20th Stop - Grand Rapids (MI)

July 27, 2025

Blog Post #27 - Written July 26, 2025

Stay: June 17-19, 2025

On our way up to Grand Rapids, we stopped in Kalamazoo to visit the the Air Zoo (free with ASTC pass). They have a bunch of little aerospace themed carnival rides that the kids loved, flight simulators, science demonstrations, plane restorations, and tons of planes and helicopters to see and climb in. My favorites were the small 1 or 2 seater planes that people had built themselves. They had so many and they were so cool, and the stories of the men and women that built and flew them were amazing. It inspired me and so I of course had to add "Build and fly my own plane" to my list of life goals . . . they only cost like $50,000! And 1,000 hours of fun to put it together haha :)

They are also home to (according to some sources) the world's largest indoor hand-painted mural! That was pretty amazing to see as well.

Megan loves showing our kids Bernoulli's Principle in action, and this science station had one of the coolest demonstrations I've seen. Check out this video!

Planes and part of the mural. Megan and Z had fun with the flight simulators. I prefer to keep my lunch in my stomach.

Battleship and more of the mural. A SR-71B "Blackbird", a supersonic reconnaissance jet.

The kids enjoying one of the airplane carnival rides.

Q and D made me go on the hot air balloon ride with them. Unfortunately, my stomach has decided I'm an old man, or may be a pregnant woman...it doesn't handle the high thrills like it used to!

A couple of the little 'kit' planes people built, and more mural. Megan and Z in a helicopter.

Z asked one of the volunteers if he could help them with some of the plane restoration. I thought for sure they'd say "No", but he's too dang cute! They let us go behind the scenes and Z and Q each got to rivet part of the wing.

When we made it to Conestoga Campground outside of Grand Rapids, we discovered the water spigot was busted and we had no way to turn it on. The maintenance guy came over and put a vise grip on it to use as a handle. Reminded me of my dad, that's something he would've done haha! But then the water pressure was so low it wouldn't work. We eventually figured out that since this site hadn't been used in over a year, the pipes were all corroded and the rust inside clogged our filter. They flushed the line more and gave us a new filter and it seemed to work okay after that. Of course after that was sorted out, we couldn't find the sewer pipe, he had to dig around in the dirt to finally find it (broken) and fixed it the next day. Definitely one of our more exhausting and stressful set-ups. Made only worse when we showered in the bathhouse and the water smelled very strongly of sulfur. Gag. Needless to say, we won't be returning to that campground!

Luckily, the things we had planned in Grand Rapids were awesome, so we didn't spend too much time in the campground. The first day we went to the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which we really enjoyed. Most of the museums we've been to have been specific to aviation, or space, or animals, or geology. This was was a more eclectic agglomeration of history, ranging from coins to games to dolls to clothing to ivory and many more. It was a lot of fun. 10/10 would recommend. And once again, our ASTC pass got us in for free :)

Megan and I enjoyed playing jumbo sized Kerplunk. And who wouldn't love matchbox car derby races?

Z and Q joined some teenagers for a game of jumbo-sized Sorry! Z and Q also treated some random strangers to a Puppet show while Megan and I were reading the plaques in the animal exhibit.

The ivory carvings were absolutely INSANE. These are just a few of our favorites. The ball-within-a-ball-within-a-ball has 11 separately moving balls inside, carved from the same tusk.

The next day we visited the John Ball Zoo. We've been to several zoos and 2 things I liked about this one were: (1) it's the right size, not too big you need multiple days or an electric scooter to see it all in one day, and not too small that you can see it all in an hour and feel jipped, and (2) the zookeepers and animals were very active. It often feels like the animals in zoos are always depressed or sleeping when you're there. Not here, the keepers were very involved and they schedule feeding times during the day so you can see the otters dive for their fish, and porcupines climbing their log, and a boar doing "target training" for treats. It was pretty neat.