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The Michigan Road


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Jim,

 

I agree with Alex!

 

And I just have to get to Indiana. BTW, The sidetrip to Plymouth was nothing short of spectacular.

 

I can see that you have successfully claimed the Michigan Road and are now the authority. It will be fun to follow your path as the good consequences develop. I bet it will be great fun, and you are young and talented enough to follow the trail its full length.

 

Dave

 

Keep the Show on the Road!

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Plymouth is a real gem among Indiana small cities. Even though all the highways bypassed it long ago, people have cared for the city pretty well.

 

But make no mistake; Indiana's small cities and small towns are all in decline. In Indiana, only the Indianapolis metro area is growing, in population and economy. The entire rest of the state is shrinking.

 

My guess is that in 10 years, towns like Argos will be a shadow of what they are today -- which is a shadow of what they were 20 years ago.

 

jim

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Today has been a Plymouth day. This morning I learned about that Montgomery Ward store then at noon, from my lunch time reading of "On the Road to Yellowstone", I learned that the Yellowstone trail passed through there. Of course, so did the final route of the Lincoln Highway and the Northern Connector of the Dixie Highway.

 

Dave, the Yellowstone Trail passed right through your neighborhood. You could easily pick it up around Ellensburg or Yakima and trace it all the way to Plymouth, Indiana. Give us a little warning and maybe Jim, Pat, & I could meet you for lunch.

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A post about the YT from my cohort in Plymouth:

 

http://hoosierhappenings.blogspot.com/2008...ellowstone.html

 

Too bad Schoop's closed in Plymouth; Pat tells me they were worth a visit. We'll have to find another spot for lunch when Dave jaunts on out.

 

 

Who'es buying? :rolleyes:

 

Dave

 

Keep the Show on the Road!

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Who'es buying? :rolleyes:

 

Dave

 

Keep the Show on the Road!

I'll buy. I do owe you lunch and I can probably clip enough Happy Meal coupons before you get here to cover everybody. Of course, I'll have to withdraw the offer if my transmission goes out between now and then. :)

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"Penguin Point, we're gonna put a smile on your face

At Penguin Point, the people pleasin' place! Yeah!"

 

Or so went the jingle in the 1970s TV commercials. They're a small chain in smaller north-central Indiana cities. Despite growing up more or less up there, I've never eaten at a Penguin Point!

 

Schoop's: Sign's even gone. Waaay closed.

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It's more or less done.

 

I mean, I have to go back through the whole thing and clean up all my typos, and fill in some missing research, and add a couple postcard images I got since I wrote the pages.

 

But all the photos are laid in to every county along the route. Man alive.

 

http://jimgrey.net/Roads/MichiganRoad/13_St_Joseph.htm

http://jimgrey.net/Roads/MichiganRoad/14_La_Porte.htm

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Reading over your Michigan Road post this morning - in the St. Joseph section you wrote:

 

"I think that this ceased to be a highway when US 31 was expanded to four lanes in northern Indiana. It's not clear to me why Quinn Trail was left behind; it seems like it would have been possible to expand this road to four lanes."

 

If you look at the map you posted with that showing the alignment Quinn Trail/US 31 the answer seems obvious - Quinn Trail curves, 31 doesn't. They simply straightened the right of way to by-pass the curve of Quinn Trail. As nature abhors a vacuum, highway engineers abhor curves!!!! :lol:

 

"To follow the Michigan Road, turn left onto Western Ave. and then immediately right onto Michigan St., where you are greeted with this scene. As someone who grew up with that awful pedestrian mall, it is very gratifying to see all the cars here.

This early 1950s postcard is from about the same place." I wonder where all those Studebakers came from!!!! :D

 

I love seeing all those beautiful Victorian homes. They have a very graceful look about them.

 

Tomorrow I'll get to the next leg of your trip. I'm catching up with you. LOL

 

Hudsonly,

Alex Burr

Memphis, TN

Edited by Alex Burr - hester_nec
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Nicely done and the perfect opening for some South Bend questions.

 

I'll likely be doing an overnight in that area in the next month or two. Are any of the three local motels you show (South Bend, Lincolnwood, Kenrose) recommended or are there others that are? Is the remaining Bonnie Doon an ice cream stand, a sandwich shop, or something else? Are there other worthwhile local eateries?

 

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Alex, South Bend is rich in well-kept older homes along some of its grand avenues and boulevards. And Studebakers were common in South Bend even through my 1970s kidhood, even though the plant had been closed for years. As for Quinn Trail, maybe it is just that simple: they wanted a straighter route.

 

Denny, it's been 24 years since I've lived in South Bend, but I'll help as much as I can. I have heard that the South Bend Motel is decent, but that's old info. I grew up near this motel and in all the years I lived there it always looked well kept, for whatever that's worth. I don't know anything about the Lincolnwood or the Kenrose. There's also the Drake Motel on South 31, south of the South Bend Motel.

 

As for local eateries, my family used to really enjoy Barnaby's, a pizza/sandwich place on East Jefferson Blvd. near downtown(http://www.southbendbarnabys.com/). People say Bruno's (www.brunospizza.com/), another local pizza place, makes better pizza, but I loved the crispy edges on Barnaby's pepperoni a ton. Even though it's been 25 years since I've eaten there, friends in town say it's still as good. Hacienda is a local, homegrown chain of Mexican eateries and their signature "wet burrito" is really good (http://www.haciendafiesta.com/). If you're looking for something a little nicer, the East Bank Emporium (http://www.eastbankemporium.com/Emp/index.html) overlooks the East Race of the St. Joseph River and you can walk along the river from there. The downtown river walk is nice if the weather cooperates -- there's a series of paths and an old railroad bridge turned into a pedestrian walkway to take you over the river. South Bend has some wonderful bridges downtown, all done in the City Beautiful style and, IIRC, many designed by George Kessler himself; you can see them best from the river walk. IIRC, the river walk even follows, or runs right next to, the Lincoln Highway's original downtown path in spots -- the road has long been torn out next to the river.

 

If you want dessert and coffee, the South Bend Chocolate Cafe (http://www.sbchocolate.com/locations.html) is on Michigan St. There are a number of bars and restaurants along Michigan and Main Sts. downtown, more than I have ever been able to experience. As for Bonnie Doon's, I haven't been to one since before the one on South Michigan St. closed, but my understanding that the one surviving store on Lincolnway in Mishawaka still does car service, still serves food, and still does ice cream -- your basic drive-in. My mom says the ice cream isn't as good as it once was, but it's still the brand she buys (you can get it at local grocery stores).

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Looks like I could be hanging around South Bend for several days just eating. :D

 

Bonnie Doon sounds like the right sort of place particularly if the weather is conducive to car service and all the others sound good, too. A friend had mentioned hearing of some river related areas downtown. The Riverwalk Park is obviously it and sounds very cool. The Kenrose is in about the right location so I'll probably check it out before the others and use the Super 8 as a safety net if none of the independents looks good.

 

Big thanks for the advise.

 

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  • 1 year later...

I had the opportunity to hear mobilene's Michigan Road presentation tonight. It was very professional and well-done. We had a reasonably good-sized crowd in Wanamaker who appeared to be very supportive of promoting byway recognition.

 

Here you can see him here in 3D as he was preparing to begin our virtual coast-to-coast journey through Indiana.

 

4968990385_a49860e8c4_z.jpg

 

Great job!

Chris

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I had the opportunity to hear mobilene's Michigan Road presentation tonight. It was very professional and well-done. We had a reasonably good-sized crowd in Wanamaker who appeared to be very supportive of promoting byway recognition.

 

Here you can see him here in 3D as he was preparing to begin our virtual coast-to-coast journey through Indiana.

 

4968990385_a49860e8c4_z.jpg

 

Great job!

Chris

 

Chris,

 

Thanks for the 3D photo of Jim, and the report on the virtual coast to coaster! He looks like a "natural" at the presentation.

 

Dave

 

Keep the Show on the Road.

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Thanks for the 3D photo of Jim, and the report on the virtual coast to coaster! He looks like a "natural" at the presentation.

 

The 3D was for you, Dave... thought it would show the depth of the presentation.

 

So a 'biway' is a road that has oncoming traffic, right? Otherwise it would be a 'one-way'.

 

Chris

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Hey, at least the reporter used "historical" right -- I kept using "historic" when "historical" was the better choice in that context.

 

That wasn't just any reporter....you got Debby Knox! She's been at WISH-TV I think since I was in junior high. Has there been anything said recently regarding changing the actual name of Michigan Road to MLK in the rest of Marion County? I recall a few years ago it looked like it was going to happen, but the idea seemed to disappear when Bart Peterson lost his mayoral election.

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Debby Knox worked at WSJV in South Bend/Elkhart when I was growing up. I was kind of surprised to see her on TV here in Indy when I moved here!

 

I've heard nada, zip, zilch about changing MR's name to MLK. I'm for the idea of having an MLK-named road somewhere outside the ghetto, but obviously not at the cost of losing the MR name.

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I had the opportunity to hear mobilene's Michigan Road presentation tonight. It was very professional and well-done. We had a reasonably good-sized crowd in Wanamaker who appeared to be very supportive of promoting byway recognition.

 

Here you can see him here in 3D as he was preparing to begin our virtual coast-to-coast journey through Indiana.

 

4968990385_a49860e8c4_z.jpg

 

Great job!

Chris

 

Totally off topic, and not consistent with the forum objectives, I was struck by the laptop in front of Jim. It brought to mind the only photo I have of myself "at work" when I was a "director of data processing" (IT today I suppose) in 1967, sitting at the console of an IBM 1130, my old "laptop."

 

The shot is entirely staged because no one ever sat at the console, and the keyboard and character printer in front of me were almost never used. Input was via punch cards, and there was a separate line printer

 

What isn't in the photo is the printer and the 1442 card read punch (it read and punched cards, thus the name). Each was about the size of the console in the photo, which contained the CPU, hard drive (1Mb!!!) and core memory (8K!!!!).

 

The printer ran at 80 lines per minute, and took so much CPU time that no serious computing could go on while the printer was operating. In case 80 lines per minute isn't clear, imagine your laser printer outputting about a page a minute, of course with no graphics or color.

 

The CPU ran at about 3 micro seconds per cycle or 330,000 cycles pre second. My laptop runs at about 2 gigahertz, or 2,000,000,000 cycles per second

 

The 1130 cost about $40,000 in 1965 or the equivalent of $275,000 today.

 

Jim was packing a machine to his presentation that was thousands of times more powerful and I assume cost much less!

 

(To make this relate in some way to the forum, let's speculate that the average automobile today packs several times the computing power of that old 1130!)

 

AR1130.jpg

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