We started off our overnight travel by going on a bus tour.  This was a first for us.  We booked a 7 day / 6 night Conestoga Bus Tour that stopped at stopped at various locations in Michigan with the highlight being a couple days on Mackinac Island.  There were other places visited along the way…

A- Henry Ford Museum
One of the major stops was the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn Michigan. The museum contains an overwhelming amount of stuff to see and photograph so I narrowed things down to the three “scenes” shown here.

1) The cir. 1960 McDonalds Golden Arches sign that came from Madison Heights Michigan. This sign brought back memories of the one located in Newington Connecticut back in the day. We were in high school at the time and cruised by it often for those 15c burgers. 

2) We like these historic diners and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to stop for lunch at Lamy’s Diner (cir. 1946). It reminded us of one that used to be outside of Reading PA that now resides in a nearby museum. 

3) We got married in August 1969 and purchased our first car several months later. That car was a 1969 Toyota Corona just like the one pictured except ours was green.
  

B- Riding in a Model-T
Greenfield Village was adjacent to the Henry Ford Museum.  The village was made up of several historic structures.  Some were original and some were replicas.  One unique thing about the village is being able go for a ride in one of several antique cars. In our case it was a 1923 Model-T convertible. The driver was very informative and described structures along the way. This was great because our time was limited and we wanted to make the most of it.
  

C- Mackinac Island
The highlight of our Conestoga Bus Tour was a 2-night stop on Mackinac Island in Michigan. It’s an island so we had to leave the bus behind and go over via ferry boat. Stepping onto the island is like stepping back in time as ALL transport is via horse drawn wagons. Everything was horse drawn… hotel shuttles, taxis, and even cargo. A truly unique environment.
  

D- Tulips, Tulips, Tulips
Our Conestoga Bus tour included a number of stops, two of which were to tulip gardens in the Holland Michigan area. The first was to the Veldheer Tulips Garden which boasts 5 MILLION tulips. All of the beds were numbered so we could look up the type in the booklet they gave us. They even included a pencil so we could jot down the numbers to purchase bulbs in the store. The second stop was to Windmill Island Gardens which has the 249 year old DeZwann Windmill. We made a trip into the windmill.
  

E- Christmas Shop
Our Conestoga Bus Tour made an overnight stop in Frankenmuth Michigan which gave us some time to spend a Bronner’s Christmas Store. It’s billed as a “Christmas Wonderland” which, without a doubt, it is. The place was big and the clips shown in this video only shows a fraction of the space. I spent my 1-1/2 hours wandering around in awe at what was available. Eventually I went off in search of cat themed decorations. I kept saying to myself, “I saw them somewhere…”. Kathy eventually found a Cat Nutcracker but the cost scared us away.
  

F- Dune Buggy Ride
The tour included a number of stops, one of which was for a ride on some sand dunes in western Michigan. Rides were conducted by Saugatuck Dune Rides in Saugatuck MI. We called the vehicles a “dune buggy” but they referred to them as a “dune schooner”. The entire trip took about 40 minutes with an informative and entertaining driver. Trees once on the dunes were stripped away which caused the topsoil to disappear leaving the bare dunes to undergo a changing topography as winds blew. As you’ll see in the video, topsoil and grasses are returning which holds everything together. The forested areas we drove through were referred to as “dead dunes” because topsoil, grasses, and trees have pretty much stabilized the topography.