JUNK BOAT TRAVELS: Toledo

Showing posts with label Toledo. Show all posts

21 July 2024

MONDAY MURAL

April 2024 - Toledo OH

The mural by Molly Joyce, pays homage to Toledo Blue Stockings catcher Moses Fleetwood “Fleet” Walker.

The Col. James M. Schoonmaker is also on the mural.

This plaque is outside the Fifth Third Hensville Baseball Stadium.

Moses Fleetwood Walker was a baseball player for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1883. He was the first African American to play baseball in the major league.

Needless to say, he made history throughout his lifetime and left a footprint here in Toledo.

There are a lot of interesting facts about Fleetwood. He came from Oberlin College, was a barehanded catcher, played alongside his brother Weldy, is a patent holder, and was one of the best players on the Toledo team.

His impressive skills elected him into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.

Moses Fleetwood Walker had quite the baseball career when he enrolled in college. At twenty-five years old, he soon found himself to be a main hitter and catcher at Oberlin College.

While at Oberlin College, he started off as a great student but as his attraction for baseball increased, his grades suffered. Oberlin's last game of the season was against the University of Michigan, which Walker was offered to transfer over to Michigan because they were impressed with his performance.

After he played with the University of Michigan, he was off to New Castle, Pennsylvania. Every team that had the privilege of having him all say that Walker was an incredible player and most notably, a phenomenal catcher.

1883 was the year Moses Fleetwood Walker left school and followed his passion to play professional baseball in Toledo.

Moses Fleetwood Walker, nicknamed "Fleet", played baseball for a few different colleges before joining with the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1883. After advancing his career with Toledo, Chicago White Stockings manager, Adrian Anson, would state that he and his team would not face Toledo due to Walker being in the lineup.

In the end, both teams played against each other, but this was the start of the issue of the acceptance of race in baseball. Throughout his career, he endured prejudice from his teammates, opponents, and community.

Playing 42 games with Toledo Blue Stockings, Walker was the only African American to play in the Major League until Jackie Robinson in 1947.

Toledo has great pride for Moses Fleetwood Walker and honors him through this mural in the Warehouse District, as well as a historical marker located at Fifth Third Field.

07 May 2024

Signs

Joining Tom at Signs2

Wordless Wednesday Wordless Be There 2day

March/April 2024 Road Trip - Ohio

Interesting highway signs driving through Ohio.

As we headed to Toledo for the eclipse.

My favourite!

13 April 2024

Mustang Ridge Coffee Co.

Linking up with Marg at The Intrepid Reader

Weekend Coffee Share
Sunday Salon

April 2024 - Des Moines IA to HOME

April 2024 - Somewhere in Illinois

Saturday

I've reached the point that I no longer know where I am! John couldn't remember what our hotel room number was!!!

Click here for our drive from Des Moines IA to Naperville IL

The park is named for John Pappajohn, a local venture capitalist and his wife Mary Louise Pappajohn (1933-2022), who gifted the initial 24 sculptures, with a valuation of about $40 million USD, to the city of Des Moines.

It's too bloody cold!

Got in the car and had a snack, bought yesterday in Elk Horn.

We stopped in Dixon IL for lunch known for being Ronald Reagan's home from 1920 to 1924, the site of his earliest childhood memories, and a place he recalled with great fondness.

I can't say we have any fondness for the service at Pekin's. Just a terrible server, she forgot about us, after we waited for over 20 minutes (it was bacon and eggs only) I asked someone to find her. Someone else brought our food, gave sausages and not the ham he requested, etc etc.

Hilton Garden Inn Naperville IL great check in.
Used our $20 credit towards dinner. Great bartender, a great believer in doom and gloom.

We shared a Caesar salad, steak (great) and fries.

Sunday Naperville IL to Toledo OH

We left at 9:30 planning on getting an early brunch on the road. It was rainy and heavy traffic until we got through Chicago.

We had a late (lost an hour) brunch at Cracker Barrel in Elkhart IN.

We were given our eclipse glasses at check in and she also said there would be viewing parties.

Monday April 8 Toledo OH

Monday Mural taken in Las Vegas March 2024.

Click here for our day in Toledo!

John slept until 10:30!! We ended up having grilled cheeses in the hotel.

We grabbed a beer and paid $5 to enter the Hensville Park with music.

The lights around us came on.

Wondering why the menu was so different....

Gluten free spaghetti and meatballs. Awful, so much bad sauce, too much filler in meatballs. And the penny dropped when we got home this was WAREHOUSE not FACTORY!

The Warehouse even had an old trolley car inside just like the FACTORIES!

We have an Old Spaghetti Factory in Toronto (NOT the same franchise - we had thought about going to the one in Salt Lake City) but it has been years since we were there. The Factories in North America all have the same menu!

I ate at the Factory in Minneapolis, same menu as Toronto and delicious.

Tuesday time to head home. Breakfast was terrible in the hotel. $4 for cold coffee. Nothing on the continental menu available. We ended up with scrambled eggs (okay), bacon (greasy) home fries.

We were in the car at 9:30 and crossed the border at Detroit at 10:30. Home at 2:30.

The border crossing was very quick, only one car in front of us at the Nexus lane. Pleasant agent, a couple of questions and we were on our way!

The Koegel Meat Company is a meat processing, packaging, and distribution company based in Flint, Michigan. Koegel's produces 35 products. Koegel's hot dogs are considered by the authors of "Coney Detroit" as the best hot dog for a Flint-Style Coney Dog along with Abbott's Meat's coney sauce. Koegel is also a supplier of A&W, about 200 Coney restaurants, Walmart, Dairy Queen and Kroger.

Detroit.

The Ambassador Bridge is a tolled international suspension bridge across the Detroit River that connects Detroit, Michigan, United States, with Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Opened in 1929, it is the busiest international border crossing in North America in terms of trade volume, carrying more than 25% of all merchandise trade between the United States and Canada by value. A 2004 Border Transportation Partnership study showed that 150,000 jobs in the Detroit–Windsor region and US$13 billion in annual production depend on the Detroit–Windsor international border crossing.

The bridge is one of the few privately owned US–Canada crossings; it was owned by Grosse Pointe billionaire Manuel Moroun, until his death in July 2020, through the Detroit International Bridge Company in the United States and the Canadian Transit Company in Canada. In 1979, when the previous owners put it on the New York Stock Exchange and shares were traded, Moroun was able to buy shares, eventually acquiring the bridge. The bridge carries 60 to 70 percent of commercial truck traffic in the region.

Temperatures fluctuated as it was around 20 leaving Toledo up to 24 crossing the border until Hamilton ON when it dropped to 12!

We only made one gas/coffee/pit stop at an Onroute (service plaza) for Canadian Tire gas and Tim Horton's coffee.

Wednesday was a sunny brisk day and we only went for the groceries we needed. I made a pot of vegetable soup from my freezer stock and added a can of chickpeas.

Thursday rainy and miserable as John set out for the car dealership. I picked up some essentials and then spent 3 THREE TRES hours on the phone with Telus, our cell phone providers.

Okay, it was two hours on a chat with the most stubborn or least empowered service agent I ever encountered. My issue - when we entered the States they sent me a text and email offering my $80 PPU Easy Roam for 30 days which I accepted as otherwise the charge is $15 per phone a day!!

Our bill was $700!!! I explained that I believed the offer applied to both phones as it is one account. John had been charged daily roaming fees.

She countered that it was a "special" offer only to "selected" phone numbers and proceeded to use a lot of corporate gobbledygook like "as a consumer myself" and how much the poor corporation had to paying to the roaming networks blah blah. I told her I didn't care. My issue was a badly worded "offer". She offered me $30, "the best she could do and would be dinged for it, but I was a valuable customer".....

When I said I wasn't satisfied she finally offered to get a Loyalty agent. She set up the call, Maximo spent ten minutes with me to ensure he understood my issue, he did. Then said he would call me back when he reviewed the documentation. He called back about an hour later, said he fully agreed with me and would issue a $360 credit and charge me the $80 for John's roaming.

So I made a $100 an hour while doing other things during the chat and waiting for phone calls.

We got unpacked and one load of laundry done.

Friday rainy and foggy. John used the golf simulator. I had planned to get a hair cut but will wait until Monday. I ran out for some weekend items, ~~lemons~~, limes, ~~turnip~~, half and half, red onion and Brussel sprouts as a substitution.

It is the Masters this week so John was glued to that.

COOKING

Saturday Naperville Caesar salad with steak and fries - best steak on this trip

Sunday Toledo cheeses and crackers

Monday Toledo Spaghetti Warehouse

Tuesday HOME! curry chicken.

Wednesday potato chip crusted halibut and broccolini

Thursday lamb chops, mashed potatoes and broccolini

Friday steak with onions, green peppers and mushrooms, chimichurri

WATCHING

We started American Rust season two. It features a favourite actor of mine, Maura Tierney (The Affair).

READING