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Last night, amidst looking for a motel in Celina, I happened upon what looked like a pretty legitimate lighthouse. This led me to looking at the list of Ohio lighthouses back at the motel and discovering that Grand Lake St. Mary's is one of those lakes where there's lighthouses, even though it isn't a Great Lake. Lighthouses like this exist in other states and I typically don't count them. The lights here seemed pretty legit though, as this wasn't the case of a local seniors club putting a lantern atop a shed. I figured I better go size up these lighthouses this morning, just in case I decided to count them. |
This is the Grimm Memorial Lighthouse, situated on a tiny island just across from docks, trailers and a lakeside bar. This looked like a busy place in the summer, so I was thankful for the quiet morning. Grand Lake Saint Mary's was once a swampy prairie until it was flooded in 1845 to create a reservoir behind the Miami-Erie Canal. It's Ohio largest inland lake and when completed, it was the largest man-made lake in the world (since passed by Hoover Dam's Lake Mead). One of the housing developments on this lake built a 2/3rd-size replica of England's Eddystone Lighthouse in 1923. They built this as a draw for the subdivision, but it was supposedly fitted with a Fresnel lens from Cuba and served as an actual navigational guide from April to November. Another lighthouse was built on the west side in the 1980s, and following the local state park saying it would be easier to navigate the lake at night with a lighthouse on each side, Stanley Grimm built the Grimm Memorial Lighthouse in 2003 to honour his son that died in an auto accident in 1997. |
It was a cold morning and the ice looked thick...ish, so I sat down on the dock and flirted with walking over to the lighthouse, but even a tiny portion of my weight led the ice to creak while cracks spread outwards. There was no way I was getting any further than an arm's reach from this dock. I hadn't even made up my mind whether I would count this lighthouse anyway. |
I went and checked on the Eddystone Lighthouse, but it was surrounded by opulent homes with gigantic lawns. It was quiet like the area around the Grimm Memorial Lighthouse, but it still didn't look like a great place to be caught trespassing across some ornery Ohioan's expansive lawn. The lighthouse in Celina was much easier to reach. This is the west side lighthouse I mentioned a few paragraphs back, built by the local Rotary Club in 1986. |
Built as a civic improvement project, the exterior staircase was totally open up to a platform that looked out over Grand Lake Saint Mary's. As for whether I count Celina's lighthouse - as much as it's a legit, 40 foot tower on a stone base, it's still a lighthouse constructed by locals as a tourist attraction. It feels like if I count this, I have to start counting every fake seafood restaurant lighthouse, church lighthouse, and entrance sign lighthouse outside various seaside towns. You know me though, these lighthouses are still legitimate Ohio sentinels on a big enough lake with an interesting history. It was hard for me not to count this one and make plans to come back for the other two. |
Just up the street was the Mercer County Courthouse. An interesting thing about Celina is it was once home to Huffy bicycles' biggest factory. Huffy also had plants in Missouri and Mississippi, but the plant in Celina employed 935 people, made two million bikes per year, and was the biggest bike factory outside Asia. Unfortunately Wal-Mart kept pressuring Huffy to lower its costs. Huffy asked their unionized employees to take a pay cut since Wal-Mart ordered 900,000 bikes - and this kept Huffy around for two more years in Celina - but Wal-Mart eventually won and got Huffy to move their plant to Mexico and then China. |
Soon crossing into Indiana, I made a beeline for Indianapolis because back in Cleveland I was told that my Covid test results would come in 3-5 days. That wouldn't really work as I was crossing back in four days and I could be left waiting. So I found myself in a McDonald's parking lot, stealing their WiFi to try and look up Indianapolis Covid testing locations with lesser or similar result times. At least if I took more tests, I increased my chances of one of them coming back early enough to deal with this surprise requirement of a negative test to get back into Canada. I found a laboratory with various locations all around Indiana, that had a test where they guaranteed a result by tomorrow at 8pm! No longer was there any need to navigate Indianapolis, as I booked a 1pm test in the town where I had afternoon plans to ride the local skatepark. With my morning now open, I was free to head off and explore somewhere new - such as Indiana's 12th-largest city, Muncie! Home to the stunning Delaware County Courthouse, lol. After visiting the county courthouse that CourthouseLover said was the least appealing in Upstate NY, I was now at the one he describes as "the most disappointing county courthouse in the Hoosier State." |
When you're talking about Indiana, I've only ever been to Gary, Fort Wayne & Indianapolis. Therefore I've long looked forward to checking out some of the other big cities like Lafayette, Terre Haute, Bloomington & Muncie. I can't think of why I know Muncie, but I would've guessed it was much bigger than 12th place when talking about Indiana's largest cities. Turns out, Muncie is really suffering from out-migration as it lost nearly 5,000 people from their population of 70,085 in 2010 to 65,194 in 2020. The loss of manufacturing jobs and poor public schools seem like the common reasons given to explain this population loss. |
On the edge of downtown, the John W. Ryan house spoke to the money that used to exist in Muncie. I didn't realize I was still in the Rust Belt this far south, but I suppose Muncie is only three hours south of Gary Indiana. |
Back amongst downtown's business district, I loved the old school signage for Pazols Jewellery. Returning to my car, I decided now was the time to get Isy a gift because I was in the town from the TV sitcom Parks & Recreation - except that my brain mixed up Muncie and Pawnee, so Isy just ended up with some artisanal tea from Indiana's 12th-largest city. It was now getting close to my Covid appointment time though and I still had an hour's drive from Muncie to Kokomo Indiana. Time to get going. |
Pulling up to the address that Genepace Labs told me to either "Find on Google Maps or Waze", I was even more floored than back in that Cleveland parking garage. What was this, an old Burger King? This was the testing site? Google tells me this used to be a City of Firsts Federal Credit Union, but it was only that way back in 2007. Mostly vacant since then, I guess it was good enough to serve the small pandemic testing operation Genepace had going here. With only one other person getting tested and the "nurse" barely sticking the Q-tip in my nasal cavity, I left skeptical about the results I was guaranteed to get within the next 31 hours. |
Kokomo was going to be a worthwhile stop regardless due to its awesome skatepark. It was actually so awesome that I wished I wasn't here by myself and that this wasn't (possibly) my only time riding Kokomo, because there were some riskier things that could use handling. |
I had to jump the skatepark-sized wheelchair ramp (aka bump to bar) at least. If only this was a good enough clip to post on Instagram, because as soon as I told Steve I was going to Kokomo, he started into "what's that stupid Beach Boys song?" and going on about Bermuda and Kokomo, haha. |
I didn't stay in Kokomo long because I also wanted to ride Peru. I had seen an Instagram friend post about this park and it looked like one of those skateparks that's fun because it's so weird. |
Peru was good, especially for a smaller Indiana town, but some of the stuff was just too small. It was fun and different, but it was so small that it felt like when you're in some obscure village, trying to make do with objects that are just too small to ride. |
Following Peru, I raced 2.5 hours up to Kalamazoo in order to catch tonight's Kalamazoo Wings game. Still inexplicably using 2010 as the current year in calculations, I haven't really adjusted the timeframe for what constitutes an old arena. The Wings Event Center from 1974 was only 30-something years old, right? Therefore I sat in the arena's shadow at the Econo Lodge and delayed going over, bored by the thought of a somewhat modern rink. I may have also been a bit crabby and tired by this point. |
The Wings Event Center is not a modern rink. It's a glorious, dark, odd and intimate hole. Walking into the seating bowl, suddenly I was kicking myself for being so silly and staying back at my motel. I should have been here when they unlocked the doors and even though I checked it off tonight, my God do I hope to see another game at this barn before it goes away. |
Yes, unfortunately this palace of concourse access points set beside Kalamazoo's Davis Creek is going to go away. The local university, Western Michigan University, is working to leave their current home, Lawson Arena, and is building a new glass thing right downtown. This new rink will also play home to WMU's basketball teams and the Kalamazoo Wings of the ECHL - eradicating all of the cool old rinks/basketball courts in Kalamazoo in one fell swoop! |
Looking at pictures of the construction progress as of April of 2025, it sure seems like the new Kalamazoo Events Center will be open for the 2026-27 season. This year would be your last year to see Kalamazoo at the old Wings Stadium, or the Western Michigan University Broncos at Lawson Arena/the Read Fieldhouse. |
Sitting here, I failed to think of another arena I've visited which is similar to Kalamazoo's. I thought maybe it was just my lack of seeing barns from the 1970s, but I listen to a hockey podcast where both of the guys have been to all 60 CHL rinks, plus the one guy has seen hockey in 147 unique rinks. When they visited Kalamazoo, they also said they'd never been in another rink like it. Tacking on $2 beer night and light crowds in this time of Covid, and boy was I have a gooooood time lounging 15 rows up. The game went by too quick. |
After the game, I noticed a bowling alley on the other side of the street from the motel and across from the Wings Event Center. Unfortunately they were closing soon, so it was back to the Econo Lodge with me. |
Waking up in the morning, I drove over to the arena and grabbed some pictures of the Pizza Hut-like exterior. The Kalamazoo Library has a list that seems like every musical act that's ever performed at this arena. I personally love the note for the October 23rd 1997's Lil' Kim, Junior Mafia & Scarface show: "Voted “worst concert of 1997” by Scott Warren, Wings Stadium director of special events." I guess the 1997 Marilyn Manson show, which triggered public protests and led the arena to cap the seats sold at 5000, was a better concert, haha. |
I've drove past Kalamazoo on I-94 a dozen times, but the only time I'd actually been in Kalamazoo was riding the Greyhound from Detroit to Chicago and being delayed in Kzoo while some woman chewed out the bus driver. Excited with the thought of a new Michigan city to explore, I was up early and headed downtown. First up, I roofed a parking garage to get the lay of the land. |
Obviously the second stop was Kalamazoo's County Courthouse. While this is a fine structure, Kalamazoo's previous county courthouse was built in 1885 by the Toledo-based firm of Miles, Cramer, & Horn and designed by Toledoan Edward Oscar Fallis. I really think Kalamazoo should have kept a building with so many ties to the fine city of Toledo - even if by the building's end, the "upstairs courtrooms and jury rooms were seen as a veritable fire trap” and the jail portion had “been condemned several times by state authorities.” Pfft, fine. Kalamazoo constructed their third county courthouse (seen above) in 1936 using a Kalamazoo architect and the Detroit firm of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls. Sadly, in researching this I see Kalamazoo decided against the upkeep costs of this old courthouse and instead went with a trade - where a company called PlazaCorp got the old county courthouse & Kalamazoo County got some land to build a new justice center (the new name for county courthouses (wanking motion)). PlazaCorp must maintain the historic facade of the Kalamazoo County Courthouse until 2037. They haven't announced any renovation plans and one reader wrote into the local radio station to say the exterior has been looking shabby. The third county courthouse sits beside a large public park alongside churches and Kalamazoo's city hall. It makes for a great city space and I'd hate to see the county courthouse disappear from the scene. |
The Lawrence & Chapin building served as a better example of historic preservation. |
Continuing to stroll around, I also liked the exposed parts of Arcadia Creek that weaved through downtown. Of course, this made me wonder about exploring drains in Kzoo. |
I also loved the signage for Mr. President's Nightclub & Cocktail Lounge, but sadly it looks like it was last open in 2016. It was time to hit the road though, as I needed to head back across Michigan. |
