Toledo Day Trip August 2022

Bus trips. Some people hate them, some people love them. I've been on quite a few and my preference is to keep the length of these trips to less than a week. Single day trips are really terrific especially if you don't feel like making the drive from here to there with no stops along the route. However, in my mind these do not replace the standard day trips I love where I tend to wander off the beaten path while making my way to a destination of choice for the day. Or, if it's someplace I feel uncomfortable driving around in like a larger metropolitan area (although there aren't really too many of those within driving distance of my home).

So it was that I found myself on a day trip via bus to Toledo this lovely August day. A couple of friends, a fun destination and copious strangers out for a good time made for a fun trip. This time we were on a privately chartered bus filled with ORMACO members. This group doesn't do a ton of these types of trips and I wish they would, we really had a great time. 

The bus ride was just over 2 hours each way. Once we arrived in Toledo, we stopped at the Maumee Bay Brewing Company for lunch.   Established in 1995, the Maumee Bay Brewing Co. is Toledo’s original craft brewery and can be found within the Oliver House, a former 19th-century hotel.  Maumee Bay Brewing is now a great pub and event center. 

Between the bar and the event section is a quirky little courtyard where we stumbled upon live entertainment by the name of Andrew Ellis. Mr. Ellis caught my ear with his gravelly baritone and one man band style of folk and blues. One drawback to traveling with the bus is that we are destined to eat with the crowd we came with. If we had been on our own, my choice would have been to settle in the courtyard to enjoy lunch and the live entertainment, but this is one great reason to plan another trip to Toledo and just one "to do" for the list of reasons to return.

After lunch we headed directly to the Toledo Museum of Art where we spent a leisurely 3 hours wandering the various galleries, a visit to the Glass Pavilion across the street, plus a stroll around the grounds where there are sculptures scattered about. The TMA describes it best from their website: Over nearly a century, the Toledo Museum of Art campus has grown from a single building to an architecturally significant campus that is a highlight of the city. With six buildings on nearly 40 acres, our campus offers Neoclassical, Art Deco, and contemporary architecture, as well as green space and a sculpture garden, all surrounded by the celebrated Victorian homes of Toledo’s Old West End neighborhood. Next door to the main building is The Center for the Visual Arts (CVA) which was designed in 1992 by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank O. Gehry. There wasn't time today to visit but next time this is a must see. 

Also off limits for the day due to a private event, as part of the Museum’s 1933 expansion, architect Edward B. Green designed the Peristyle Theater. A classical concert hall whose name means “an area surrounded by columns,” the Peristyle’s most distinguishing architectural feature is a curving row of 28 Ionic columns, which surround the main seating area, arranged in tiers reminiscent of theaters of ancient Greece. Inspired by a Greek agora, the two-story Peristyle lobby is animated by a painted Greek frieze. Everyone says this is a striking theater, sadly we weren't able to judge for ourselves today.

Toledo’s image as the Glass City of the US was firmly established by the time of TMA’s founding in 1901, based on a spate of inventions across the glass industry—bottles, window glass, tableware, windshields, and construction materials. Glass industrialist Edward Drummond Libbey spearheaded the initiative to improve the education of local craftsmen and designers by assembling a model glass collection. Throughout his lifetime Libbey continued to acquire systematically formed collections of high repute from both abroad and from the U.S. Today, TMA’s American glass holdings rank among the principal collections in the field, with objects of exceptional quality and historical importance.

With the opening of the TMA Glass Pavilion in 2006, Toledo acquired a state-of-the-art facility to house, care for, study, and display its renowned glass collection.

One additional "to do" when I return to Toledo will be to browse the neighborhood where the TMA is located, the Old West End. We bribed the bus driver to take a circuitous route through the  neighborhood where we viewed some lovely old Victorian homes in varying states of disrepair and renovation. 

While this Old Biddy has a long list of "places to visit", Toledo will assuredly be on it. 

To view the rest of my photos from this trip click here.

Blissfield MI - OLD BIDDY ESCAPES ACROSS STATE LINES - October 2010

This past week found this old biddy, not only in Cleveland, but also sneaking across the state line on a bus tour to Michigan.

A co-worker asked if I’d be interested in spending a day on this trip that was billed as a Fall Foliage Excursion. Heck, someone else driving – a day playing hooky from work – a short train ride for lunch – plus a little shopping – of course I said yes.

I took plenty of ribbing about going on a “blue-haired” bus trip, but my response is pretty much, "if it weren’t for the diligence of my Hair Dude John, I’d BE one of those blue-haired old ladies."

Boarding the 1940's
vintage restored
dining car for lunch

So on a Monday morning in October, we rendezvoused at the AAA offices in Akron and boarded a deluxe motor coach with our driver Mac, tour guide Eric, and about 50 other folks, and headed on out to Blissfield Michigan. In Blissfield we boarded the Blissfield & Adrian train for a leisurely chug through the countryside while we were served a terrific lunch of Chicken Marsala, rice pilaf and green beans. During lunch we were entertained by a troupe of actors attempting to do a Murder Mystery entitled “Pet Shop Murder”. We never really got much of a plot to this mainly because we were a little busy laughing at the actors and their characters, particularly Miss Muffin who was maybe just a little larger than life (in so very many ways). The actors kept losing their places and forgetting lines, but it was all in good fun and everyone was happy just to be having an enjoyable afternoon.

Although the train never topped a cruising speed of 7 miles per hour, we did enjoy the trip. The dining car was a nicely restored vintage 1940’s, the service was excellent, and the food was delicious.

After our rail journey, we hopped back aboard our motor coach and headed to Dundee Michigan where we stopped at Silver Bells, a Christmas shop that seemed a little out of season on this crisp, sunny day. From holiday ornaments to Fenton glassware, this shop was brimming with items begging to be taken home for the holidays.

This walkway was 10 feet under
water during the flood of 2009

We then hopped back on the bus for a short jaunt to downtown Dundee and the Swan Candle Outlet shop. I wandered a bit astray of our group and took a little walk down by the Raisin River front. Hard to believe that the entire area was flooded just a year ago and hit hard by a tornado earlier in 2010. Where I had walked underneath the bridge was covered with water by the flood, I’d guess nearly 15 feet over normal river height.

After our hour shopping at the candle outlet, we rode over to the Russell Stover chocolate outlet and the St. Julian Winery on the other side of town. Shopping for chocolate on the cheap is always a good idea and discovering a new wine or two isn’t a bad thing either.

Contrary to the opinion expressed by those that were mocking this trip (not to name names here Dan and Alan!)...there were at least 9 men in the bus besides all the women.  I was going to state that they were all older than Methuselah, but I'm getting a little to long in the tooth to make that particular remark. 

POST PHOTO TRAUMA
The young folks over at the Akron Digital Media Center have been asking me to produce videos with the stories I'm writing.... and frankly it's a difficult task for me since I'm 1) not steady with a camera and 2) not technically gifted and 3) sort of shy about that sort of thing in general.  HOWEVER, the other day they mentioned that the same effect could be had by stringing together a bunch of photos and I had an Ah-ha moment.  Photos I can (and do) do. 

So after a week of trial and error with the Microsoft Movie Maker program and a bunch of pictures I took while in Michigan I strung together my first video.  Speilberg is in no danger of being replaced anytime soon.  I image that the 2-year old at the ADMC could do better, but hey - I gave it a shot.  So...here you are....