We've gone into Detroit once or twice a week since the first week in February. This has been enlightening and delightful. We've met a lot of terrific people whom we hope we'll get to know better and better in the years to come. Our destinations have included Avalon Breads, the D:Hive, the River Rouge Plant, the Detroit Institute of Art, Kidpreneur, Earthworks Urban Farm, Cass Tech, Detroit City FC, Jefferson Avenue, the Friends School, the Heidelberg Project's installation on the east side of the city we well as its studio and offices off Woodward Avenue, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Detroit Artists' Market, Los Galanes restaurant in Mexicantown, and that statue of Joe Louis' fist.
Soon, however, we'll be leaving urban life behind, for the very wide and very open spaces of the Upper Peninsula and the Great Lakes.
Our Spring Trip will take place from Tuesday, May 27 to Saturday, May 31. Jayonne Wynne from our lunch and Aftercare crew has agreed to join us as a second chaperone. Unlike last year, the seventh and eighth graders will be embarking upon a different adventure than the fifth and sixth graders. Revisiting the themes of The Odyssey and Explorers of the World, the heart of the 7-8 trip will comprise four maritime voyages on four different vessels on three different Great Lakes.
We'll leave from SK on the morning of Tuesday, May 27, and head up I-75 to Saginaw Bay. Around lunchtime, we will set out, like Gilligan, on a three-hour tour, albeit on a much more reliable ship than the Minnow: the Appledore IV, a schooner out of Bay City that plies the waters of Lake Huron.
Here's a link to more information about the Appledore fleet: http://www.baysailbaycity.org/
From there, we will pile back on the bus and head up the freeway across the Mackinac Bridge. Once we're in the Upper Peninsula, we'll turn west on Route 2 for a few minutes and settle in at my family's house on the northern shore of Lake Michigan--the same place where we camped way back in September. After spending the night there, we'll set out the next morning, May 28, on a short tour of the nearby shoreline on a small collection of kayaks, canoes, and rowboats.
Then it's back on the bus for a drive across the UP to Houghton, where Michigan Tech University is located. We will settle in our guest rooms at Michigan Tech, have some dinner, and tour the campus and town. The following day, May 29, after a morning hike, we will set out on the SS Agassiz with graduate instructors from Tech for some marine research on Lake Superior.
Here's a link to more material on the Agassiz:
We will fall into bed early that night so we can get up early on May 30 the drive to Marquette for lunch and then on to Munising for a boat tour of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. After the tour, we'll head back down to the family lake house for the night. We'll get up at a decent hour on May 31 for the five-hour drive back to Summers-Knoll and home.
Here's more on the magnificent Pictured Rocks:
We always strive to keep these trips affordable while still making them as fantastic for the soul and healthy for the mind as they can possibly be. In the past, SK trips have fallen within the $300-$500 range. We don't have a final tally for this year's trip yet, but we expect that the cost will run about $350 per family. When we have made the last of our reservations, we'll have a budget set in stone and will be able to communicate precise costs to you.
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