No, We're Not in Florida Anymore.

I know, I've been neglecting my documentation of our travels. My creative energies are being channeled into my interior design fantasies. Apologies offered. I'll do a quick update now. This Spring and Summer are all about friends, family, and future too I guess.

Our last stop in Florida was a very stimulating one in Jacksonville, where I dashed around madly trying to visit all the furniture stores to feed my fantasies and determine which ones will be most useful when we come back to Jekyll Island in the Fall.  Jekyll is about halfway between Jacksonville and Savannah, both of which have more furniture and interior decor stores than can be found closer. Furniture Mart will be my lead provider I think, with the local Jacksonville West Elm and Ballard Design stores in supporting roles. Brunswick also has Sweats, a nice but small furniture store, which will be a great local resource.

Then we parked at Coastal Georgia RV Resort in Brunswick and spent the week gazing longingly at the construction site where our townhouse will be. We also walked the beaches on Jekyll Island every day and explored the local territory, including St. Simons Island. From the Jekyll beaches we viewed porpoises and manatee in the shallow waters, enjoyed the deep green shade of the oaks, and basked in the relaxing atmosphere of the Island. What a beautiful place Jekyll is. Even more beautiful than we remembered. We're still feeling really good about our decision to live there.

After a too short and wonderful week with our family (Hi Bob, Caroline, Catherine, Will, Sarah, Cathy, Jess and Michael!) in Mount Pleasant, SC we started making some serious headway northward.  For us that still means moving only about 2 hours on travel days, and spending a couple of days at each stop.  

In our slow and steady style we actually made it through South Carolina and North Carolina, into Tennessee, and stopped for a week at the tidy Two Rivers Landing RV Resort in Sevierville and the Great Smoky Mountains. While there, we revisited our favorite spots in the National Park, perused the hugely comprehensive Smoky Mountain Knife Works, and had a lovely visit with Rick's old friends, Bob and Barb from Louisville.

On through Tennessee, Kentucky and into Ohio, we stopped for a great visit with our new friends Barb and Phil, in Mount Vernon, OH. They were kind and generous to let us stay in their home over the Memorial Day Weekend. What a blessing it was to get a break from the crowds and expense we would have encountered in an RV park on this holiday. And Phil and Barb are just so much fun to be with. We explored all around the beautiful Ohio countryside, including Granville, where I went to college and where Rick's great grandfather was a pastor and president of a local women's college (predating Denison University, my alma mater).  Granville is still such an idyllic little town, and I think Ohio is just about the most beautiful state in the country. Thanks Phil and Barb for showing us around your home state!

After a few of more quick stops in pastoral Ohio, the northwest corner of Pennsylvania and western NY, we've landed in apple country north of the Finger Lakes for a week to catch our breath from all this hard ramblin'.  : )  Right now we're at NorWin Campground and Fruit Farm, kind of an unusual stop for us. The large campground of primarily summer homes/trailers of local folks, is surrounded on all sides by a beautiful farm, with fruit orchards, corn fields and goat pastures. Our hosts couldn't have been nicer, and found us, on short notice, a pull-through spot with an open sky so we could use our satellite. We'll get both cars serviced, clean house, do a lot of laundry and let Honey run through the orchards.

We'll be in New England very soon for some long awaited visits with many dear people who we love and have missed. Our travels will peak at Acadia National Park, then we start the long trip back south, stopping in New Hampshire and Vermont for a couple of weddings and a visit with my son Mark. Lots to look forward to.

P.S. Sorry, no photos. There is something bad going on between Picasa (Google's photo program) and Blogger (Google's blogging program). I'm not feeling hopeful about where it's going, so the future of this blog is in question. I'm very tempted to bad mouth Google, which has basically abandoned Picasa users, and may be planning the same for Blogger.

Kentuck Knob: A Lesser-Known Frank Lloyd Wright Home

While at Fallingwater, we discovered that another of Frank Lloyd Wright's creations, Kentuck Knob was nearby in the outdoor adventure town of Ohiopyle, so we visited it too. It has some of the same features as Fallingwater, such as the carport, and primarily horizontal emphasis in the roof lines and stone work, as well as one view of the house with a vertical upward thrust.   

After a little bus ride up a wooded hill, the walking tour of the inside of the house begins in the driveway, between the carport and the front door.  This is the view of the house from under the carport. You can see how low the carport ceiling is. Remember FLW's perfect human's height of 5'8"?

Throughout the house there are details reminiscent of the dentals on colonial home architecture. The cutout designs tucked under the eaves on the right side of this picture are the signature geometric shapes of Kentuck Knob. They are the same as the shapes of the rooms of the house.

Here's the view of the carport from the front porch.

Kentuck Knob is one of FLW's "Usonian" homes, which were intended to be smaller homes for middle income folks and were of a design that he felt reflected the new architecture of the United States.  They were built mostly later in his career, and by that time he had developed this method of signing his homes - the authentic Frank Lloyd Wright signature tile:

Again, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but I did get this one of the dining room through the open deck door.  The interior was also designed by FLW, as he liked to give the complete package. Much of the furniture is built in and other than the living room, the rooms are very small. The passageways are really tight. It reminded us a lot of living in an RV, but chock full of great art work. 

After the tour, guests are free to wander about the outside, explore the grounds and take pictures.

These view shows the side with the vertical thrust, 

and it reminded me of the ship prow effect of the Robie House in Chicago. 

Like Fallingwater, Kentuck Knob is built into the surrounding rock to some extent, 

and FLW incorporates that in several places.

At one time, Kentuck Knob had a 360 degree view, but the original owners wanted to live in a forest, so they planted thousands of trees, which have now grown up and surrounded it almost completely. There is currently one view left.

The current owners of Kentuck Knob,  Lord and Lady Palumbo Of Great Britain, have turned the surrounding acres into a large contemporary sculpture garden.  Here are a few of the sculptures.

The original owners of Kentuck Knob, the Hagans, (of the local Hagans ice cream) were big time dairy farmers in the area. The Visitor's Center, where we ended our walk through the sculpture garden, serves Hagans ice cream. Guess what we did to restore our energy.

BTW, we are no longer in PA, but have moved on to Kentucky, where we are trying to catch up a bit and rest a bit more.  It seems like we have been traveling too fast for too long. Who knows what I'll post next or where we'll be by then! Thanks for hanging in there with us.

Frank Lloyd Wright's "Greatest Work": Fallingwater

I think Frank Lloyd Wright's (FLW) architectural designs are about as close to aesthetically perfect as you can get. Photography is not allowed inside Fallingwater, but I'll try to show some of the outside architectural details that make it so appealing to me, even though I liked the inside even better. I wish I had the architectural knowledge and language to explain why the house is so important and inspiring, but I hope the photos help convey some if it.

FLW had many strong opinions about architecture. One of them was that the building should blend in with it's environment, and not separate its inhabitants from their surroundings. Fallingwater has at least six outdoor balconies or terraces integrated into the living space to allow the resident's easy access to the outside from anywhere in the house.  On the terrace here you can see the upper fresh water swimming pool.

At Fallingwater FLW used a lot of this terra cotta colored concrete. Strange choice I think. Maybe it was the Southwestern influence, but it doesn't seem to blend in with the colors of this environment. Grey, green, beige or gold would seem more natural, like the colors of the stones used throughout the house, inside and out. 

More Southwest influence?

The house is all angles and planes, including the furniture, with a heavy emphasis on the horizontal, which gives it a peaceful feeling. Although aesthetically pleasing to look at, the furniture inside doesn't look very comfortable.  Not contoured and cushy, but angular and flat.  Here's a little peek inside.

Here is where the natural rock that the house was built into meets the concrete. There are iron beams running horizontally into the rock to support the structure of the multi leveled building.

This is the lower fresh water pool.

From one of the upper balconies you can see into the living room, which has glass on five sides here. What looks like the floor of a green house here are a set of sliding windows covering the staircase that goes down to the stream running under the house. 

Here is where the staircase comes out. It was designed so that the owners, the Kaufmans, could dabble their feet in the very cold stream. The lower swimming pool is on the right of the picture. Water is obviously the central theme of the house, and to the left of this picture you can just see the waterfall dropping off just beyond the house windows and decks.

Below is one of the sets of floating stairs in the house.  There were several "floating" features, including the balconies and the roof over a covered walkway. These were accomplished with counterbalances, cantilevers and folded concrete. The house was actually not that stable, and has had a lot of problems with sinking and sagging and leaking, even when the Kaufman's were living in it.  The Fallingwater Foundation has invested a huge amount of money to restore and maintain the building.

Another of FLW's quirks was that he wouldn't build storage areas, like basements or attics, and he wouldn't build garages. Instead he invented the open air style carport (below). He also thought that the perfect human was 5'8" (his own height) and so all the rooms were built to that dimension, making them seem very low ceilinged for anyone any taller. 

Perhaps you can see the influence FLW architecture had on 20th century homes. Just think of all these "modern" homes in the 60s that looked a lot like the above view of the Fallingwater. 

Probably the best view of the house is the one you get after the tour, from the lookout across the river.  From here you get a sense of the verticalness of the house that you don't really see anywhere else.

We also visited another one of FLW's homes in the area - Kentuck Knob. 

I hope to get a post out about that soon too.

Lancaster, PA: Pennsylvania Dutch Country

We've been having trouble with our hydraulic system since we were in Florida. The two driver's side rear jacks slip down when we travel. Yeah, really, not good. Rick has been strapping them up with two mega cable ties on each jack but lately they've even broken those. So we decided it was time to take it somewhere and get some help with them. We found a DRV dealer in Willow Street, PA, just south of Lancaster who could take us. That meant changing the itinerary a bit and finding a place to stay nearby.  Thus we had a day to spend in Pennsylvania Dutch country while overnighting at the Old Mill Stream Campground right next to Dutch Wonderland! Oh boy. This was our first campground in the shadow of a roller coaster. 

Lancaster PA could be anywhere in the US, with the same chains, outlet malls and congestion, except that the tourist traps have this bizarre Amish twist.  But get out of Lancaster and into the countryside and you encounter the real thing. So that's what I did that evening at sunset.

This was a lucky drive-by shot of a farmer's team of mules doing the haying.

The Amish, or Pennsylvania Dutch, have been in this part of the country since the early 1700's. They are as much Americans as anyone, but have chosen to remain apart, preserving the traditions and vocations of their culture. They are best known for being farmers, and they farm using methods far different from the rest of the farmers in the US. Despite not using "modern" agricultural technology, they are incredibly successful at what they do.  Do you think an Amish person could run for president if we asked nicely?

Their farms are absolutely beautiful and heartwarming. They are large, vibrant, solid, clean, well kept, and traditional. Very few of the Amish use electricity, but they do use gas generators and pneumatic (air) power in their barns and shops to run various kinds of tools and machinery. You can see some kind of motor going on the back of this farm implement, while it's being pulled by mules.  The Dutch embrace technology very slowly and with great consideration for how it will impact their families and their community. Decisions to incorporate a new method or tool are made by the elders of the community.

Families are intrinsic and necessary to the success of the Amish community.  Children work on the farms as soon as they can, doing jobs that are deemed age appropriate. They don't spend hours playing video games. Their parents don't spend hours watching television. What can we learn from that?

You can see activity everywhere on the farms: gardening, hanging out clothes, milking the cows, haying, feeding the chickens, putting the mules away, and on and on.

Of course there are the ubiquitous buggies being pulled along all the streets by the carriage horses. Now the local Dutch have found a way to meet the needs of curious tourists - buggy rides! I saw lots of advertisements for them, and young men hanging out with their buggies waiting to provide the tours.  This was another lucky drive-by shot.

I didn't take a ride, but I did have a great time driving around the farmland, getting pictures when I could. I felt a little awkward and voyeuristic, but did find a few places to get pictures where I didn't feel too intrusive.  See the happy Amish cows?

By the way, we are still having trouble with our jacks, even after getting some part replaced and bleeding the hydraulic system. If we repeat the bleeding procedure and retighten all the hydraulic valves each time before we travel, we seem to be okay. Rick has been trying to get a hold of Lippert to ask them what they think is wrong, but is hasn't been easy. He is still strapping them up with mega cable ties. Don't be caught without them.

Historical Philadelphia and Winterthur, Delaware

For a little less than a week we stayed in West Chester, PA at a very nice KOA. While in the area we visited Longwood Gardens (see previous two posts), downtown Philadelphia, and the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in nearby Delaware.

The area, called the Brandywine Valley is known for its historical richness, and this was evident on every back road.  Small, two story stone homes (some of them plastered and painted white) accompanied at times by huge stone barns are nestled in valleys, along the rivers, in little towns and on the rolling hills. I wanted to take many pictures, but there were rarely any shoulders on the roads to pull off safely, and all the locals are going about their 21st century business at breakneck speeds.  This is, after all, a commuter suburb of Philadelphia and Wilmington, DE.

I was able to take pictures of one home that is typical of the area - the John Chad house, after whom the town of Chadds Ford was named. John Chad had a ferry that crossed the Brandywine.

 The stone is called blue stone according to the information on site, even though it is all different colors.

This barn was on a side road where I could safely pull off for a second. It was a real beauty. Notice the slits in the stone walls for ventilation.

We also spent a day in Philadelphia to basically see Independence Square. Parking was a hassle, as was finding our way around. We bought our tickets for the tour, had an uninspiring lunch somewhere and wandered around a bit.

I did like this view of a side street in the historic district.

Here's a view of Independence Hall.  We aren't wild about cities, so we were in an out pretty quickly. I'm sure we missed a lot of things that others would find interesting. Sorry Philadelphia.

In contrast, our visit to Winterthur was relaxed and inspiring. It was quieter than Longwood - fewer visitors, but the same kind of quality experience in every way. At the Visitors Center you get a tram that takes you on a long ride through the extensive arboretum and woodland gardens, then deposits you at the house/museum (below).  The house, once the residence of Henry Francis duPont and now a museum, is nine stories on the side you can see here, and four stories on the back. It is built into a hillside and surrounded by trees. Very low profile except for this view. Not particularly inspiring on the outside.

Henry duPont was a collector of antique American furniture, tools, and housewares of various sorts, and his home was completely furnished with them.  Each room of the house had a different style of furnishings. Below are a set of Paul Revere silver tankards in a room furnished in the same period as the tankards. 

Guests are led through the house in groups of ten, by a very informative guide.  Unlike similar places , guests are free to take pictures. I noticed that items (like silverware) that were sitting out on the furniture were strung with clear filament like fishing line - so fine you could barely see it. I suppose it was all hooked in to some kind of alarm system. There were times when the guide was way ahead of us, and it would be pretty easy for someone to pocket some silverware, so the security system must be effective.

This colonial era room was one of our favorites. 

This room had hand painted Chinese wallpaper from the 18th century.

An adjacent building is a more typical museum with other collections of American material culture including tools and primitive arts. 

This grand staircase is in the museum section.  Looks just like an eye from this angle, doesn't it?

Outside there are lovely gardens to wander through, but very low key compared to Longwood.  There was also an interesting gift shop and a excellent small cafe.  

Oh, I almost forgot the Campbell's soup tureen collection. We found it odd.  

Next stop, Fallingwater!

Longwood Gardens Part Two: The Conservatory

(This post is especially for Caroline and Catherine. Wish you were here.)

Well, I promised to reveal the four coolest things I had ever seen in a garden and/or conservatory, and I will. But now there are five. We went back again yesterday and found another way cool thing in the Conservatory that must be included. Hence the small delay in posting. 

Here once again is what the Conservatory looks like from one end... 

...to the other.

Inside there are many rooms, large and small, with different kinds of tropical and desert displays.  There are also outdoor sections, or courtyards within the structure. 

I was especially impressed with the perfect and unusual plant pairings. Here are two of my favorites.

OK, on to the most cool things ever, in no particular order.  First the "Green Wall."  This may look like a bank of elevators, but they are individual, domed, sky-lighted restrooms. The wall is completely covered in different kinds of ferns. It is the largest green wall in North America, and I'll bet its the healthiest.  The plants are just dripping off the walls. 

The experience of walking into this space is complete science fiction. 

Here is a tiny section that was being replaced, to give you a sense of how it's done. Individual plugs are planted into a steel framework of some magical growing medium. The link above will also take you to an article about the Green Wall, with all the facts and figures.

Cool thing #2. The Longwood Organ, housed in a grand ballroom within the Conservatory. Another complete surprise as you are wandering around immersed in plantness, and you stumble onto this!

Behind the ballroom is a hallway with huge windows looking onto all the organ pipes, 

which range from itty bitty 1/4 inch diameter metal pipes...

...to humongous wooden rectangular columns.

The pipes are separated from the ballroom by a fabric wall that vibrates in different ways as the organ is played, depending on which pipes are "blowing." The organ is played electronically several times a day in addition to scheduled live concerts and big deal organ competitions. 

Now, the coolest thing #3, floating in one of the Conservatory courtyards: 

the Victoria water lily.

As you can see, Victoria water lilies are immense compared to your regular run-of-the-mill water lilies floating nearby. They are different in other ways too. They have these edges that uncurl and then stand up as the pad develops, and the bottoms and sides are spiked with thorns to keep them from begin eaten. 

You can see in these pictures how they come in different colors, depending on the variety.

In the picture above, a blossom bud is just starting to open. The blossoms are always white the first night they bloom, then they close up (with little pollinating beetles trapped inside!) and open the next night, having changed to pink. (The beetles get to fly away.) Then that's the end of that blossom's short showy life.

This guy is the Victoria caretaker. We saw him there twice, wading around, pruning out the dead flowers and pads, and sharing fun facts.

The ponds in this courtyard hold several varieties of Victoria lilies as well as more standard kinds of water lilies, often mixed together.  Here are a few pictures of the regular lilies - just as beautiful if not as exotic.

OK, hang in there for the 4th cool thing.  The Orchid House. We've seen a lot of orchid displays, as I'm sure you have. But this one was so huge, and so varied, that it positively possessed me. (Oh, and the smell was glorious.) I had to go back a second day to take more pictures. Here are just a few of the more successful ones out of the gazillions I took.

And finally, the fifth cool thing that I had to add as a result of our visit yesterday: the Indoor Children's Garden. Oh boy. My inner child's dream come true. 

It was a miracle of mazes, grottoes, tunnels, spiral staircases, fountains, statues, archways, windows, balconies - all the architectural details that children love. Oh and a few plants too.

There were secret little details to discover everywhere, just at childs-eye level.

There was water to play in and with at every turn. 

Finally! Fountains the kids can just stick their body parts into! 

This was a little row of bubblers that a kid, like Rick, 

could run his hands through as he ran up and down the little ramped passage it was in.

This low arched walkway was lined with mosaics made of beautiful shells, 

again, right where you could touch them.

Fountains everywhere, of every imaginable shape and size, doing all kinds of tricks: ringing bells, overflowing, bubbling, jumping, streaming, spraying. 

This mini-grotto had the smoky dry ice effect. Above it were hanging black stalactites with a snake coiled through them. This was the darkest place in the garden. 

 

In my opinion this children's garden had just the right balance of scary and wondrous. Or maybe it was tilted a little to the scary side. It certainly wasn't all sweetness, light, talking animals, fairies and unicorns.  It had some tooth!

There was even a child sized mini-chapel with kid friendly chairs and stained glass window. 

(Perhaps it was intended as a safe place to hide or calm down.)

What a perfect place this whole conservatory would be for a family on a cold rainy winter day. It was a perfect day (or two) for me.  Next I hope to write a post about Winterthur, another local favorite, before we start heading west again. Tomorrow we go for some repairs to our hydraulic system, and a day visit to Lancaster, PA.