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Published: July 31st 2009
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Henry's 1st motorized carriage.Hello again, On monday we had to move our trailer. I went to the shop yesterday to see if we could stay another couple of days. She said sure but someone is booked to come into your site for 3 days right behind you. So we packed up and moved to different part of the park with no sewage hook up now. No biggy then we drove to Toronto again. Found a park in a parking building and went to the Eaton center shopping mall. Its got over 250 shops and over a million people go through there a week. 2 levels above ground and 2 below, An awesome curved glass roof that has to be at least 700m long along the main shopping area was incredible.So while the girls went one way the boys went the other. Met for a gluten free lunch out the back of the car in a carparking building, uumm nice !! Then Josh and I decided to go the movies for the afternoon while the girls kept shopping. We went and saw some dodgy movie called 'survelance' that Josh probably shouldn't have watched but when you choose it from a poster on the wall ,
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Log cabin travel trailer. what do you expect. By the end of the movie everyone had been shot, strangled, beaten to death and there was only 3 people still left in the movie. Not my kind of movie !! The mall was quite an up market one so I think the girls had to look more than buy, but as usual they found something to spend their money on. Both kids found some books that they liked , so thats got to be better than watching dvd's .As usual we didnt get out of there until 5.30pm, hit the traffic, another thunder storm !! It doesn't seem to just get normal rain here. I guess its that time of year, but everytime we have had rain its been a thunder storm and they are good ones too. The thunder just keeps on rolling, I tried to catch it on the video a few times but thats harder than you think to.
Tuesday we got up early for us 7.00am and were on the road by 8am. We headed west back into USA into Detroit. It took about 3.5hrs across really nice rolling farm land. Most of the farms up here and in up state
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Front of the 'Henry Ford museum'. New York all have the huge red barns with the big silo beside it. One guy was filling the top of his barn with conventional hay bales as we drove past. The conveyor belt to get them up there had to be 50m long. The barns from what I can see are about 3 stories high inside them. A animal area at ground level.A feed storage area above then more storage in the loft. In winter time when the farm is completely covered in snow they have to be able to feed their animals for months inside there. Alot of their houses are two storied houses too, some with double garage doors all in one structure, for that same reason. When it snows you dont really want to be going from building to building . So you might as well be all under one roof. A lot of places have a snow plough parked around the side of the barn or the house, thats the one you put on the front of the truck to make a path down the road for your wife to go shopping !!
Soo we go over the bridge , through the customs part and
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Josh and Tori working on the line producing model T fords. we get off the motor way, Woooo culture shock !!! The recession has hit hard in different parts of the country, Kylies book said Detroit has a 90% black population and alot of them used to work in the manual labour industries that have struggled for the last few years. Run down buildings, some falling down.A real dodgy neighbourhood to drive through, then we get to the Henry Ford Museum. Head inside and book to go on the 'Rougue factory tour' and then come back and go through the museum. We catch a bus that leaves every 20 mins. Back in the early 1900's Henry ford had 2000 acres of land. Its now down to about 600 acres. So the rogue is a short bus trip away. 90 acres is part of the museum !! So we go and watch a short movie about the history of 'Henry '. About 1907 Henry was working for Thomas Edison (yeh the lightbulb guy) in a factory for him as an engineer. At the time a lot of people were trying to build powered carriages. So Henry built one in the garage at home. In about 1910 he decided to leave his job
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Kylie and I on the bus. and start up a small company with about 15 guys and build these things. He went broke! about 2 years later he tried again, He went broke again. then in about 1917 he started the ' Ford motor company' and we all know what that is today. The difference between Henrys cars and other cars that were being made at the time was he decided to mass produce them. Cars were taking 15 guys , one day to make. Henry built a factory and employed like 4000 guys and they could built a model T every 90 mins. Then about 10 years later in the 1920's he built the biggest factory of its kind at the time. 'A one stop shop', he wanted a site that could have the raw products shipped in , made into the parts he needed and then make his cars all in one place. " The Rogue" was born. He employed 100,000 men to work there. It had its own hospital, police force, 3 fire stations, etc. He put an add in the paper that he would pay all his workers $5 / hr . At the time most workers of that nature were getting
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Tori in Miley's car. $2.50/hr. Train loads of people came from all over the country to work and live there. Boring , repetitive work, some parts of it were dangerous. But you had a good job and you were earning pretty good money. A lot of the workers went from lower class to working class citizens. They could now afford a car themselves.( Can you tell I watched the Ford ra ra ra movie) Henry had a problem with the unions as most of those sort of places do. As the unionists were handing out propagander to the workers as they walked to work one day. Henry sent in some thugs to sort them out, problem was there were some newspaper journalists there and caught it all on camera, Bugger !! once all the shit had hit the fan , he had to sign them up and the Unions and Ford merged. In WW2 Ford changed from making cars to making parts for planes, jeeps, anything to do with the war. A lot of the men went to war so the women filled in on the production line. We went into the F150 production line. You get to walk around at your own time
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Simon and Littl e professor. above the factory floor watching the staff do their little piece of the jigsaw puzzle. We watched one guy put the capping on the tailgate, put in 2 plastic plugs then the Ford emblem, then the F150 badge on then walk to the next tailgate that was coming along. yep yep yep I cant see any of us rushing to go and work there. Quite interesting to watch thou as it goes along and you see different parts getting done. One robot part puts the cab body together with the back half of the truck.that was cool to watch. then the hooter went and they all get 12 mins for a smoko break or a coffee.
We caught the bus back to the museum and it is huge. Not all Ford stuff like I thought it would be but stuff Henry Ford collected. Now the Ford museum collects it. The car that JFK got shot in, president reagans car. The bus that ' Rosa Parks' got arrested on in Atlanta. When blacks were spose to get up for the whites, she refused and got arrested which was a major turning point of the segregation protests. Tori got her photo taken
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The bus that 'Rosa Parks' was on. in 'Miley Cirus's' car that she went touring in somewhere. They had an area of the 80's. It had a typical kids bedroom. that was a laugh.They had the game 'Simon' in there. I had one of those. the round one with 4 1/4's that used to like up in different sequences and you had to remember them. they had the Atari game that you plugged into your tv and it had 2 control knobs on it and 2 players could control the paddles that went up and down to play tennis on it. It was a break thru of games in those days. We spent hours in there looking at trains, cars, all sorts of stuff.We didnt even get to the 90 acres of buildings and other stuff they have in there. You can see why they say to allow 2 days to go thru the museum. So then it was back over the border , had tea at some little town on the way home and got back about 10.30pm.
Wednesday we shot down to Cambridge to get some cough medicine as Im dying and the rest of them know all about it. Then we packed up and
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Kylie and Tori on the paddle boats. headed south, across the border back into the US for the second time in 2 days. Just kept driving to see how far we got before stopping somewhere. We weren't going to do the long haul we had on the way up there. Got as far as Binghamton NY. Found a campground on the GPS. It was in the middle of no where. What a beautiful little spot, its a campsite around a lake. 400m by 200m . We parked up , had tea and went to bed as it was still raining.
Thursday we woke up to an awesome clear sky day. So we hired a coup[le of the pedal boats that they have there and went for a ride. After that Kylie and the kids decided to go for a swim in the roped off area of the lake. They got as far as their waists and the guy on the lawn mower came over and told them to get out as you can only swim while there is a life gaurd on patrol. Whatever !! So they came back had some lunch and packed up and left. Got to Ross and Christa's about 5.30pm. Thats way better
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The campground in NY. than one big haul. Ross went to the races tonight so we just hung out with Christa. her and I went and fed up the horses and put them out for the night. They made some more bread, that takes acouple of hours . But its definately worth it. Went onto Amazon and ordered some more so we dont run out for the next few months. Plugged the trailer in and it popped the breaker !! Its not that hot here about 30. But really sticky, high humidity. so I shot down to the local hardware shop and bought a bigger circuit breaker as I'd tried plugging into different power points but nothing worked. So after a little electrical work we now have a/c in the trailer for the night. yeh baby.
Did you know if you click on one of the photos , It will make them larger to see and from there you can look at the photos one after another.
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McAsey Family
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Update
Hi Guys Finally have sat down and caught up on your exciting adventures. Wow Paul your entries have been full of info and it feels like we are right with you. Your tips have helped us here as well, so I'm off to look for the Lets Go book you mentioned. Send us your cell phone number to our e-mail address so we can exchange numbers. We are still experiencing very warm weather here in Texas. We are all looking more like locals now we have browned up nicely. Great to hear from you all Regards McAsey Family