Our hotel is next to the Gerald Ford museum. It's a giant triangle-shaped wedge that faces the river. The Amway Plaza Hotel has a plaque outside that says it is "dedicated to the distributors of Amway products around the world."
I seem to remember from my childhood Amway products and their sales force as a kind of cult.
From my window I can see huge highways crisscrossing the city. One runs more or less along the river, cutting half of the city off from the waterfront, though there is a strip park there. But life, businesses, and foot traffic would never flow there naturally, not with acres of concrete in the way.
The rapids, at this point in the river, are not really so grand, but if a ship or barge were headed through it could have certainly been a problem. Which brings us to a momentous event in the city's history — the Great Log Jam of 1883. There is a plaque on the nearby bridge commemorating it. The lumber industry was, of course, huge at the time and the jam backed up at least 7 miles. When the logs broke lose they ripped out the city’s bridges. One by one they were destroyed by the "boiling" logs. The pride and lifeblood of the city was decimated in a single day.
The Jerry Ford museum was less of a hoot that I suspected. Reminders of the infamous NY Post headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead" and Nixon's downfall replayed one more time and Ford pardoning him. It was sort of sobering.
Some interesting merch items were available for purchase: a wine bottle filled with golf tees(!); a Bush, Sr., family paper doll book (Jeb and W. are just kids in this book. Bush I appears in the front page in his underwear); and some loud commemorative socks.
