I really hope you get a chance to check out yesterday's Michigan Surfing feature. Quite a few cool videos and another shining example (based on reader comments) that Michigan is often more than people believe it to be.

Shhh. Proposed Grayling Amusement Park a Secret?

The MLUI has done some digging on Grayling's proposed Main Street America theme park we looked at last month.

GRAYLING – Citizens, local elected officials, and the Granholm administration are lining up in support of a 1,800-acre amusement park that its downstate developers propose to build on nearly three square miles of public land here, adjacent to Interstate-75. The planned amusement park promises 2,000 jobs and would be among the largest in the Midwest. But its path to construction is subject to a host of local and state environmental and land use approvals, and some of the most important early agreements and management decisions were deliberately kept secret from the public...

Read the rest of Secrecy Cloaked Proposal for Huge Theme Park from Glenn Puit of the Great Lakes Bulletin News Service.

Engage Hybrid Hyper-drive?

Monday's Freep reported that Ford Motor Co. and Southern California Edison will team up to test rechargeable hybrid vehicles in an effort to speed up mass production of the new technology. The story is also covered in Green Wombat's Ford Plugs into the Grid. While the article seems to be looking at this as an effort that will increase the speed with which plug-in hybrids get to market, I was left feeling a little depressed at how far away it appears they are from the mass market.

Electric Tie Dye

Shqipo says he had always wanted to do some long exposures during fairs and got his chance at the St. Mary's Polish Fair (the nation's largest high school fair) about a month ago. In addition to this photo, he has a really amazing set of photos from the fair that you'll want to check out (slideshow). You can also get a great listing of Michigan fairs from the Michigan Fair Association.

Big Boy says It's a Michigan Thing ... now where the heck is it?

Outlets from mLive to mLiberal are reporting that Warren-based Big Boy has launched a new "It's a Michigan Thing" multimedia marketing campaign that will include television, radio, a consumers sweepstakes, in-store materials and an interactive component where customers can blog about their favorite Michigan things. Small problem: nowhere from YouTube to Big Boy's own web site can you find anything more than the announcement. You can get more about Big Boy (and a cool photo) from Big Boy Graveyard at Michigan in Pictures.

Warren, Michigan

The headquarters of Big Boy is located in Warren. Wikipedia's Warren, Michigan entry says it's the largest city in Macomb County, largest suburb of Detroit and 3rd largest city in Michigan. Despite that fact, we're surprisingly slim on Warren listings. We do have links for a cool Warren info site - GoWarrenCity.com - and the excellent Dragonmead Microbrewery. We should say something nice about the weather too - after three days of mid 90s, Warren (like the rest of the state) will fall back to the 70s. Joy.