Seabiscuit
Day 118 – July 27, 2003 – Sunday
We rested today.
When we were trying to find a motel room yesterday, we learned that Buick was having its 100th Anniversary Celebration in Flint, Michigan this weekend. The parking lot at the Marriott was literally full of classic Buicks when we checked in late last night, so we decided to go to the Buick Gallery & Research Center and the Sloan Museum to help them celebrate.
As it turned out, the big event was yesterday, so we missed a lot of the action, but we enjoyed seeing the Gallery and the Museum. The Gallery did not have nearly as many cars as the local Flint promo brochure indicated, but the Sloan Museum made up for it. The Sloan exhibit was an exceptionally well done walk through the history of Flint, and Buick has been a big part of Flint’s history.
After the Museum, we cruised around Flint looking for a place to eat. We passed franchise after franchise, and we finally found a local place with a parking lot full of cars. Venus Family Restaurant. We’ve stopped at a few restaurants over the last 118 days where the parking lot was full of cars, but there weren’t many folks inside. Venus Family Restaurant was packed. The servings were huge. We enjoyed Coconut Cream Pie for dessert. We enjoyed talking with Penny, Mary Ann, and Wendy — owner, waitress, and cashier. www.venus-family-restaurant.com
We drove from Flint to Detroit — about 60 miles. It took us longer to drive through Detroit — one of those cities where you seem to drive and drive and drive and see little or nothing and have trouble finding what you are looking for.
After Tiffany helped us get checked into the Marriott Courtyard, we went online to find the nearest theater showing “Seabiscuit.” Boz has said it is the most enjoyable book she has ever read, and she had been waiting for it to hit the theaters. We went to the Showcase Cinema in Westland, Michigan.
“Seabiscuit” was absolutely wonderful. It’s heartwarming and inspirational — a tearjerker. We both loved it. What a great, true story.
It was quite a coincidence to find that Buick played a significant part in the “Seabiscuit” story.
The lesson for the day is that if you have a big heart, you can accomplish great things.
The Daily Journal of Round America:
Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.
You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.