  
  
  



• Caine Road Bridge

  The Caine Road Bridge is a 124-foot-long span built in 1986 for Ashtabula County's 175th anniversary. The bridge crosses the Ashtabula River in Pierpont Township and was the first of only a handful of covered bridges in the state featuring a Pratt Truss design. The Smolen-Gulf Bridge also features a Pratt design, a construction capable of handling the heavier loads of modern traffic.

  The Caine Bridge takes its name from the Caine family. Thomas and Margaret Caine came to Ohio from Ireland in the late 1830s and established a farm. The couple is buried in the nearby Evergreen Cemetery with four of their seven children.

  
  
  



• Graham Road Bridge

  The Graham Road Bridge is one of the few covered bridges in the county closed to vehicular traffic. The 97-foot-long Town Truss span originally spanned the Ashtabula River in Pierpont, but moved to a County Metropark in Pierpont Township in 1971. As you can see from my photo, it makes a nice stop for a picnic. This bridge's history predates its 1913 construction, as it features the remnants of an earlier (1867) bridge washed downstream in a major flood during 1913.

  
  
  
  

Note: There is some disagreement among sources for some bridge lengths and/or constructions dates. In those cases, I went with the lengths and dates from the covered bridge festival site.

Be sure to check back here next week for another in my series of posts about the Covered Bridges of Ashtabula County!

Want to learn more about covered bridges in Ohio?

Check out Ohio's Covered Bridges (Postcard History) by Elma Lee Moore. This book contains many images of historic bridges in the state, and includes a photo of the original Graham Road Bridge spanning the Ashtabula River.

Want to tour the county's covered bridges by bicycle? Check out Ride Guide: Covered Bridges of Ohio by Kurt Leib and Steve Butterman. This book details trips for bicyclists that visit 37 of Ohio's covered bridges, including a trip through the eastern leg of the Ashtabula County bridge tour.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Ashtabula

Where I live: Plymouth Whalers' 2010-2011 season home opener

Get set to usher in another autumn and the start of the Plymouth Whalers' hockey season with the team's home opener on Saturday, September 25 against the Barrie (Ontario) Colts at Plymouth's Compuware Arena.

The Plymouth Whalers offer fast-paced and high-quality hockey, not to mention a great alternative to high-priced and hard-to-score NHL or college hockey tickets.

The Whalers are part of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), a Junior Major-level team where 16- to 20-year-old athletes often start their professional careers. The league itself is part of the larger Canadian Hockey League (CHL), which includes teams in Maine, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania and Michigan as well as teams from all over Canada.

I've owned season tickets for the Whalers since the early 1990s (when they started out as the Detroit Ambassadors, then becoming the Detroit Junior Red Wings before moving to Plymouth and becoming the Whalers). I've watched many players in the early stages of their pro careers, before they eventually landed in the National Hockey League. Some of the players I've enjoyed watching as Whalers (or Detroit Junior Wings or Ambassadors) before they played for the NHL include:

• David Legwand

• Chad LaRose

• Pat Peake

• Stephen Weiss

• Todd Harvey

• Robert Esche

• Fred Brathwaite

• Bryan Berard

• James Wisniewski

• Chris Thorburn

Last season was especially exciting, as there were several opportunities to see Whaler Tyler Seguin and Windsor Spitfire Taylor Hall play against each other as excitement built through the season around speculation about how each of these players would fare in the NHL 2010 Draft. Edmonton eventually picked Hall first overall in the draft, with Seguin going to Boston as the second first-round pick.

There really isn't a bad seat in Plymouth's 3,500-seat arena. My center-section aisle seats behind the penalty boxes are a great place to catch a peek of the replays in the off-ice officials' monitor and practice a bit of lip reading as we watch the on-ice officials discuss calls with the team captains. Yes, we're that close to the action, although being near the top of the section also means we're up above the glass a bit for a better view of the game as well.

I think it's pretty difficult to beat the deal with season ticket packages that range from $269 to $399 for 34 games and include parking. Individual game ticket prices range from $11 to $15, and parking costs $5.

Whaler games draw lots of families and groups with affordable tickets and special packages. Birthday parties, special end- zone sections with $5 tickets on selected nights, and four packs (4 tickets, 4 pops, 4 game line-up cards) are just a few of the most family- and budget-friendly options.

Things I enjoy about the Whalers' hockey beyond the great hockey action? Singing both the Canadian and American national anthems before each game (even on nights when two U.S.-based teams play), reasonably priced beer, and fist-bumping or high-fiving the team mascot Shooter when he visits our section.

So, be there on September 25 as the puck drops for the first home game of the Plymouth Whalers' season. We will!

 

Check out the Plymouth Whalers Facebook page for team news and story links.

 

Check out The Memorial Cup: Canada's National Junior Hockey Championship by Richard M. Lapp and Alec Macaulay to learn more about the history of Major Junior hockey and the coveted Memorial Cup awarded in a tournament each year among teams from the Canadian Hockey League. The book offers a year-by-year history of the cup contests from the first one in 1919 through 1997, including the story of the 1995 Memorial Cup final between the then-Detroit Junior Red Wings and the Kamloops Blazers. The book, which I bought a while back for myself, doesn't include more recent years. However, real fans of junior hockey should still find it a fun read with plenty of stats and vintage photos.

 

Note: "Where I live" posts are part of a series of periodic stories about special events and people in, and around, metro Detroit. "Where I live" posts are stories I'll post in addition to my regular schedule of stories about attractions around the larger Midwestern region. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Review: Fairfield Inn & Suites, Notre Dame

We recently took a spur-of-the-moment trip to South Bend, Indiana, to visit the University of Notre Dame and found ourselves staying at a brand-new Fairfield Inn & Suites just across the street from campus.

While we often like to stay at bed-and-breakfast places, country inns, cabins, or some other sort of unique accommodations, staying at a chain is sometimes our best option when we make travel plans at the last moment.

This Fairfield Inn & Suites was open barely a week when we arrived for a two-night stay, something we didn't know before we booked the room. Workers scurried around doing last-minute work in the lobby while we were there, but our stay was glitch-free in spite of the newness of the property.

The room decor was decidedly sleek, modern, and colorful compared to the generic beige furnishings you often encounter at chains. Photos and artwork in the room featuring the Notre Dame campus further helped give this motel a little sense of local identity.

The king-sized bed took up much of the space in the bedroom portion of our "executive suite", but the sitting area was like a comfortable little living room. I appreciated the fact we didn't have to compete for the one couch or chair standard in many motel rooms.

Our room was on the first floor and facing a main street, but we found it surprisingly quiet. Traffic noise wasn't a problem, and we didn't even hear much of the heavy rain and thunderstorms that blew through one of the nights we stayed there.

Breakfast was your pretty standard hotel, pre-packaged buffet. The best bet? The pre-packaged sausage sandwiches were a decent choice for a quick, warm breakfast.

As always, we appreciated the free wireless access so we could log on to check email or search for information about our destinations.

(As an aside, motels and hotels charging for wireless access seems to be a major peeve among frequent travelers. Charging for access is a deal-breaker with us if we have any other choice, so I still have no idea why so many places still insist on charging extra for what should be a basic amenity these days.)

The pool was small, but I appreciated the fact that I didn't have to sneak through the lobby in my bathing suit in order to take a dip.

This Fairfield Inn & Suites is part of a larger mixed-use development also featuring residential and retail. We found only a few stores and restaurants open at Eddy Commons during our as construction continued on the development, but being able to walk a just a couple of blocks to eat at a pub, grab some quick carry-out food to bring back to your room, or shop the Notre Dame satellite bookstore for college souvenirs was especially handy.

I'd guess this place should become popular with folks coming in for events at Notre Dame, especially for football fans coming in for a game. Parking is free at the Fairfield, and you can easily walk to campus (you can see the football stadium from the motel).

Check out my stories from last week about our visit to Notre Dame's campus, Back to school at Indiana's University of Notre Dame and Photo Friday: O'Shag Hall at Indiana's University of Notre Dame. I also reviewed this property on Yelp.

 

Want to learn a little more about South Bend and its history? Check out South Bend Indiana (Images of America) by Kay Mernon Danielson, which I picked up in the satellite bookstore next to the motel, or South Bend in Vintage Postcards by John Palmer.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Hotel Review
South Bend