After a leisurely morning, we departed the Huron House and continued south along M-23 towards Bay City. This would be our last full day in Michigan and we are encountering our first rain since the brief storm on Day One in Grand Rapids. Fortunately, our only planned stop today will be in Frankenmuth, Michigan's "Little Bavaria". The city's name is a combination of two words. "Franken" represents the Province of Franconia in Bavaria, where the original settlers were from. The German word "Mut" means courage; thus, the name Frankenmuth means "courage of the Franconians." The area was settled and named in 1845 by conservative Lutheran immigrants from Franconia (now Bavaria) in Germany. It is safe to say that tourism is the main industry as this town of less than 5,000 residents draws over 3 million tourists annually!
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| Rainy day on the main street in Frankenmuth |
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| West entrance of Bronner's Christmas Wonderland |
Since 1945, one of the largest tourism attractions is Bronner's Christmas Wonderland. Although I had previously heard of a "Christmas store" being located in Frankenmuth, I was unprepared for the size and scope of Bronner's--it is almost disorienting. Open 12 months a year and with Alpine architectural design, the building footprint alone is nearly 7.5. acres. The parking lot holds over 1000 cars and 50 tour busses to accommodate over 2 millions visitors a year. Luckily, we visited on a "slow, rainy day" with perhaps 50 cars in the parking lot...the weekend after Thanksgiving alone brings 50,000 visitors!!!
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| Both the West and East Checkouts have more than 20 checkout lanes! |
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| Christmas displays at Bronner's |
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| Anything and everything........ |
As we walked through the store, I began to realize that Bronner's alone might be solely responsible for our annual trade deficit with China! Bronner's stocks multiple multiples of EVERY theme in EVERY color, size and shape. You cannot name a vocation, avocation, hobby, college, pet, state, country, landmark, religion, club, fraternity, organization, etc. that is not represented in every conceivable format--and then Bronner's has an entire department just for "customized decorations" for those who want their tchotchkes personalized!!!
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| This section is for aqua thru blue ball-shaped ornaments |
Merchandise is presented in a variety of clusters by theme, then by shape, then by color. As an example, if one simply wanted to shop for the sub-group of ball-shaped Christmas ornaments which are displayed in the entire spectrum of colors...just the aqua/blue section (above) fills nearly 50 linear feet of display space! And Bronner's states their daily electric bill is over $1250! The 365 days of non-stop Christmas music alone would make me crazy......
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| Bavarian bye-bye! |
After purchasing a few items for our optical display cabinets, we departed for Fenton to spend our final night in Michigan. Tomorrow we will visit the Rock & Roll HOF in Cleveland and have dinner with friends.
Posted by TBW Travel Today!
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