We make a lot of travel adventures. Sometimes they are short little trips, others might be longer with extended stays. Things happen when you travel from home, but on Tuesday, June 12, 2022, we had our worst travel day ever.
Please don't take this as complaining. We are not. We just thought that all of the events that took place on one day was quite strange. On this day, everything bad that has happened to us on a trip, pretty much did and we thought we needed to document this here in our journal. We didn't have an accident, and nobody got hurt, we just had a ton of bad luck and weird things happen.
The day started out just fine. We awoke, finished up packing, headed on over to pick up Marianne's dad. He was going with us on this adventure. Our final destination for the day was to be our hotel room in Allen Park, Michigan. This was going to be our return trip to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village to get some better footage with our new cameras to be able to produce some better videos for our YouTube channel.
If you don't want to read all of this, you can check out our VLOG about this topic:
We had just gotten home the previous week from Gettysburg and put all of the equipment through the paces so to speak. We had this all down; SD cards for recordings, batteries, battery charging systems... everything was ready to go.
To break up the drive from Youngstown, Ohio to Michigan, we thought we make a stop in Milan, Ohio at the birthplace of Thomas Edison. We have driven by this location several times (on the turnpike seeing the exit and signs), but never took the time to go down and visit the location.
We also decided we would try something different this time too. We would take turns driving. Marianne was going to drive form home to the Edison stop, then Shawn would take it on into Michigan to the more dense traffic and unknown freeway changes. We had a plan and were ready to go...
After a couple of hours on the road, we pull up in front of the Edison home. This was when the first issue started. Not a big one, just a little bit of a set back, hiccup type of thing. Shawn pulled out the new camera, turned it on and hit the record button and it had a problem with the brand-new 128Gb SD card. The camera was giving fits. Here we were in a rush to get on the tour and the new camera is not functioning correctly. Luckily, there was another new 64Gb SD card in the back and Shawn quickly sought to change it out while Marianne was inside getting the tickets for the tour. Like I said...small hiccup.
We took the tour (great by-the-way and highly recommended), recorded the footage, had to do the intro and outro a couple of times due to being a little bit flustered, but we got it done.
Next it was time to seek some lunch. We headed on into town looking for a restaurant. It was around 2 p.m. Shawn was looking on his phone for a place to eat. He found a café, but it said on the phone that it closed at 2 p.m., so that was out. Then we decided on a pub on the town square.
This is when the weird stuff started to happen for the day. We arrived to the restaurant, got a seat and ordered. We were all hungry, but it seemed like the food was just taking forever to come to the table. Finally after about 45 minutes it arrived. Shawn didn't know until later, but Marianne's food order was wrong. She didn't say anything to him while they were there, since she knows that Shawn would make a big deal over it. Her sandwich had "A1" sauce on it, and she cannot stand "A1" sauce (she actually ordered a sandwich that was supposed to have BBQ sauce and lettuce on it and hers came with A1 and onions). She just sat there like a trooper and ate it anyways (minus the onions of course).
While we were sitting there, Shawn kept looking out into the square and mentioned he would like to go outside and get some footage of the town to maybe add to the video. We finished eating and went outside.
We spent about 15 minutes going around the town square recording some video and taking some pictures. Unfortunately, none of the video is useable since in the background there were the sounds of landscape machinery running and you could hardly hear us talk on the video. This footage may never make it out and is now just archived.
The funny thing is, once we got down to the other end of the square, the original café that Shawn had found to stop and eat, was still open. Their hours on the Internet were wrong.
We got back into the car and hit the road.
As we were driving, Marianne and her dad mentioned that they wanted to stop at the Michigan visitor center once we crossed over the state border. This was a tradition of theirs when they traveled when Marianne was younger. They would always stop at these centers and look around at the brochures to see what activities and happenings were going on around the area they were heading. This may sound strange, but they were both very excited about making this stop.
We pulled into the Monroe Michigan rest stop/visitor center at 4:20 p.m. I know this was the exact time due to what happened right after we all went into to recycle our beverages from lunch. The visitor section with thousands of magazines and brochures that promote the state of Michigan and places we were going to visit, closes at 4:30 p.m.
Here is the worse part of it, the people working there kept nagging Marianne and her dad to find what they needed and kept telling there they were closing a few minutes. Not even giving them a few minutes to browse the literature in peace. They literally followed them up and down the rows of brochures telling them they really need to close. This was so bad it actually forced us to leave a horrible review on TripAdvsor and Google Maps.
After that horrible experience we got back into the car and fought the traffic all the way to our hotel in Allen Park Michigan.
Of course by the time we arrived, we were all a bit tired and on edge. Stomachs were starting to growl a bit, we pulled up in front of the hotel and went inside to check in and get our room keys. Shawn had called this hotel a few days before to ask specific questions. First, do they offer a full breakfast in the mornings and second, do they have a shuttle service to the museum? The answer on the phone was "yes" and "yes".
When Shawn and Marianne visited the museum some time ago, they stayed at a hotel where they just pulled in and parked their car for a couple of days. There was a shuttle that you could hop on that would take you out to the museum. Shawn was specifically looking for this option since it was nice and relaxing and the worry about driving around in unfamiliar traffic is somewhat stressful. He just wanted to relax and enjoy the adventure to the museum.
The full breakfast thing was extremely important for Marianne's dad due to medical reasons, this is why these questions were specifically asked before reservations were made.
After we checked in, Shawn asked the girl at the counter if there were any discounts or packages for the museum that they had available, and about the shuttle service. He was told, there are no discounts or shuttle service available since these options were not selected when the reservations were made on the website. We asked, well can we just change it now, and we were told no, they cannot be changed? They no longer sell this option. Marianne then asked about the breakfast, and we were told, 'Oh sorry, right now we only have continental breakfast available."
At this point, all we wanted to do was get something to eat and go and chill out in our hotel room. Kind of let the day go and restart again in the morning, but after hearing this from the attendant at the counter, we both were unhappy. We cancelled our registration and Shawn went outside starting to make some calls to find another hotel in the area that offered the shuttle service and full breakfast.
After calling four different hotels, who offer the same services, we made the decision. We are here now, let's just cut our losses, go in and get the room again and move onto finding dinner. We did that and took our luggage up to the room.
After looking around on the phone, we found that there was a restaurant at the hotel about two blocks away from our hotel. We wouldn't have to go out and fight traffic, we could just get something to eat and go back to the room and relax for the night. We headed down there.
I'm not going to mention the name of the hotel, nor will I mention the name of the restaurant, since what happened next was not their fault. It was the server.
We get into the restaurant and found a seat. The waiter came over, joking around with us and we were in somewhat better spirits, we placed our order. Drinks came and we sat there reflecting on how screwed up the day had been so far. Almost joking around about it, blowing it off.
About fifteen-twenty minutes goes by, and the waiter comes back and asked us what we had ordered. Now, like I mentioned before, Marianne's dad has a medical condition. He has to eat at specific times and take his medication. We were already about an hour off schedule. We tell the waiter again our order, it wasn't that difficult. Shawn had a BLT and fries, Marianne had fried fish and fries, and Marianne's dad had chicken parm. Again we gave the order.
Another 30 minutes go by and people who came in after us has already received their food and is leaving. We are looking around and nothing yet.
Shawn looks down the hall and sees our food server walking out of the hotel. He was just leaving. His shift must be over... More time passes. Marianne's dad is about livid and he got up to walk over to the bar were the food servers put in their orders and asks about our order.
Finally the manager comes over to our table asking what was going on. We mentioned what had happened and of course gave our order once again.
It turns out, that our original food server had only worked there for a few days and had actually taken the cash from the pervious group's table that he waited on and walked out without even telling anyone. They could not find our server anywhere. As it turns out, we were victims of our order not even being placed in the system.
So, the manager and the restaurant made it all right with us. They immediately brought Marianne's dad a salad, put in our full order again, and took 50% off our bill, very apologetic to what happened.
Shawn made the following Instagram post during the ordeal to try and cheer things up a little bit.
We headed back to our room and just called it a day. A very weird and horrible travel day. Other than the post office at the village being closed and not being able to send post cards to our Patreon supporters, the trip went on to be wonderful with no additional mishaps.
