After our visit to Saulte Ste Marie we headed South for about an hour and took the ferry from Mackinaw to Mackinaw Island. while there we took a tour by horse carriage to most of the sights. We even made time to visit the haunted house that they have there.

These are pics from the boat tour through the soo locks in Michigans upper peninsula on the Canadian border. We stopped at the Soo as part of our Honeymoon, although most of it will be spent on Mackinaw and Mackinaw Island. The day is very overcast so hopefully the weather will be better for Mackinaw.

I remember the Soo Locks and trips up here as a kid. Its a great place to spend a day, but I don’t think you could get more than a day out of it, unless you like casinos, then you will be in your glory.

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Chuck and Mary were married at the City Hall back in 2002. About a year later James was born.

We were going to have our wedding in Las Vegas but the 911 attacks postponed everything. Finally we got tired of waiting and planning and I called the city and they said they could do it during the first week in September so we agreed. Ron, Aunt Louise, and Peg attended a small ceremony at city hall then we went on a honeymoon up north and had a great time. We visited Saulte Ste Marie and Mackinaw Island and the weather was literally spectacular the whole honeymoon.

Mary was proposed to at a garage sale at the Kleiber home and the rest is history.

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These are pics from before James was born, Mary and I having fun at the Detroit Zoo which is an awesome place to be.

Mary used to live in Ferndale and you could see almost see the water tower from her house, yet we did not start going to the zoo for at least a year after we met. The dinosaur display was the big attraction this year, sort of a 21st century Jurassic park so we took a lot of pictures of that exhibit and Mary had fun posing with the dinosaurs as well. Another glorious summer day in the fair city of Detroit!

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This was Mary’s first visit to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn MI. Mary loves cars and antiques and really loves seeing the sites at the museum.

I on the other hand was literally raised at Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, at least once but usually twice a year there would be field trips from my school to the village or museum depending on the season. This year the big attraction was the Rosa Parks bus and they were working on a new airplane exhibit which will feature some of the most famous airplanes in American history.

Some of the more gruesome exhibits are the chair Lincoln was assasinated in and the car Kennedy was assasinated in.

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According to our sources at Ancestry.com (currently worked by her grandson James) when Loretta Rose Graf was born on January 29, 1920, in Harrison City, Pennsylvania, her father, Joseph, was 32, and her mother, Rose, was 29. She married Charles Thomas Kleiber on February 15, 1941, in Wyandotte, Michigan. They had three children in 14 years. She died on August 3, 2000, in Grand Traverse, Michigan, at the age of 80.

Loretta is James Grandmother and enjoyed traveling alot. Every Saturday there would be at least a trip to Trenton where some project or event was taken place. The evenings all ended the same way with a family game of Pinocle. They played for keeps during these games and my family was not always gracious losers when the game did not go their way.

My mother enjoyed travel outside of Michigan as well, trips to Florida, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Bahama’s, Toronto, and West Virgina were just a few of the many destinations she vacationed at. She passed away while on vacation in Traverse city.

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Here are some pictures from the Knights Dungeon haunted house which was a charity haunt which we operated for about a decade. The dungeon became a real big fund raiser for the K of C charities and was reasonably priced so that any size family could attend. Many people help contribute to the overall success of this Halloween event and I would like to thank them all.

The dungeon relied on a pole and curtain system that was supplied by the Hyatt Regency. the curtains would either be all black or alternate black and orange. On top of the supports camouflage netting was placed as we tried to create the illusion that they were not in a Knights of Columbus Hall. The Knights Dungeon used animatronics including air pressure to create some great effects such as a corpselator (where a corpse flies out of a coffin at you) and the werewolf. Most of these items were motion activated.

Unfortunately there was really no one to carry on the tradition so all that remains of the Knights Dungeon are memories and these few pictures.

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James’ Dad got the Knight of the Year award from the Knights of Columbus for the time period of 1999 thru 2000, primarily for his work on the Knights Dungeon Haunted House and the Millenium 2000 New Years party.

We used to do the Christmas display in the basement since my father was pretty much living in the living room (he was unable to walk in his later years). This year, after over a decade of having Christmas parties in the basement, we moved it up to the living room and decorated the entire house. This made things easier for my mother who’s task was to feed the huddled masses and she did not have to go up and down the steps to do that. This was my mothers last Christmas I believe.

The Christmas party went well and everyone had a good time. While having the decorations upstairs did not have the same atmosphere as having it in the basement, it was much more convenient for everyone since the bathrooms, kitchens, cable televisions, etc are all upstairs.

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I had always wanted to visit the Grand Canyon since I was a kid, and for whatever reason just simply never made it out to Arizona despite having relatives living in the state. Anyhow, I finally had my chance during a visit to Las Vegas. This was a helicopter trip that took you over the Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam, and dropped you off inside the Grand Canyon where you had a champagne lunch. The whole trip was great, but a warning to females who might want to take this trip, they ask for your weight and you can’t lie about it. On the way back to Vegas they flew down the strip and I was able to take some great pics of Stratos from the air, you can see those pics in the Las Vegas post.

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