The day of no bathrooms…. No! Wait… I’m not starting the whole ‘naming the days’ thing again. So… Wednesday.
We began our day at Meadows Racetrack and Casino…. Not a CAR racetrack… but technically a track. Okay, MINI… Well let you have that one ’cause they had mini horses and I got to pet one.
It was cool and a bit overcast this morning, so all my pictures turned out dark. The horses and their humans were out practicing. It was fun watching the horses prance and run. I’d enjoy watching these races sometime.
Brian even got a hug from one of the horses!
We stuck with the official MINI route for most of the morning. We wandered off a few times to hunt down a bathroom. Apparently not all gas stations have bathrooms… Lady acted like I was stupid for even asking. WTF are gas stations for if not for bathroom breaks?! Yeah… I’m the stupid one. Thank goodness for McDonalds (Only time you’ll ever hear me say that!) they have restrooms! I love you MINI, but if you’re going to recommend a route that takes several hours, I’d appreciate a route with a few available pit stops.
Our afternoon Surprise & Delight was in the town of Lisbon, OH…. The birthplace of the paper straw. Brian and I pretty much blew through this stop. We went through the MINI welcoming committee and received our straw. Just one. They’ve started giving only one MINI gift per car. It made sense with the candy box yesterday… not sure about the straw… I mean, I’m not afraid of Brian’s germs, but not all driver’s and co-pilots are willing to share germs.
Lisbon looked like a pretty little town, but we just didn’t feel much like stopping and visiting the shops…. I’m starting to run out of room in the car as is… and I have to budget space for whatever I buy at Disneyland!
We found a great Gluten Free restaurant called Moo Cluck Moo in Detroit for an early dinner. EVERYTHING was gluten free. It was so exciting to be able to order anything off the menu … Just like a normal person! (That’s what I miss most about my life before going gf… Not having to think so hard and worry about every damn bite of food. Just ordering and eating.) The food was fabulous! The staff was super sweet and friendly.
I had onion rings for probably the first time in 4 years! Oh, I love onion rings.
The chicken sandwich was huge and delicious. The bread was really good too. It crumbled on me a bit, but had a great texture.
After dinner we headed to the evening event. We were about an hour early, but we were thinking that the venue would be like the French Market in New Orleans with lots of shops and places to wander around. Nope. The Eastern Market isn’t anything like the French Market. I think it’s supposed to be more of a farmer’s market? I couldn’t really tell. There weren’t any vendors or cool shops, just a bunch of empty pavilions in a not so inviting downtown area. We finally found a bunch of other MINI’s who had also arrived very early… and taken all the parking spots. MINI crews weren’t set up yet… (We were and hour early) so some Market staff(?) were hearding MINIs. I heard one of them yell to another that all the parking was gone and we’d just have to start parking on the streets. We finally found a spot to park with another small herd of MINIs.
We milled around with the other early arrivals and snapped some more photos.
When the event finally opened we were given two tickets each…One for dinner and one for dessert…to spend at the food trucks. There were about 10 different trucks there… BBQ and sandwiches and an ice cream sandwich truck and one with donuts. We could have probably eaten the BBQ, but we were still pretty full from dinner at Moo Cluck Moo. We asked if we could just have the ice cream from the ice cream cookie truck…. It was a Design Your Own cookie sandwich thing… And they said sure… But didn’t have any cups or anything to put the ice cream in. And the donuts were obviously out.
We looked around at the couple vendors that were there, but nothing really caught our eye. The band started murdering songs…. loudly… in an enclosed, hot pavilion. Brian and I decided to bail.
Oh! Guess how many bathrooms. Go on… Guess! How many bathrooms were provided for 900+ people?
THREE!!!
Now it was a cool little trailer with three nice air conditioned bathrooms with running water and toilets like in an R/V…. but there were just three. If there were others, I never saw them.
******** Update ********
Brian and I ate dinner with two of the guys from MINI tonight (7/14) and they said that there actually were more bathrooms inside. So, I’m sorry for being cranky about the lack of bathrooms, MINI. I guess I missed em. – S
After we left the event we went to look for the house that Nicole on Rehab Addict renovated a few seasons ago on HGTV. It was only a few blocks away, so we hunted it down at snapped some photos.
Gorgeous house.
Scary neighbors. HGTV didn’t show them!
Another interesting day. I enjoyed Pittsburg… Ohio was pretty… And we spent about 20 minutes in West Virginia, so I guess technically we can check that one off the list… Detroit… Enh… Not a huge fan. Ready to motor on tomorrow.
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