Exploring Royal Oak

While Chuck has lived most of his life in Tennessee (with the exception of the last 3 1/2 years we have been full-timing), he was born in Royal Oak, Michigan.  When we saw how close we would be to Royal Oak, we decided to go on a little expedition and try to find the house that he and family lived in for a year or so before and after Chuck was born.

We left the campground a little after 10 am and took the bypass around Detroit because part of I-75 north going through Detroit was being detoured due to construction and we didn't want to get stuck in that.  It took us about an hour to get to the City of Royal Oak, but we had no trouble finding the City Clerk's office.

We thought we knew the street address of the house where his family lived; but to be sure, we got a copy of Chuck's birth certificate at the City Clerk's office which took all of 5 minutes to do.  We still had a couple of hours on the parking meter so we decided to eat some lunch in downtown Royal Oak before driving to the house.

While Royal Oak is an old suburb of Detroit, it is a very nice little city with lots of interesting restaurants and stores along Main Street.

We decided to eat at Mesa Taco and split a tasty order of nachos.  The weather was so nice we sat outside on their terrace to eat our lunch.

After lunch, we drove about 4 miles from the City Clerk's office and found the house where Chuck's family lived when Chuck was born.  Chuck doesn't remember it because they lived there such a short time.

It was a clean and cute little house.

The house is actually in the town of Hazel Park but is just a short distance from Royal Oak.  We saw one of the black squirrels like we had seen in Elk Rapids but had not been able to get a picture.

Hazel Park is a nice little community also.  Some of the streets were lined with big beautiful trees along the sides.  I wonder how big these trees were when Chuck was born????

After leaving Hazel Park, we headed back to Monroe but drove on I-75 south through Detroit this time because there were no road closures on I-75 going south.  We drove by Comerica Stadium -- home of the Detroit Tigers baseball team.

We stopped at Wal-mart on the way back home to pick up a few groceries.  The air conditioner on the Honda stopped blowing cold air today and we noticed a Honda dealer in Monroe after we left Wal-mart.  After unloading the groceries at the camper, we called the Honda dealer and they said to bring the car on in and they would take a look at it.  They took us right in and fortunately it was just a relay which was a quick and inexpensive fix.  Thank goodness!