A newly formed weekend routine between me and my lady Louise is going to find a cafe/coffee house work in. Me on this website, her on philosophy (she’s a grad student).
We also love driving to random places nearby South Bend and this led me to see if any of the farther flung smaller towns (we’ve already done New Buffalo, Holland and St. Joesph, which I still need to write up). This led me to searching if places like Waterloo – a website that’s two years old said a coffee house is coming soon – and Bangor which much to my surprise had would sounded like a decent coffee house in the station open Monday through Saturday. This past weekend we decided it would be a fun little road trip up to Bangor. Google gave me an option of going via Dowagaic so we added that in too (Niles I’ve been too by bike but my camera was dead so I need to revisit it).
We set off on a nice late autumn afternoon, some leafs still in the trees. It’s maybe a half-hour drive up to Dowagaic–(46 Photos) where we head and park at the train station. It’s a beauty and has been restored by the city and is even open a Saturday afternoon. I get my photo essay.
I notice there is an express train scheduled to pass through soon but it hasn’t left Kalamazoo yet. We’ve noticed a historic Main Street a block away and head over there to explore. Dowagaic is a neat town and we gravitate into a super neat used bookstore. After 15 minutes inside I realize that it’s time to head back and try and catch the midday Wolverine. I leave Louise inside and walk over to the station, meeting another railfan also from elsewhere getting out of his car for some photos of Train #353 screaming by.
I return to the bookstore and find Louise where I’ve left her. We then walk Main Street some more and find an authentic historic soda fountain where we stop for a milkshake right at closing time (4:00pm). We vow to return to Dowagiac and try some of the interesting restaurants in town.
We get back in the car and drive literally straight north for 23 miles up to Bangor (well we have to make one left turn when the state highway turns to stay on the county road north).
Once we get to Bangor–(33 Photos), which has a much less cute downtown, we drive to the train station and before getting out of the car, notice the Railroad Cafe is clearly closed. Signs on the doors list it’s new much more limited hours, 6:00am to 4:00pm on Weekdays, 6:00am to 2:00pm on Saturdays. I leave Louise in the car as I get my photo essay of the station with a decaying platform. Unhappy I can’t enter the depot.
We then need to salvage some work time before heading home to South Bend. Wefind a place courtesy of Google – we hope, in the midwest the internet has served us wrong so many times compared to the coasts where were from – open until 8:00pm (after the milkshake we know a late dinner will be fine) in St. Joesph. We arrive there right before sunset and take a little walk onto the bluff that overlooks the Amtrak Station.
The cafe in St. Joe is open till 8:00pm and is perfectly adequate. We go to our favorite brewery in Silver Harbor, happy about the days adventures even though they didn’t go really as planned.
Enjoy the new stations! (Next up will be finishing up the North Jersey Coast Line!)