Michigan? It’s Supreme!
To a stunning soundtrack, Phil Lancaster takes a tour through a State full of Miracles
ACOUPLE of days before flying out, I started compiling a Michigan music playlist. I had to stop when my iPod ran out of memory about 950 tracks later. And, frankly, that was just scratching the surface. From Stevie Wonder to the Stooges, Lefty Frizzell to Sufjan Stevens, I had a song for every occasion – the perfect soundtrack to a journey through the heart and soul of America, from the Motor City, through Grand Rapids, Silver Lake, Boyne Mountain, Sleeping Bear and beyond.
Detroit is famous the world over as America’s automotive capital. But we started our Motown journey on two wheels, not four. We saddled up and joined the Slow Roll bike ride, one of the coolest things I’ve ever done... around 1,200 people cruising the streets, through tough neighbourhoods, past abandoned factories, in glorious evening sunshine and a spirit of true community co-operation.
This was all to a stunning soundtrack of soul, funk and hip-hop from the dozens of riders who had ghetto blasters and home-rigged sound systems strapped to the wildest bikes I’ve ever seen.
Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers came wafting out just as we cruised through an intersection with the police holding back the traffic to let us pass – perfect. Slow Roll was an incredible opening act, but it was the following day that we got the top of the bill – Hitsville USA. Motown is the most famous recording studio in the world and, as I grew up in Wigan, the home of Northern Soul, this music has in many ways been the soundtrack to my life.
It’s such a dynamic, dynamite mix of joy and yearning, love and loss that it has an astonishing emotional power. I was in tears through most of the tour!
The guide could see it clearly meant a lot to me and, as the tour finished, she suggested I take some time on my own. So I was able to stand alone for five minutes in Studio A, unchanged from the days when the likes of The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Temp-
tations and Smokey Robinson and The Miracles filled it with some of the most joyous sounds in the history of popular music. Motown magic!
Motown is one of Detroit’s three big tourist attractions, along with the Detroit Institute Of Arts and the Henry Ford museum. The DIA has a stunning collection of works, including Breughel’s The Wedding Dance and a world-renowned African-American gallery. But for most visitors it’s Diego Rivera’s stunning Detroit Industry murals that are the real draw – even with their very unAmerican political statement, a red star on the glove of a worker, hiding in plain sight!
The Henry Ford is not all about cars, but it does have two of the most important vehicles ever built. The first is the limousine in which JFK was travelling when he was assassinated. Incredibly it was repaired, strengthened and used as part of the presidential fleet until 1977, when it was finally retired to the museum.
Second is the Montgomery City Lines bus on which Rosa Parks was travelling when she made her stand and sparked a sea change in American history. You can sit in her seat – but President Obama refused to do so when he visited in 2012. He said he hadn’t earned the right...
DETROIT is the obvious starting point for a Michigan road trip, and it’s everything you imagine – gritty, resilient and on the way back, despite its troubles. I absolutely adored it and can’t wait to go back. But it’s only one side of the Michigan story.
Hit the road north and, in around three hours or so on the freeway, you’re in a different world. The concrete and steel gives way to thousands of rolling acres of verdant farmland, thick with cornfields, vineyards and apple orchards. We stopped to pick our own apples from trees heavy with fruit at Crane’s Orchards, and sipped local wine on a tour of the beautiful Fenn Valley Vineyards.
We spent the night at Saugatuck, a picture-perfect, turn-of-the-century art colony at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River where you can take a paddle-wheel boat cruise out onto Lake Michigan or browse 30 art galleries and dozens of trendy boutiques.
Once we were back on the road, the soundtrack was Sufjan Stevens’s album Michigan. He went to school in Holland, just a half-hour drive from Saugatuck, and wrote a song about the place. It’s a beautiful spot and defines much of what’s best about small-town life in America.
We breakfasted at the historic Windmill diner (I can heartily recommend the magnificent hash brown omelette) before a tour of the town’s actual working windmill. They take the Old World connection very seriously here.
From the homely Main Street delights of Holland, it was back to the big city – Michigan’s second-largest city, Grand Rapids. The River City is hipster heaven, a place with art at its heart and an amazing array of craft breweries and beers.
Out of town, the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park is a must-see – a 158acre oasis of exotic plants and artworks by, among others, Rodin, Ai WeiWei, Miro and Henry Moore. The scope and breadth of the collection, both artistic and horticultural, is incredible.
In town, the Grand Rapids Art Museum acts as fulcrum for the annual ArtPrize, an open competition which is billed as the most-attended public art event on the planet. It’s democratic and unstuffy, with works placed in public spaces across the city, from theatres and galleries to bars, bridges, bus stops and laundromats. For our final few days, we left the city behind once more, this time heading for the shore. Around 80 miles north of Grand Rapids, we hit the beach at Silver Lake.
The area has 2,000 acres of shifting sand dunes and the best way to explore them is on one of Mac Wood’s buggy rides. The Wood family have been whizzing tourists round the dunes since 1930 and these days it’s a high-octane ride on a souped-up, opentopped monster 4x4 that carries 20 people.
Our next stop was the Boyne Mountain
resort. In winter there are 60 downhill ski trails, 12 lifts and 35km (21 miles) of crossuntry routes. On a beautiful afternoon in late September there was precious little snow, but still plenty of high-speed thrills. The zip-line adventure was a stunning series of spectacular, dizzyingly high, adrenaline-pumping swoops. As a conmed hater of heights, I never thought I’d ke it on, but with excited ten-year-olds ying down the wire in front of you – upside down, 80ft off the ground – it seemed cowardly not to (and it was a very, very long way to walk back to the bottom).
We ended our Michigan odyssey with a trip to Sleeping Bear Dunes, a breathtakingly beautiful 60km (37-mile) stretch of Lake Michigan’s eastern coastline with forests, beaches and the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.
From town to city to shore, Michigan offers everything you could want from a road trip. Just make sure you leave plenty of room on your iPod.