The first time we visited Detroit, it seemed like a nice enough city. Of course, looking at the long term, Detroit was about halfway declined by then (Detroit had peaked in the 1950s). The decline, however, was much more obvious to us in 1987. Maybe we just visited more obviously declined neighborhoods on this trip, but we found that to be really sad.
Cincinnati was also kind of depressing as well. In 1980, my mom and I had spent the day at Union Terminal, which was, at the time, a shopping mall. When we returned in 1987, the mall was closed. We had, at that point, no idea that three years later Union Terminal would reopen as the Museum Center. We had had dinner in the rotating restaurant atop the Quality Inn which is now a Radisson in 1980. That restaurant was closed as well.
I’m hoping to redeem the memory of that trip to Cincinnati, at least, the weekend of the total eclipse in 2017. We won’t be able to see the eclipse in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which will be where the eclipse will be total for the longest period, as the trip back to San Antonio will take too much time. If all goes as planned, we’ll be going up through Memphis and Nashville to Cincinnati and then across to either Kansas or Nebraska, depending on where we can get a room at this point. Then we’ll come straight back and go back to work and (likely, though the calendar hasn’t been released yet) school the next day. And we don’t need to stay right on top of the eclipse site, since we’ll be driving. We can stay a bit out of the way and drive to the eclipse site. Having our car will also open up more possible places to see the eclipse. If the place we stay ends up being overcast that day, we can go northwest or southeast until we find a place that’s open.