{"id":20908,"date":"2017-06-26T21:41:15","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T21:41:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/?p=20908"},"modified":"2017-06-26T21:41:15","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T21:41:15","slug":"traveling-around-detroit-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/traveling-around-detroit-region\/","title":{"rendered":"Traveling Around the Detroit Region"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a saying….or maybe it’s just me who says it….that Detroit is on the way to and from nowhere to nowhere. \u00a0Actually all of Michigan is kind of that way. \u00a0I suppose if you were in Chicago and decided you needed to drive to Toronto, then maybe<\/em> Detroit is on the way, but chances are you’d fly for that one or cross further north at Port Huron.<\/p>\n

This gives Detroit a unique status though, especially as the city continues to become\u00a0a destination in and of itself. \u00a0The special places in and around the city and region are less well-known outside of Michigan, northeastern Indiana, and northern Ohio. \u00a0National publications have taken an interest in Detroit in recent years, but tend to focus on a cluster of places downtown. \u00a0Even Bourdain wasn’t much help when he featured the city in his show Parts Unknown\u00a0<\/em>in 2013. \u00a0There’s much more to the area than downtown\u00a0and while I’ll make no claim to having experienced it all or even knowing of it all, I have come to really like certain special places in my time here.<\/p>\n

So for those in other parts of the country, or world, who maybe haven’t been to Detroit, SE Michigan, or SW Ontario, here are some of my favorite places in the city, the metro area, and the wider region.<\/p>\n

Batch Brewing and Atwater in the Park<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anyone who knows me knows my love of great craft beer. \u00a0My favorite places are the ones that don’t distribute beyond a city or region, the places you have to go visit to enjoy. \u00a0Detroit and the suburbs have quite a few breweries, but there are two standouts in my humble opinion. \u00a0Batch Brewing<\/a> is located in the Corktown neighborhood about a mile or so southwest of downtown.<\/p>\n

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Batch’s bread and butter are their continuously rotating small batch beers. \u00a0There are few standbys and the beer on tap changes often from week to week. \u00a0This seems risky as beer drinkers are creatures of habit, but Batch succeeds because of customer knowledge that every beer they craft is going to be of excellent quality. \u00a0In the craft brewing explosion that’s happened over the past decade, this emphasis on quality is becoming harder to find.<\/p>\n

Atwater Brewery<\/a> has two locations in and around Detroit, one on Atwater St. along the riverfront about a mile or so east of downtown, and my preferred location, on Lakepointe St. in the adjacent eastern suburb of Grosse Pointe Park. \u00a0Atwater in the Park is located in a beautiful old church building, nestled among a vibrant business district full of small, local businesses.<\/p>\n

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With a substantial offering of brews and a small town, local bar atmosphere (not to mention the large outdoor biergarten that allows dogs), Atwater quickly became my go-to brewery. \u00a0Their Vanilla Java Porter is never a bad decision.<\/p>\n

Belle Isle (honorable mention: Rouge Park)<\/strong><\/p>\n

A nearly 1,000 acre island sitting in the Detroit River between the US and Canada, Belle Isle is Detroit’s greatest outdoor asset. \u00a0Not only is it a beautiful piece of land, with beaches, forest, and fields. \u00a0It hosts high quality free edutainment with its Dossin Great Lakes Museum<\/a> (which has pieces of the famous Edmund Fitzgerald wreck) and a large Conservatory<\/a> filled with plants from around the globe. \u00a0It’s also home to\u00a0a world-class auto racing event each June.<\/p>\n

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EMC holding a link from the anchor chain of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum.<\/p>\n

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Team Forest from Challenge 4 getting ready to wander the wetland forest of Belle Isle.<\/p>\n

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For a weekend each June, insanely fast cars zip around the island for the Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

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The eastern side of the island on a beautiful summer day.<\/p>\n

Heidelberg Project<\/strong><\/p>\n

Detroit’s most immersive outdoor art installation, the Heidelberg Project is something I’ve seen nowhere else:<\/p>\n

“In 1986, artist Tyree Guyton returned to Heidelberg, the street where he grew up on Detroit\u2019s East Side, and found it in shambles, riddled with drugs and deepening poverty. Bruised by the loss of three brothers to the streets, Guyton was encouraged by his grandfather to pick up a paintbrush instead of a weapon and look for a solution.<\/p>\n

Armed with a paintbrush, a broom and neighborhood children, Guyton and Grandpa began by cleaning up vacant lots on Heidelberg Street. From the refuse they collected, Guyton transformed the street into a massive art environment. Vacant lots literally became \u201clots of art\u201d and abandoned houses became \u201cgigantic art sculptures.\u201d Guyton not only transformed vacant houses and lots, he integrated the street, sidewalks and trees into his mammoth installation and called the work, the Heidelberg Project.”<\/p>\n

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Old Miami<\/strong><\/p>\n

Probably my favorite bar in the city (with The Keep coming in second), no simple description quite conveys just what the heck Old Miami is. \u00a0Part ancient veteran bar, part EDM club, part hipster hangout, a small part sports bar, add in an outdoor fire pit and a giant back lawn, subtract doors from the bathrooms and you have the magical concoction that is Old Miami.<\/p>\n

All of Hamtramck<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hamtramck is a tiny enclave surrounded by Detroit. \u00a0It’s Michigan’s most diverse city and that shines through brightly in its seemingly endless delicious food options. \u00a0There’s a wacky “sport” called Fowling that I’ll let you look up on your own. \u00a0It’s also where the Northern Guard cheers on the men in red of Detroit City Football Club<\/a>. \u00a0Games are affordable and loads of fun.<\/p>\n

Windsor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Windsor is the butt of many Canadian jokes. \u00a0Detroiters rarely speak of it unless there’s a big artist playing at the gigantic Caesar’s casino across the river. \u00a0I’ve written about Windsor before for this blog<\/a>, so I won’t drone on about it here, but I will say that the city has its charms and is certainly worth a trip through the tunnel to check it out. \u00a0I have found my greatest thrift store treasures in Windsor and everyone knows Timmy’s coffee tastes better in Canada. \u00a0It just does.<\/p>\n

Bruce Peninsula and Fathom Five National Parks<\/strong><\/p>\n

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I won’t say too much about this place other than that it is beautiful, Canadian, and about 300 miles from Detroit. \u00a0Should you find yourself looking for incredible natural scenery, Canadian hospitality, and an excuse to cook an entire kielbasa over a campfire, Bruce Peninsula should be on your list.<\/p>\n

Bonus: My Kitchen, Backyard, and Friends’ Houses<\/strong><\/p>\n

If I’m being completely honest here, the greatest times I’ve had in Detroit have been with friends; cooking breakfasts and dinners, sitting around fires, telling stories over coffee, whiskey, wine, or beer, and biking around this fine city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a saying….or maybe it’s just me who says it….that Detroit is on the way to and from nowhere to nowhere. \u00a0Actually all of Michigan is kind of that way. \u00a0I suppose if you were in Chicago and decided you needed to drive to Toronto, then maybe Detroit is on the way, but chances are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":304,"featured_media":20929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,12,19,409,155,13,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-livedetroit","category-playdetroit","category-detroit","category-drink-detroit","category-live-detroit","category-play-detroit","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/challengedetroit.builtrare.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}