(soft rock music) - [Tom] On this episode of "UTR," we head inside to explore Michigan's great indoors.

We'll visit a zoo that's full of things that zoom, go inside to play ball, and see the Wright Museum.

Then it's a cool car collection that's also music to your ears, and a place that literally rocks.

Get ready to explore the cool people, places, and things that make Michigan's great indoors the place to be.

(dramatic soft rock music) (wind blowing) ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh, oh (upbeat cheerful music) ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh (snow crunching loudly) (sliders laughing) (snowmobile engine roaring) (upbeat cheerful music continues) ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh - [Tom] The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is dedicated to enabling economic prosperity.

The MEDC markets Michigan with a focus on growing businesses and building resilient communities in our state.

- [Announcer] A visit to the Stahls Auto Collection will take you back to a time when cars were more than just a way to get around.

A fantastic assortment of gas pumps, neon signs, and automated music machines dating back 150 years that must be seen and heard, info@stahlsauto.com.

- I've been around the world but there's one place I keep coming back to.

And the more I explore, the more I realize it's the place to be.

I'm Tom Daldin, and this is "Under The Radar: Michigan."

(soft rock music) Now, we all know that winter, spring, summer, or fall, Michigan is an awesome four season destination with incredible outdoor adventures for all of us.

But eventually, you gotta go inside.

And for that reason, we proudly present five awesome things you can do when the weather outside is frightful, because Michigan's great indoors is pretty darn delightful.

That's right!

Here in Michigan, you can make as many magnificent memories inside as you can out, so that's why we're coming in to see what's up.

And speaking of up, our first stop takes us to an amazing place where fun and learning fly high.

(loud whooshing) That's right, we're in Portage, Michigan, just south of Kalamazoo at a zoo that shows you things that once flew.

(Tom chuckles) Don't worry, that'll make sense in just a minute.

If you're looking for a great place to take the whole family where you can experience all the fantastic flying machines made by man, this place is like no other.

They call it the Air Zoo, and it's literally the entire history of flight and space exploration in one giant indoor interactive adventure.

Now, we were here a decade ago in our very first show but this place is so cool it's worth multiple meanders.

Besides, I'm sure a lot's changed over the years.

So to find out exactly what, I took off for some talk time with Air Zoo President and CEO, Troy Thrash.

Troy, I've been singing the praises of this place for a full decade now, to the point where I am hoarse, so I'm gonna let you do some singing.

You can go ahead and start.

Do a number for me.

- Well, thank you.

It's been seven and a half years for me and I will tell you every day I walk into the Air Zoo, I discover something new, I learn a new fact, and I am inspired just how we are able to educate our community.

We started with five airplanes, all named after animals.

Hence the term Air Zoo, like a Flying Tiger and a Warhawk and a Wildcat.

And we've grown from those humble beginnings to now over 200,000 square feet of artifacts, exhibits.

We have over 100 rare and unique aircraft and spacecraft, from World War I fighters all the way up to the world's only SR-71B Blackbird.

- Plus, what I love about this place is it's just not just airplanes and jets, you do aerospace, you do the history of space exploration.

- We do.

We have a big space area where we talk primarily about rocketry, from Robert Goddard and Tsiolkovsky, the early fathers of modern rocketry, all the way to the incredible exploration we're doing right now.

We have now over 100 hands-on, interactive education programs for kids from three years old to 99 years old, in fact.

(Tom laughs) - Hey, I'm in there.

- And these, they really run the gamut of science so it's not just aviation in space, but it's chemistry, physics, biology, geology.

And they're all designed to bring what kids are learning about in the textbook to life in a very different way.

It is so important for us to reach every child in this community, in this region, and beyond, and give them a chance to fall in love with math and science and engineering with their hands, their minds, and their hearts, because we wanna show them all of the great stories of these pilots, the mechanics, the designers, everyone who worked on these airplanes.

And we want them to know that they can do the same thing if they love this stuff.

- Again, that's what I love about this place.

You've got stuff that's been in outer space, and you also have planes that have been at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

- That's right.

One of the new things here at the Air Zoo is our original building has been turned primarily into a restoration center.

Right now we're restoring two World War II aircraft that had been on the bottom of Lake Michigan for at least 65 years each.

An FM-2 Wildcat and one really cool one, an SBD Douglas Dauntless dive bomber that served at Pearl Harbor during World War II, and also fought in the Battle of the Coral Sea.

- Well, this is one of Michigan's great indoor treasures.

I mean, if you want, when it's cold out or for whatever reason, if you wanna come to a place, this is such a treasure and I think people realize that so they get involved and they want it to continue and grow.

If you haven't been to the Air Zoo, come in from Michigan's great outdoors and discover some cool indoor stuff.

Quite honestly, I've been talking about this place since we first came here 10 years ago, and I still can't say enough about it.

If you're looking for an aviation and space place that's simply out of this world, check out the Air Zoo.

You'll take off for parts unknown, and when you land, you'll know all about them, bonus.

(loud whooshing) Well, right now, we're gonna show you a place we went to a couple years ago where we had an absolute ball.

Actually, we had a whole bunch of them.

(Tom laughs) If you're Italian, you know an Italian, or you've always wanted to be one, I got a place you're really gonna like.

Palazzo di Bocce is like a crash course in being an Italian aristocrat.

From fine dining and fantastic surroundings to the fun and ancient sport of bocce ball, this place will turn you Italian in no time at all.

It all started when Anthony Battaglia retired, got bored, and then, well, started building.

Oh, you don't look at the cameras, they're evil.

- I wanna look at the camera, what's it matter?

- No, then it looks like a TV commercial.

You'll break, it steals your hair.

- Already you're starting to tell me what I gotta do here.

(Tom laughs) - Well, he's Italian.

From the look of this place, I don't think retirement suited you, did it?

- [Anthony] Are you kidding?

(Anthony laughs) - [Tom] You don't seem like the kind of guy that can sit around and do nothing.

- No, I mean, come on.

No, I retired from the construction business and I had to do something.

So I was gonna build a little club, you know, for a couple guys.

- [Tom] Right.

Well, how many bocce courts you got here now?

- [Anthony] 10.

- [Tom] You got 10?

(Anthony laughs) And then, the restaurant, this place is so grandiose, like-- - [Anthony] 32,000 square feet.

- [Tom] Wow.

- [Anthony] But it's a, you know, I was, you know, wasn't sure what was gonna happen but it opened up and it's been successful.

We've been here 11 years now.

- [Tom] So you wanted to build bocce courts, but what inspired the restaurant?

- [Anthony] Well, you gotta have-- - [Tom] You're Italian, right?

- [Anthony] Something to go with it and you gotta eat.

Right?

Come on.

No, it's a perfect mix.

- [Tom] Well, you're right.

It's the perfect combination because people love to play games and people always congregate where there's food.

So you come here, you've got a wonderful traditional game, you've got wonderful food.

Yeah, it's a great place to be.

- And a little bit of?

- Little bit of wine.

Yeah, that always adds to that.

Does that help your playing?

- You gotta have that.

(Anthony and Tom laugh) - So do you think I should try this?

- I think you should try it.

You wanna try it right now?

- I've never done it before and I feel guilty, I should probably.

- Okay.

- I should try it.

What do you think?

Do you just wanna-- - Let's.

Jason, we got a guy here that doesn't know how to play the game and we wanna teach it to him.

- [Jason] All right, let's play!

- [Tom] Okay.

- Okay, we gotta explain a little bit how the game works.

- Well, first of all, what's the little ball for?

- That's the target.

It's called the pallino, that's the target.

- Pallino?

- [Jason] Yes.

Basic object of the game, you wanna get close to the pallino.

- [Tom] Okay.

- Let's go down on this end.

- Let's go down, I'll try and get close to the pallino.

I don't even know what I just said.

Well, since I already know how to eat Italian, I figured that with the expert tutelage of bocce champs, Jason Wisniewski and Jose Baro, I should be rolling them like a pro in no time.

And I gotta say, it's definitely tougher than it looks but also a whole lot of fun and a great way to work up an appetite.

So we sat down to a meal so good and so plentiful, that if we could have stood up after we were done, we would have done it all over again.

I'm telling ya, Palazzo di Bocce will make you feel so Italian you'll leave with an extra vowel on the end of your name.

So let me make you an offer you can't refuse.

Go to Palazzo di Bocce, have dinner, play some bocce ball, and if you don't have a great time, huh?

What's a matter, you?

Now, are you ready to learn about the true African-American experience in America?

Well, if you are, the first thing you have to do is go to the Wright Museum.

And I mean that literally.

That's because here in Detroit, we are so lucky to have The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, a place that educates, celebrates, and enlightens all of us about the incredible accomplishments and arduous journey of these amazing and resilient people.

African-Americans have contributed so very much to the building of this nation and have been responsible for tons of advances in science, society, literature, the arts.

Let's face it, in everything!

And if you're ready, this is the place to revel in it.

Now, to make sure I get the full depth and breadth of this fascinating facility, I spent some time with Director of External Affairs, Ed Foxworth.

The first thing I wanna say, Ed, is everybody, and I mean everybody, whether you're white, red, yellow, black, purple, green, blue, should come to this museum.

An absolutely incredible experience.

- The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History is an institution that is the second largest of its kind in the world, and we're very excited about the fact that we have this institution that we call a first-person institution where basically, individuals were here, not from what we thought happened, what we imagined happened, but in fact, what did take place?

- I was gonna ask you, what's the most significant part about the museum or an exhibit in the museum, but I think I know what you're gonna say.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that the most significant part that people will experience when they come to this museum is the fact that they'll get a chance to go through and see just what happened in previous times and how the slave trade actually impacted Africans and African-Americans.

And that is being able to see how Africans were enslaved, how they were captured and kept, how they were traded, how they were then treated, and then took upwards of 350, 400 people and put them in a cargo hold for months at a time as they traveled, and just how they were treated.

That is the most significant part here at the museum in the Still We Rise permanent exhibit.

- What's the most rewarding thing for you personally being a part of this museum?

- Being a part of this museum for me is extremely exciting because we get a chance to teach people of all backgrounds just what happened.

We get a chance to talk with young people and watch the light bulbs go off over their head and see, you know, "Wow, Harriet Tubman "made 17 trips back to the South to save 300 people, "including her own mother, wow!"

right?

And so they get a chance to then be ambassadors for us.

So as people come through this museum, they get a chance to leave out and they go and tell people in their communities, in their churches, and on their job about what they saw here.

That for me is the most rewarding part of the kind of work that we do here.

- Why do you think it's important that people come here more than once?

- Oh, it's really important to come back to The Charles H. Wright Museum because we're always changing and updating our exhibits.

We have a large number of programs that we put on from authors and speakers, to storytellings.

We have a fantastic cadre of educators and tour guides who can really explain things.

It's one thing to walk through a museum and look at placards and mannequins and imitations, but when you have a tour guide and someone who's gonna take you through and begin to tell you the story.

So when we talk about the West African slave, for example, you can walk in and see mannequins, but then for someone to tell you how they were fed, how long they stayed in there, the fact that they didn't have latrines and windows, that is powerful.

But coming back, because we're gonna talk about all kinds of things in different galleries throughout the museum.

So there's so much to see, there's so much to soak up.

You gotta come through here with a pen and paper in hand, ready to capture in our rotunda, all of the fantastic names.

So you can go through the basic ones of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King.

We have outdoor activities and concerts and things like that, where it just, again, reinstills excitement and energy into people's lives.

So we love what we do here.

- With open eyes and an open heart, this experience will open your mind to an amazing journey made by some absolutely incredible and proud people.

It's astonishing how much you can learn and feel in a single afternoon, especially when you're at the right museum, The Charles H. Wright Museum that is.

(loud whooshing) Now, everybody knows that Stahls Automotive Museum in Chesterfield Township has one of the most comprehensive classic car collections in the cosmos.

I mean, in a few short steps you can see the entire evolution of the automobile.

Ah, but did you also know that this place can be music to your ears?

Yep, at Stahls you'll see tons of absolutely incredible and rare automobiles, righteously restored gas pumps, and a vast variety of vintage signage.

Believe me, this place has an amazing array of captivating cars along with all their awesome artifacts.

But what are all these marvelous and magnificent machines that make music?

Well, to find out the who, what, when, where, why, and how they got here, I checked in with Stahls' General Manager, and all around awesome individual, Terri Coppens.

Okay, Terri, this is a car museum.

What's with all the music machines?

(bright cheerful music) - Well, cars are mechanical, these are as well.

These are all mechanical music machines.

- How?

Well, first of all, how many do you have?

And then second of all, are people shocked when they come in to see these?

- Oh, definitely.

They definitely come in here thinking they're seeing cars and especially the wives, when the guys are dragging their wives to see another car museum and they come in with the wives, they'll come back more often than the guys do then to see and bring their friends to see these things.

- Well, what got Ted Stahl interested in music machines, 'cause we know he's a huge car head, but?

- [Terri] Yes.

- I mean, this is, like, they're mechanical, like you said, but it's a completely different thing.

- He visited a previous collection that was in Florida, the Milhous Collection.

They had many of these machines set up along with some cars too, and he just fell in love with it when he heard it.

And again, the engineering behind the cars and the engineering behind the musical instruments also intrigued him.

- Well, what amazes me is when you open up one of these machines, it was state-of-the-art technology at the time.

- And the really neat thing is if you think about it, these machines are exactly how the people listened to it in the 19th century, early 19th century.

So what you're hearing is exactly what they heard.

There's no changes.

There's no, I mean, we may run them through using an iPad with a MIDI program or anything, but the sounds coming out are exactly what they would have heard back then.

- The range of what you have here is mind-blowing.

Every different kind of mechanical contraption that you can think of, you guys have here.

From the small to the very, the huge.

- Yes.

- Like the biggest one you have is?

- That is the Gaudin.

It is a dance hall organ, considered to be the largest Gaudin in the world.

And it has, it's got, the bells were actually added on later, which add a whole new sound to it.

So it's just, it's an amazing piece.

- How do you even maintain these machines?

I mean, who is still around that understands how these things work?

- Well, that is the one gentleman that we have that does do.

He travels to come here and does the maintaining of them or does repair work.

Actually, we have a couple of them that do that but they will also show us things to help keep them going.

The biggest thing is humidity.

You may feel it in the room now that we do keep, we have a steam humidification system.

- [Tom] That's why my mustache is frizzing.

- Yes, yeah.

(Terri laughs) Looks wet.

But the steam humidification actually helps everything run very well, so.

And then just keeping them moving.

Just like people, you know, you gotta keep moving to keep going and keep staying strong, we gotta keep moving these machines.

So we'll keep playing them and people enjoy that.

- Well, this place rivals the Henry Ford.

I mean, this, what you have amassed here is absolutely amazing.

And like I said, people must be so surprised when they come in here and they're expecting cool cars, gas pumps, signage, and then all of a sudden they see this.

- Yes.

- Is amazing.

- Yep.

Again, they'll stay just for the music and they'll come in and ask certain ones to be played and we'll do that.

You know, we'll play them all, we demonstrate all of them.

They all play and they all sound wonderful, so.

- Well, I'd sure love to hear one.

And if I had to pick one, which one would it be?

- The Gaudin.

That's definitely-- - The big daddy?

- Yes.

Yes, definitely gonna wanna hear that one.

- Well then, we'll let Gaudin play us out then.

- There you go.

- Okay, Terri, fire it up.

(bright cheerful music) So if you wanna see some of the coolest and rarest rides ever to be amassed in a museum, you came to the right place.

And if you also want to experience the amazing history of music machines from all around the world, they've got you covered there too.

I'm telling you, Stahls Automotive Museum is an incredible collection of all kinds of contraptions that will completely captivate your entire family.

It really is one of Michigan's great indoor adventures.

(loud whooshing) You know, I've always wanted to have a rock star on this program, and I finally got one.

But this guy isn't just any rock star, he actually knows about rocks.

And that's because this rock star is John Jaszczak, Director and Curator of the A.E.

Seaman Mineral Museum at Michigan Tech University in Houghton.

This is an absolutely amazing place that has mineral specimens from around the world and beyond.

And John is such a rock star that he's actually got a rock named after him.

You wanna see and know more?

Good, because I've got a backstage pass.

So let's rock.

Well, thanks, John.

Thanks for having us up.

I appreciate it.

When we walked into that museum a month ago I think it was the little kid rock collector in me, 'cause I used to have this big rock collection.

The number of specimens you have in that space is incredible.

What's your largest specimen you have there?

- In the museum, we have some very large specimens.

One of them is a beautiful specimen of copper with a little bit of silver from the Caledonia Mine, and it's over 800 pounds.

- Wow!

Now, you have specimens from around the world, correct?

- That's right.

We specialize in minerals from Michigan and the Lake Superior region, and we have specimens from all over the world that are world-class we say.

- Well, what kind of reaction do you get from people when they walk in that place?

'Cause I'm sure you heard, I mean, I needed my wow counter when I was in there.

But you saw my reaction when I was there.

- It's great fun to walk around anonymously in the gallery and watch people's reactions and hear their reactions.

We regularly have to clean the glass and the display cases 'cause there's nose prints on the cases.

(Tom laughs) But also, your reaction in the Fluorescent Gallery, it's a guaranteed wow experience when those last shortwave ultraviolet lights turn on and the minerals that in ordinary light look kind of bland, and they just glow with these brilliant reds and greens and yellows.

It's a universal reaction.

People say out loud, "Wow!"

- What makes them glow like that?

- Well, not all of the minerals fluoresce like that.

High-frequency ultraviolet light is able to excite electrons in the atoms and they give off light at a wavelength and frequency that we can see, so it goes from invisible ultraviolet to the visible wavelengths of reds and blues and greens.

And it reminds me again, of being a kid.

I loved things that glowed in the dark as a kid, so.

- You were starting to talk above my intelligence grade there, but I think I got a lot of it.

Well, we love the town of Houghton, Hancock, both towns, and the university is amazing.

But yeah, folks, if you get a chance to get up there and go to this museum, it's like I said, you get a chance to meet John, the rock star.

(Tom and John laugh) And the specimens are out of this world and of this world.

- They're beautiful, they're amazing.

I find them inspiring.

I never tire of looking at them.

- Well, thanks for giving me a backstage pass so I can come back and talk to you.

- Anytime.

Come on back and visit.

- Deal.

I'll be back.

- All right.

- [Tom] In a word, wow.

With every turn you see something rare, beautiful, or just plain fascinating.

If you wanna get caught between about a million rocks in a cool place, spend some time at the A.E.

Seaman Mineral Museum in Houghton.

I guarantee this is one of the best rock shows you'll ever see.

And if you want some awesome memory making adventures, don't forget to explore Michigan's great indoors.

Just whatever you do, don't forget to close the door on your way in or your mom will holler at you.

(wind blowing) ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh, oh (upbeat cheerful music) ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh (snow crunching loudly) (sliders laughing) (snowmobile engine roaring) (upbeat cheerful music continues) ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh, oh ♪ Wa, oh, oh, oh - [Tom] The Michigan Economic Development Corporation is dedicated to enabling economic prosperity.

The MEDC markets Michigan with a focus on growing businesses and building resilient communities in our state.

- [Announcer] A visit to the Stahls Auto Collection will take you back to a time when cars were more than just a way to get around.

A fantastic assortment of gas pumps, neon signs, and automated music machines dating back 150 years that must be seen and heard, info@stahlsauto.com.

(soft rock music) (cheerful piano music)