We're now having some down time at Lucy's in Grants Pass after our fairly hectic road trip - Chicago - Detroit - Cleveland - Niagara - Toronto. Five US states and 2 countries in 12 days.
The music part involved visits to the historic Chess Studios and to Buddy Guy's Legends club in Chicago; Motown in Detroit and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland - all excellent. We stayed in 4 lovely hotels and a nice apartment (Niagara) - the best of them was the first one, the Blackstone in Chicago.
We were impressed with the US cities - Chicago and Cleveland both looking very smart and tidy, and even Detroit was looking good on the waterfront. Less favourable was Toronto which was full of high rise buildings, having apparently demolished many of their classic old buildings. Niagara-on-the-Lake was very pretty and the Falls themselves are special but the surroundings make Blackpool look classy. Tacky is not a strong enough word.
We almost crossed with Barry and Helen who were in Toronto and Niagara just a few days beforehand. We'll catch up with them again next week when they arrive in Oregon. We also weren't all that far from Dawn and Meghan and family when we passed through New York state - they were on vacation north of the Big Apple.
Apart from one fairly cool day in Detroit, the weather has been great - warm and sunny but not too hot.
Now, some photographs from our trip so far - hopefully mostly ones that haven't been posted on Facebook or WhatsApp:
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| The Blackstone - our historic hotel in Chicago |
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| Lunch at a pizza restaurant on the Chicago river |
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| Selfie on our boat trip on Lake Michigan |
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| A classic US city scene - overhead rail and external fire escape in Chicago |
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| Inside the legendary Studio A at Motown where all the magic happened |
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| Rehydrating at Southern Tier brewpub after our visit to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland |
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| Looking over at America from the Skylon Tower, Niagara |
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| One of the boats approcahing the Horseshoe falls |
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| Another silly Niagara photo |
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| Selfie above the Horseshoe falls |
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| Our rental car and the house we stayed in at Niagara - our appartment was accessed through the car port |
That's about all for now - Toronto was so uninteresting that I don't have any more photos that haven't already been published - I didn't even take any from our bus sightseeing tour, but we did enjoy the wonderful St. Lawrence market so I've pinched this external view from the web:
