Our plan Friday to get going early in the morning succeeded. Maybe a quarter-hour later than we really wanted, but that's nothing in the scheme of things. And it brought us to the Merry-Go-Round Museum in downtown Sandusky, unaffiliated with Cedar Point, at about 2:00. They closed at 4:00; we'd hoped that would be enough time. From past visits where we felt like we'd mostly seen the things most important I thought it was likely we would have, but, you know, we hadn't been there in three years, who knows how much had changed within?
It had changed some. Right away in the front room we saw a coin-op machine, with a stained glass carousel. Like, all the animals and the whole structure were stained glass figures, turning for a couple minutes for a coin. There was another in the front room of the onetime post office, too, noticed later on.
Missing from the front, and not explained until ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger asked the person working the gift shop counter: this year's carving. The Merry-Go-Round Museum carved nearly all the animals on its antique-frame carousel, and carves a new one as a fundraising raffle every year. They've had a series of holiday-themed carousels and every year bunnyhugger buys a dozen and I buy half-a-dozen tickets, and every year we hear nothing after it's drawn. Well, they don't have one ready this year. They're working on a replica of Stargazer, their lead horse and the mascot figure for the museum. It's taken longer than it 'should' have, owing to the pandemic. If it strikes you that carving a wooden horse is probably a pretty solitary occupation, well, it is. They figure it's also going to be the last of the horses they raffle off, because their carvers are finding a shortage of the time and energy for this sort of long, hard donated work.
That reduction in time available for the carvers, or maybe a lingering Covid-19 change, showed in some rearrangement of the museum. The corner of the museum which had been the carving station was moved into a little alcove that seemed to be the loading dock. It seems like a less convenient space, particularly for getting out from behind the stand and into the museum proper although I guess if you're just doing work that isn't a significant problem. There's fewer sight lines to it, but since the museum usually only has a couple people in it at any moment I guess that's nothing too bad?
The relocation of the carving station does give space for a couple new items. There's a series of horses that show, loosely, how the carving goes, from the initial wood box that looks like a low-polyhedron horse to increasing levels of detail and paint and all. What seems to be some sort of charity project, a horse figure covered in signatures and drawings and the like. Some new figures on display, donkeys and sea horses and the like. They also switched out the cabinet display of miscellaneous merry-go-round stuff (including a merry-go-round children's board game) with one that's all Euclid Beach Park memorabilia. (Cedar Downs, the derby racer carousel at Cedar Point, used to be the American Racing Derby at Euclid Beach Park.)
We saw two pressed-penny machines, leaving bunnyhugger the question of which one to use. No wrong answer, of course, and I had a good pre-zinc penny to use for a good shiny impression. And we got our ride on their antique-mechanism, modern-carvings carousel in, this time to the theme from Ghostbusters. We've ridden to that once or twice before, but somehow we seem more likely to get the theme to The Addams Family or Batman. Other tracks on the roll include Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead, as well as Dem Dry Bones and The Purple People Eater. We didn't hear them all.
We did have our fill of the museum, we felt, after maybe an hour and a half. We weren't sure if it was already check-in time at the Hotel Breakers, but we figured it couldn't be far off. Especially considering whatever traffic we would endure on the way into the park.
We set off.
Let's enjoy more of Michigan's Adventure on what was a most enjoyable day.
(Tapping forehead) Thunderhawk roller coaster can't blow your shoes off if you don't wear your shoes on it!
View of the whole of Thunderhawk, mostly to prove to myself that they did not change the entrance next year. Every year I think they changed it and they did not.
Little patio area by the lagoon that, earlier this season, was emptied out and taped off. It's open again with ... not really any big obvious changes? Maybe they just wanted to limit how much stuff they had to clean for a while.
The sea dragon, most interesting figure on the Chance fiberglass carousel the park has.
Zach's Zoomer had one row closed, probably for the restraints being stuck closed.
Hey, they painted off the Zoom! that used to be on the back of the train, that's no fair!
Trivia: Franz Kafka had a doctorate in law. Source: Know-It-All, A J Jacobs.
Currently Reading: Apollo Pilot: The Memoirs of Astronaut Donn Eisele, Donn Eisele, Francis French.
