Fallingwater

 

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Today I got to cross out another item on my Bucket List. Joe and I went to visit Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic house in southwestern Pennsylvania. And I have to say, the experience exceeded my expectations. the house was just stunning!

 But first, when I woke up, I had to put last night's plan into effect. I took a Covid test, which thank goodness came out negative. Then I went online and reserved our same campsite for tonight. And then I put my feet up for a little while and relaxed!

 We had a 12:30 pm reservation for our tour, but all too soon, I realized we needed to hustle. We took the Jeep  down the mountain, commenting at how incredibly steep the road was even for a Jeep. No wonder we'd had so much trouble getting up to the campground last night! Fallingwater was only about a 15 minute drive away once we made it down. There is a small touristy town at the base of the mountain, with the park office, a lot of places to rent rafts, kayaks, bikes, etc, and of course ice cream and souvenir shops. I made a note of some good places we could pull up to tomorrow in order to reattach the Jeep to the RV-- we'd already decided NOT to hook up until we reached the bottom of the mountain.

We arrived at Fallingwater, and went to the Visitor's Center, where our tour was confirmed. We had some time to wait, so we checked out the little cafe and I looked in the store at all the FLW-themed items. You an furnish your whole house with the FLW "look", but it's nothing without the architecture.

Our tour began with our guide handing us ear buds and a small speaker. When she spoke, our little speakers picked up her voice for us. This way, she could talk and we could hear her even if we weren't walking right beside her. They started this system during Covid, and Joe and I thought it was brilliant-- we could hear her even when we were looking around at the scenery, hear her answers to other people's questions, and all in all, it was a very good system.

 We walked through the grounds and heard about FLW's career and about Edward and Liliane Kaufmann, who commissioned the house. They had been coming to the property for years in the summer just to get away from the city (Pittsburgh), but they wanted to live there during the year. Their son, Edward Jr., had studied architecture with FLW, and he recommended that they hire Wright.They realized soon enough that although this was their private residence, Fallingwater was much more than that-- it deserved to be seen by the public. So they set up a trust and donated the house and grounds to the state, with the understanding it would remain open to the public.

As we came down the walkway and got our first glimpse of the house, I was just blown away. I had the same feeling I've had with other sites (and sights!) that I've seen numerous times in photos, and then got to see in person. It was just so much MORE than I'd expected. I could fill this blog with photographs of the exterior alone, it was just so stunning.

The tour took us through the entire house, although photos are only allowed on the first floor. The first floor was designed on the same kind of "open floor plan" that is so popular today (but was rare then)-- the dining room and living room/conversation areas are all just one huge space, surrounded by windows looking into the woods around the house. The river runs beneath the cantilevered terraces, and there is even a staircase directly from the living room down to the riverside. When the glass encloser to the stairs was open, it provided cooling air coming off the cold water. The kitchen was also on this floor, and although we couldn't go in, we could look at it through the doorway. The entire space was constructed of only four materials-- stone, glass, wood, and steel. We wandered all over while our guide pointed out small details and answered questions. 

Joe looks at stairway down from living room

From there we went upstairs-- the second floor had the "master bedroom" and Mr. Kaufman's study. The latter had this great window configuration by his desk, which allowed the window to actually swing into the room and open completely, allowing the sound of the rushing river to come into the space. Every bedroom had its own bath and its own terrace. The hallways, in contrast, were narrow and felt like little tunnels leading between the living areas. There was plenty of natural stone in the walls, adding to the tunnel effect.

View from first floor terrace of river rushing away from house

We went out onto the second floor terrace and from there walked up an outside staircase to the third floor, which had Edward Jr.'s bedroom. He had moved his bed to a little alcove on the other side of the floor (still connected to the main room) where the sun poured in from three sides--it was delicious! The walls of the staircase going down from that floor were lined with bookcases filled with Edward Jr.'s books. In fact, all the furnishings were original--the family's own stuff. They had wanted the space to really represent the fact that it was a HOME first and foremost before it became a public space.

Finally, we walked from the second floor up to the guest quarters, which were a separate building. The staircase canopy was an amazing concrete ribbon which swooped around with the curving stairs. At the top, the house had a small living room and bedroom, plus of course a terrace. There was also a "plunge pool" fed naturally from the natural stream dripping from the rocks. Apparently the family used this pool quite a bit for a quick dip.

Stairs down to the river from the living room

All in all, we thought the tour was very well done and the buildings were simply fabulous. We were so glad we had come. When we were finished with our tour, we went into the gallery (part of the visitor's center complex) and looked at photos and original documents related to the building of the house. We got something to drink, and then came home. The tour tickets allow you to wander around the grounds, but we didn't do much wandering-- climbing all those stairs, and then walking back to the visitor center was enough activity for us.

Kitchen

 

After that, it was a quick trip back "home" to the RV. But we did make one more stop-- at Cucumber Falls, which is in the park and was right on our way back up. The falls were very pretty and worth the 10 minute stop. Then when we got back, Joe immediately took a nap; I walked the dog and did some reading, and then I took a nap too. And that was our day-- dinner, and I started blogging this trip. I would consider today a success!! And I was SO glad that I had changed my plans... neither of us would have been up for driving for almost 2 hours just to spend the night in a Walmart lot. We can drive a little further tomorrow instead.

Cucumber Falls

Our 40th Anniversary

Day 3: Aug 29, 2011
Our day started out as planned--a lovely breakfast, and then we went to tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s home, Taliesin, and the Hillside Home School, which currently (still) contains the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. The lucky students live in the house, dine in the dining hall, and study in the huge drafting room designed by Wright for his own “apprentices” when he was the busiest architect in America. At that time, it was a working farm as well, and the students also baled hay and raised vegetables along with working on the pencil sketches for homes such as Fallingwater and the Robie House. (The year after he died, they voted to stop working the farm .)

The tour took us through the highlights--the school’s assembly room, drafting hall, and theater, and most of the house farther up the hill, including an enormous living room, bedrooms, and other living spaces. Every room is designed to enhance the view outside, which is wonderful on its own. But it is true that when you frame an amazing view with horizontal windows, it makes everything outside even more spectacular. All in all the buildings are fascinating and beautiful. Wright himself was of course a genius when it came to space and architecture, but he was also quite an unusual thinker in other ways. He could never have done what he did if he lived today--expecting apprentices to “learn by doing”, and the “doing” was building his own home, would undoubtedly not fly today!

Another interesting thing was that Wright seemed (to my way of thinking) to be remarkably un-invested emotionally in his work. What I mean by that is, The Hillside House especially was always a “work in progress”, and he constantly tore things out and rebuilt them in new configurations. Most people, I think, would look at what they did and not want to destroy it to build something new. His home, too, was rebuilt twice. The first version was destroyed by arson (causing the death of 7 people, including Wright’s long-time mistress and her 2 children), and the second house was destroyed by fire again when lightning hit the home. Wright rebuilt it including many stones which had gone through the fire turning pink in the exposure to the heat) and even art objects (statues, mostly) which show signs of having been burnt. In some places, the statues are literally embedded into the walls.

All in all it was a lovely tour and we enjoyed it. We got back to Mo at 12:15 and had sandwiches for lunch. While walking Roxy, however, Joe noted that we had a small problem--sometime in the last two days, the cover had blown off our rooftop air conditioner. We didn’t have internet in the Frank Lloyd Wright visitor center parking lot, so we drove back to the campground where we’d spent the night. We thought they might know a local RV supply place to get a new cover. (We could have backtracked an hour to the Camping World in Madison, but were hoping to avoid that and continue westward.)

After an hour of phone calls, we located what we needed in several places, but decided we’d wait until Sioux Falls, SD, which was right on our route and my original destination point for tonight. No rain is expected tonight, so we figured we could wait until tomorrow and not go backwards. So we got ready to go, and Joe turned Mo on--and Mo’s starter turned ON but would not turn OFF. Even when Joe removed the key, the starter kept cranking. Joe jumped out and disconnected a battery so the starter would stop….. but now we had a bigger issue. Joe’s guess was a “stuck solenoid”. Now we needed not a roof cover, but a “real mechanic”. Back into the RV Park office to ask for a recommendation. The guy we called couldn’t help, but he gave us the name of a good truck service center in Richland Center. The mechanic at the Richland Center shop talked to Joe on the phone, and actually guided him through the process to get the starter to turn off--by hitting the right part with a hammer!! (Joe says the hammer was his idea, to unstick the stuck solenoid, and the mechanic figured it couldn't hurt, LOL!) After the hammer trick worked, the mechanic recommended getting a new solenoid. Since his shop was literally 20 miles down the road on the route we’d planned to take anyway, we opted to come directly to the shop and get the solenoid replaced here.

So it is now 4:30pm--3.5 hours since I expected to leave the Spring Green area (well okay, we ARE 20 miles further along than we were, to be fair.) But the repair is now done, and Joe is paying them in the office, and I am going to stop typing, clean up, and get ready to drive toward Sioux Falls. We’ll stop someplace (as close to there as possible) and stop (I hope BRIEFLY) to purchase and put on a new air conditioner cover. And then continue on toward Montana.

Happy Anniversary, Joe and Deb. The journey of 40 years and thousands of miles may not always be smooth, but somehow, we do manage to come through it together. We are packing up again and heading west. The journey continues, I hope for another 40 years and thousands more SAFE miles. I love you, Joey Cohn!!

Charging Across the Country

Day 2: Sunday Aug. 28

My title tonight is a pun. It refers to: 1) Our steady progress from eastern Ohio this morning to Spring Green, Wisconsin, about 30 miles northwest of Madison, tonight. It was a gorgeous day for a drive. If you can believe it, we saw our first herd of buffalo this morning--in Ohio! Just along the Ohio Turnpike, who would believe it? But most of Ohio and Indiana is much of a muchness--kind of a flat, pretty in a nondescript sort of way, landscape. The corner of Illinois we are forced to endure is mostly very expensive Chicago-area toll roads until we get most of the way to the Wisconsin border. Wisconsin, otoh, is simply gorgeous. I loved it last year and loved it again today. There is something that really speaks to me about this landscape--all the green farms, dairy cows, white farm buildings, and gently rolling terrain. So beautiful. We barreled along all day and made good time, logging a total of 573 miles. This is a lot, even for us--although on our second day in 2007, we drove for 648 miles by getting up at 6:30a.m and drivng until nearly midnight. Today we started at 9:10am and stopped at 7:50pm. It was more than enough, for me at least.

2) We wouldn’t get far without charging a lot (well, three) expensive fill-ups of our gas tank. It seemed that with every 50 miles, the price of gas went up another 10 cents/gallon. The Chicago area was the worst--it got all the way up to $3.99; luckily we still had half a tank at that point and did NOT top it off. Our last fill-up last night, in western PA, cost $3.59/gallon; this morning we paid $3.69 in Ohio, $3.79 in Indiana, skipped the $3.89 and $3.99 in Illinois, and came back “down” to $3.65 just at the Wisconsin border. That price was actually $3.63 for us, because it was a Flying J station and we have a loyalty card for RVers, which gives us 2-cents/gal off (it amounted to $.48, LOL!) But each full tank approaches $100, ouch!

3) And finally, charging refers to all the electronic cords which are surrounding me at the moment. My phone is charging, my computer is charging, and the iPod Touch is charging off the computer. I *love* my iPod Touch-- it earned its keep today. First, it did what it was supposed to do--played music. The Mo Report includes the refrigerator being more or less fine, although the pilot to the gas line blows out on the highway (not so unusually). But the CD player, which was temperamental last summer, refused to work at all this morning. So whenever we get tired of playing Radio Station Roulette, we relied on my iPod for music.

Even more important, however, was what it did this evening when we finally had to decide where to camp tonight. This afternoon, we made reservations for a tour of Taliesin tomorrow morning at 10:15 a.m. So where to spend the night? Last year we were here for 3 nights and stayed in 3 different places--two state parks, both beautiful, and one private campground, with lots of “facilities” but not so beautiful. The latter, however, is only 10-15 minutes from the Frank Lloyd Wright visitor center where our tour leaves from. And, it has wifi. We decided to choose the practical over the beautiful (especially after we missed a turn which took us toward the parks.)

At this point, we tried to program Magellan, our GPS, with our true final destination. But although I had the campground name (in our log book, which I keep daily for every long trip), the name was not in the AAA data bank, nor was it in the AAA camping book. Now what to do? I have an old copy of the Trailer Life Campground directory, and was just about to go dig it out, when I remembered: THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT! I looked at my iPod and there was the Woodall’s Directory, which is published in TWO paper volumes, each several inches thick, but which is stored on my cute little iPod with the Woodall’s App. There was the campground, with the address for the GPS and the phone number, so I could call and warn them we were arriving. And in truth, we would not have been able to find this place without that address.

So now we are parked in a nice grassy spot away from everyone else, with lots of electricity to charge up all our indispensable gadgets. Joe just made us a yummy dinner of cheesey-scrammies and kasha. There is a hot shower handy, and a lot of places for a dog to be walked in the morning. And the wifi has so far been excellent, at least for my little iPod. I hope this blog uploads as smoothly as my email downloaded on the latter. It is now almost 11 local time, which is midnight DebandJoe time. But we can sleep in for a while, and have a quiet anniversary morning before going to our tour and then heading west again. And I promise to get my camera out tomorrow--that will give me another gadget to charge, I suppose.

Note to blogwatchers: we will be Ontheroad for the next couple of days--so if you don’t get a daily blog, do NOT worry. We will probably be Walmarting or something of the sort, and there’s no guarantee we’ll find wifi on the way.

Day Three: House on the Rock

Aug. 16, 2010 We have had a wonderful day, full but not rushed, and it seems to me that we could spend an entire week in this little corner of southwestern Wisconsin. It is an absolutely lovely area, full of rolling green hills and valleys, many farms, and not many people. In fact, everywhere we go we are struck with how uncrowded it seems, beginning with our first “adventure” this morning. We started the day slowly, taking care of some housekeeping chores, and taking advantage of the nice showers in the campground. We were feeling remarkably well rested, which at first I attributed to the fact that when the alarm went off at 7 a.m., we slept until 8. But a little while after we woke up, we realized that somewhere along the way, we’d entered the Central Time zone, and although it was only 8am by our cell phones, it was 9 a.m. by our wrist watches, indicating that we’d actually had 9 hours of sleep! No wonder we were so perky!! We left our campsite in the woods and before leaving Blue Mounds State Park entirely, we drove up on top of the “mountain” (this is the highest point in southern Wisconsin.) There was absolutely no one up there when we got to the parking lot for the scenic overlook. We climbed up the wooden observation tower—even Roxy made it up despite her reluctance to go up open staircases—to find a stunning view of the surrounding valleys. Green everywhere—it was a great vista. We were up there for 10 minutes or so when a family of 4 came up the 8 flights of stairs and joined us. We decided not to stress Roxy any further and decided to climb down. We left the park heading for the Welcome Center in the town of Spring Green, figuring we could pick up more brochures and maybe even coupons before going to either Taliesin or the House on the Rock. The GPS routed us via county roads, which here are all labeled not with numbers but with letters. We took Road F to Road ID to Road Y, and followed Y for quite a long while, much to Joey’s delight. It was narrow and twisty and went through the countryside and there were NO other vehicles to be seen. That is, until a tractorish truck pulling an oddly-shaped tank trailer pulled out of a side road and passed us going the other way. We suddenly realized what was in his tank—a wide trail pungent brown liquidy stuff was laid on the road, and there was no doubt it was liquid manure. Moments after realizing that “Oy, his truck has a leak!”, we realized that WE had no choice but to cross his path—and at that point, it was Mo with the pungent smell of horse manure clinging to the wheels. The smell stayed with us for a while before fading, but late in the afternoon when we left the RV, I could smell it again. Next time we are anywhere near water, we need to spray our mud flaps! Phew! Lucky for us, we have a good sense of humor about this kind of thing. We arrived at the Visitor Center in Spring Green and discovered a totally delightful small town (population 1444, twice the size of the village of Blue Mounds.) The architecture of the town is very influenced by the proximity of Taliesin, with many buildings designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Visitor Center itself, and the bank next door, both show a lot of prairie style influence, and the town’s medical building is modeled after Taliesin. The town itself seemed so utterly quiet—there was little traffic or noise or people—but we could tell it was a thriving place. We parked Mo next to the library, which had beautiful specimen gardens planted around it; the bank, as I said, was a fascinating building, there were parks and little shops everywhere. We walked into some of them, picked up some batteries for my camera and a few small fun items, chatted with shop owners, and generally felt that the town was totally adorable. I don’t think it has a single traffic light. An utterly livable place. Below is a photo of the center of Spring Green at noon! We had some lunch in Mo, and then headed south again to visit the House on the Rock. This is a major attraction in the area, and we decided it was really a cross between the Winchester Mystery House in (I think) San Jose, and the Shelburne (VT) Museum which we fell in love with last summer. This house was the lifetime project of one Alex Jordan, who was born and grew up in this area. Like the Winchester House, the house has room after room, and like the Shelburne Museum, it houses huge collections of everything from dollhouses (over 200) to circus memorabilia (miniature model circuses, posters, painted circus wagon wheels), pipe organs, weapons, carved ivory, pipe organs, dolls, automatons, Asian artifacts, carousel horses, stained glass, and “stuff” of every conceivable description. The most stunning item of all is the carousel—it has 276 handcrafted animals (not a single horse, but everything else you can imagine!), 20,000 lights, and is 80 feet in diameter. Our jaws literally dropped when we walked in and saw it! It was simply stunning. It is housed in a room with more carved wooden horses stacked up on the walls and the ceiling was covered with angel carvings—or so I thought (more about that later.) The house itself is original attraction—it is built right into the side of the mountain, and the walls of many of the rooms are the natural stone. One room has a waterfall of natural runoff trickling through it, and many of the rooms have windows which bank out over the edge of the cliff. The ceilings are quite low and some of the passageways are narrowly cut through the stone. The high point of this section is the “Infinity Room”. Opened in 1985, it is a 218-foot room which is cantilevered out over the valley below, suspended in space. As you walk toward the end it physically narrows to a point, making it seem as if it goes on forever. At the end of the room, there is a glass floor with a view straight down into the trees below.

Above: A room with natural rock walls, a waterfall, and trees inside.

The place is so large and houses so many things that it is divided into 3 self-guiding tours with 3 separate tickets. We of course bought the entire package, but because we didn’t get there until 3 pm, we decided we’d never be able to see the entire place. So we went into Tour 1 (the house itself) and Tour 3 (including the Carousel Room, the dolls, the circus collection and all the other things I listed above. We are planning to go back tomorrow for Tour 2 (they let you use any unpunched tour tickets within a year of purchase.) We had mixed feelings about the entire place—on one hand, we loved many of the items we saw, including the carousel, a fabulous calliope playing songs from the Mikado, the automatons, which played along with the music everywhere, the pipe organ room (which was like some kind of science fiction dream), and the collection of Barranger Motion Machines. These were produced during the 1920s-1950s to display diamonds and jewelry in store windows, and are very charming.

Right: Drum Tree in the Organ Room What we didn’t like so much was that there was literally NO explanation of anything in the place. [Subsequent comment: we read in the book we bought that Alex said, "Don't education them, entertain them"-- but we WANTED to be educated!] They don’t even give you a basic map which shows where the rest rooms are, or what is in the next room. (Speaking of rest rooms, I had a “first” today—I took photos inside the Ladies Room, and even inside the stall!) But anyway, we felt that maybe Alex Jordan actually didn’t WANT people to know too much about it, in order to preserve the sense of overwhelming amazement. FX there is a room full of armor, displayed in dioramas. I didn’t find out until tonight when I was reading a tour guide that it was all made specifically for his museum. There was a HUMUNGOUS cannon, which we wondered about, and turns out he had it made right there on the premises. The most bizarre thing we saw was as we left at the very end. The tour pathway (which was circuitous and went up and down all the time) ended RIGHT up under the ceiling in the room with the carousel. That was when we could see that many of the angels suspended from the ceiling were not carved, as we’d thought, but they were store-type mannequins with wings attached! They were extremely bizarre and somewhat creepy . Joey felt that the end result was a feeling that Alex Jordan was not quite sane [g],and that for him, enough was never enough. For instance, there was NO need of the room filled with somewhat tacky-looking replicas of all the British Crown Jewels… there was plenty to see without that! Tomorrow when we go back, we will spend time in the Alex Jordan room, which is an introduction to the museum, and see what we can learn about him.

(Above: "Angels" on the ceiling and dozens of carousel horses on the walls)

We finished our tour just at 6 pm, at which point we had a snack in the RV and then, after searching for a gas station, decided to spend another night in a Wisconsin state park, this time the Governor Dodge State Park. This place is much larger than last night’s park, with a very large campground, 2 lakes, beaches, etc. Tomorrow we will go see the waterfall before we leave, and then go south just a little further to find wifi. The park ranger told me where the only place is “around here” with wifi, and we have been out of luck on that subject since we left home. I am not at all sure where we will end up by the end of the day tomorrow…. I am beginning to think that we’d better start planning to spend our entire vacation just in Wisconsin and Minnesota. There is so much to see here, and I am already one day “behind” on my schedule. But it doesn’t really matter…. It is so pleasant here, and relaxing, and we are thoroughly enjoying discovering places which we didn’t plan on but which turn out to be lovely. It was a wonderful day.

[Postscript: Camera malfunctioned--I took more photos, but when I tried to transfer them from my 3rd disk of photos, there were absolutely none. So I have no photos of the circus collections, or anything else from that part of the tour. Too bad, the circus wagon wheels were so beautiful!]

Fast Update from Spring Green, WI

Aug. 17, 2010

We are having a wonderful time, but have not had ANY wifi until today. Unfortunately it seems that Blogger won't let me copy/paste my lengthy blog from MS Word into the blog. Sooooo.... no long blogs today! I will have to catch up somehow later.

We spent last night at Governor Dodge State Park in Dodgeville, WI, the home of Land's End. Went in the morning to Culver's, a cute fast food restaurant, to use the free wifi there. The wifi was fine but as i said, the blog didn't upload. We spent over an hour there, yuck! Then we headed north back toward Spring Green, where we also spent yesterday. We took two days to tour the House on the Rock, a totally amazing attraction. I can't really do it justice here--it took us probably 8 hours total to go through the whole thing. It reminded us of the Shelbourne Museum which we saw last year--rooms and rooms of eclectic collections of everything from dollhouses to carousel horses to old musical instruments to boats to firearms to cash registers to circus miniatures to almost anything you could possibly imagine! The house itself is built into the original rock, with an "infinity room" which is cantilevered out 210 feet long over the valley 150+ feet below. It was truly astonishing.

Now we are trying to decide about tomorrow, but meanwhile we're camped right on the Wisconsin River in Spring Green, an adorable little town which is heavily influenced by the work ofFrank Lloyd Wright. His home here, Taliesin, is a major attraction, which we haven't seen yet. The problem is that the tours are not too early in the morning and we are already "behind schedule" due to the huge size of the House on the Rock. I am thinking we will not make it as far as North Dakota after all... there is just too much to do in Wisconsin!

Mo has behaved quite well, although the refrigerator is being fussy. Joe has been fixing it; but we have also used our collapsible cooler when necessary. At least we grew up camping with a cooler and no fridge--it is not a deal breaker! Other small housekeeping chores have been quite easy to handle.

So that's about it--we are having a very lovely time and feel as if we've been away for a long time already. I do hope this blog uploads; and if not, check me on Facebook for brief updates!