Three Wrights Historic Roadtrip, Day 3

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We rose fairly early today at the Bavarian Inn. We loaded up and checked out in the pouring rain and headed for the closest Interstate headed west. It ran parallel to the National Road that we had a picture of the mile marker from Monroe's home. Since we were time pressed this morning and there was no included breakfast, I had a cup of coffee in the room and we ate our complimentary apples in the car.

We actually arrived early at Kentuck Knob which was very fortunate since it meant we went on the next timed tour and got a private tour. This was probably our favorite of the 3 Wright homes. Of course, Falling Water was the most spectacular, but Kentuck Knob was the most elegantly livable. We had a great tour guide in Suzie and regret that we failed to notice any feedback forms at the Visitor's Center to compliment here before we left.

We had purchased our tickets online in advance for both Kentuck Knob and Falling Water.

We had some of the Hagan dairy ice cream before we left. The Hagan's were the family that built Kentuck Knob. We bought a container of hummus and chips and an extra bag of chips to snack on for lunch as we went to find Falling Water.

Let me just say that if you set off to do this, make sure you have a very detailed map, and good directions to each of the Wright houses in Pennsylvania. They need to post their latitude and longitude coordinates or people can't find them with their GPS systems. They are on tiny roads that don't appear on most maps! The roads were not in the databases of any one of the 3 GPS systems that we had running. I had even picked up a Laurel Highlands Travel Guide 2011 with all 3 houses shown on a map and we still couldn't find all 3 easily. Especially Duncan House, as the critical road Clay Pike was missing all street signs! So, we had some stressful times in the blinding rain, looking hard for little roads that were not signed or not on maps, etc. It may take longer than you think! We were told repeatedly that usually in summer you can just follow the lines of cars... but not today!

That said, it was crazy crowded anyway at Falling Water. It was especially appropriately named today. Water was falling through the ceilings, through the rock walls, over the rock floors, running off the overhangs in sheet, shooting in arcs out of drain pipes, etc. Amazing and crazy. There is a covered walkway from the main house up to the guest house. The rain running off the low side of it was forming a virtual wall of water. Again, amazing and crazy. I just wish we could post photos, but they told us on our tickets that we are not allowed to publish or post or reproduce images we photographed where photography was allowed. So, visit the websites to get an idea of what we saw, but we cannot share ours. Sorry!

We left Falling Water after eating our snacks under their covered walkways making up their Visitor's Center. From the parking lot, we had a cell signal. (Rare in the Laurel Highlands area for us anyway!) We tried to call the PolyMath Park to get instructions for check in around 3pm as per instructions. No answers at any of the 3 numbers they had emailed us. I had picked up little slips of paper with driving directions at each home to get to the next. So, we decided to follow those directions and see what happened. What happened was missing street signs, a critical failure in the printed directions as to which side of the golf course Clay Pike Rd. was on, as well as not one of the 3 GPS systems being able to get us there! Then there was the intermittent phone signal and the flooding rain, Polymath Park hosting a large wedding the next day that was all hands on deck and no one available for us, the only overnight guests, and the ceiling of Duncan House falling in from the famous leaking flat Wright roof. Oh well. We did eventually locate it by driving around eliminating possibilities. We arranged by phone to have a host meet us at the house to pay the other half of our night's rent on Duncan House and to get directions to find a place to eat.

Before I tell you about dinner (our first real meal in 24 hours!) and show you photos. Let me say a word or 2 about Frank Lloyd Wright houses. I did not know prior to this trip that FLW was opposed to window treatments. Also known as curtains, drapes, blinds, shears...  He did not even want people to have screens to interfere with his clear glass. Huh, you say. Well, until the sun sets and you are in a lighted house surrounded by darkness in the woods with all you can see is reflections. I have a thing about that, so this was pretty nightmarish for me! Geez. Who'd have thought? Anyway, no curtains, not even in the Master bathroom with its clear glass shower stall. What the heck? Was he some kind of closet nudist? In any event, we have been there and done that now. Once was enough. It was an interesting experience. Duncan House is a Usonian home, so we imagined it would be smaller. But, our hostess when asked told us it was 2900 sq. ft. That is bigger than our home and we have 2 floors, so the trip from the Master bedroom to the kitchen was quite a trek!

We picked Nino's Italian in Mt. Pleasant for dinner from our hostesses suggestions. It was good, and 2 towns (I use that word loosely) away. There were only about 9 people eating there, so I guess the flooding rains were keeping people in at home. We were worried about getting in and out of Polymath Park because there is a small one lane bridge across a stream with a gate that you have to get out and open and close when you come and go. That little stream was a raging waterway with whitecaps as we came and went and right up to the bottom of the bridge. As I understood the photo policy, we can only not photograph or share images of the houses. So, posted above are a couple of the bridge and gate. Notice the left side of the bridge got washed away! Scary! But, we cannot post photos of the buckets throughout the kitchen catching the roof leaks or the chunks of ceiling falling into the carport. It was very sad. We hope they will be able to repair the leaks, roof, etc and keep the Duncan House open.

So, It was a pretty quiet dinner and we were hungry and enjoyed it despite worrying about the potential flooding in the continuing deluge of Lee. I'll report on the meal in photos.

As we were leaving Nino's I pointed out a small glass display case which contained boxes of homemade candy. We were needing some snacks for the long drive home tomorrow... So I went in the bar and asked about it. I got a story and a sample, we found out they were out of 1/2 pound boxes, so after eating our delicious samples, we bought a one pound box. Nino's Homemade Butter Toffee was originally made and sold by an old woman whose name I forgot in a town nearby that I was told I wouldn't know about (no kidding!) but anyway... When the old woman was about 90 years old she couldn't keep up with demand and no one wanted to inherit her legacy evidently, so she offered her recipe for sale to local store owners or restaurateurs who would keep her candy available for sale. Nino agreed to buy it and now they make a big batch every week at the restaurant's kitchen. It was like a very chocolaty Heath bar. Yum.

The next morning we were up with the sun for the long ride home. We studied the multiple GPS systems and a set of paper maps for an hour before packing the car and leaving Duncan House. Now, honestly it should not have been that hard. And trust me when I tell you that it got even harder once we got in the car. Geez Louise! The first problem, was that the quickest way out was to take the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was probably within 5 miles of us and we had passed on the way here and could definitely back track to. But, since we had blue skies and sunshine for the first time this morning we were hoping to make the most of some scenic drives we had not had views of coming in. Clay's GPSs all said that any scenic route would add an hour to our trip and he did not want to do that. I am not sure what operator error led to it, but I agreed to give up the scenic routes and take the Turnpike and Clay's preferred GPS tried to first avoid the Turnpike and then route us to DC and I-95. So, we headed out down some windy little one lane turkey track headed North and West and wound around for about an hour before I insisted Clay get on the PA Turnpike 3 exits away from where we began and go EAST! Don't believe me.. click the photo, we just stopped the car and got out to photograph the wild turkeys!

The rest was Interstate driving and not terribly interesting. We had sun until we went through a tunnel on the PA Turnpike and crossed the Allegheny Mountains and wound up back in the soup of Lee remnants for most of the rest of the trip until we got pretty far south.

One interesting point about this trip was that we were in 5 states in just a day! We covered parts of NC, VA, WV, PA, and DE. Pretty cool. Around Antietam, you could drive in 3 or 4 states within about 15 minutes, which sounds cool unless it is getting dark your competing GPS systems fail you again and you have to keep flipping atlas pages to find the little corners of map for each of the states! Just an observation.

The other observation is that VA must have the lowest gas prices because gas was 10 to 30 cents per gallon cheaper than neighboring states depending on where you were. Anyway, we made a point to fill up twice in VA. Clay got his best mileage yet on his new Hyundai Elantra, but still no where near the EPA estimates!

Oh, we passed a sign on one of the Interstates that was in the median and said "Mason Dixon Line". That just cracked us up for some reason, but we blew by it so quick there was no chance of getting a photo. Of course, you know it must be an actual line on a map like the Equator, but somehow we didn't expect a sign! I mean we must have both crossed that line numerous times, but neither of us could remember seeing a sign for it. It happened on either Interstate 70 or Interstate 81. Sorry can't be more specific. I am just not sure where it was.

So, we stopped for dinner in Henderson, NC at Skipper Forsyth's BBQ. It was OK, we wouldn't make a special trip out there. I had the vegetable plate and we once again got a laugh. Only in the South. I ordered macaroni and cheese, baked beans and corn pudding and Brunswick stew. The baked beans had ground beef in them, they were sweet and meaty; weird, but not suitable for vegetarians. Don't say I didn't warn you. So, I'll end here with photos of dinner. We got home around 5pm and back to work and routine. We'll go to the Ayden Collard Festival this weekend. So, I'll see if Clay takes photos there for here.

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Three Wrights Historic Roadtrip, Day 2

Monday, Labor Day September 5, 2011

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So sorry that the photos are not arranged in the order they were taken. PhotoBucket officially sucks!

Clay had a long night's sleep. Mine was a bit more fitful due to the very loud A/C unit in the wall. I was first up between 6 and 7am. The complimentary breakfast began at 7am. Nothing else for us in the area began before 9am though. We were not the first people into breakfast, but we were out before it got really crowded in there. It was a buffet, self-serve hot and cold breakfast in a large room just across from the reception desk in the lobby. Clay stayed with cold food and I stayed with hot. They also had 2 waffle irons. I made one while we ate and we shared it for dessert!

After breakfast, we had time to kill. We found the fitness room in good use and then went back to our room. We brushed our teeth and packed up. Then Clay went back to sleep for an hour or so. I stayed quiet! I woke him about 9am and said everything is open now. We packed up the car and checked out. We drove about 10-15 minutes to Ash Lawn - Highlands, the James Monroe home.

Ash Lawn - Highlands was probably most what we expected a president's private home to look like and our least favorite tour. First of all, the home was most altered after the Monroe's left it. The reconstruction of a portion of the original home is odd. It is 2 stories instead of 1 and the floor is about 3-4 feet higher than the remaining original home. Also, it was very hot and humid that day and the A/C in the home was not working. We were told that it was not as unbearable as the previous day had been. But we had a good-sized tour group and even though we were the first tour of the day, it got uncomfortable in the house. Also, it was a very small house compared to Monticello or Montpelier, yet the tour was over an hour! Our guide droned on about the date and provenance of practically every piece of art, furnishing, wall covering, etc. We had not planned on that much time at a minor (in our minds anyway!) home. Anyway, that put us off our schedule for the remainder of the day. Remember that we had not originally planned to see Ash Lawn and Montpelier. We had planned to drive to Antietam and see what else there was to do. But, once we realized we could see 3 presidential homes and 3 Wright homes, we liked the symmetry and changed plans. One thing that we learned about that was new and after Williamsburg, etc. I am not sure how it never came up before, but tea bricks. They had them for sale at several of our stops! I am positive that I had never heard of or seen such a thing before. But, our guide assured us this is what was thrown in the harbor at the Boston Tea Party. So, there you go. That very comprehensive tour was not a complete waste of time!



It was getting overcast and humid as we left. We stopped in to use the restrooms outside the gift shop as we left. The walls and doors and windows and ceiling under the covered area had an inordinate number of green grasshoppers clinging to them! We wondered if it was like flies becoming clingy before a storm. In any event, the great rain of Lee was on us!

Montpelier was further away than we thought. Clay would not have added it to our things to do, if the maps we had picked up in Charlottesville advertising the 3 had been to scale. I was willing to use the new Virginia state map I had picked up and not Clay's 3 competing GPS systems. So, I thought it was not putting us out of our way. The GPS debate will undoubtedly continue as Clay cannot find North nor read a map to save himself! And I find every GPS system he has put us through to have enough differences and enough unreliablities to make them an annoying hazard rather than a useful tool. Just sayin'... makes road trips a challenge.
 

Making up time we skipped lunch today. We snacked on some nabs and cinnamon almonds I had in the car. Along with some bottled water I had packed and some Coke Zero for Clay that he had picked up at a grocery store in Charlottesville. Which reminds me of Clay's brief money magnetism. He scored an extra $5 back at the self-checkout for an otherwise very overpriced small cans 8-pack! Then walking up to Ash Lawn, someone must have had a hole in their pocket because he picked up close to a dollar in change off the brick walkway to get our tickets.

  

On to Montpelier, I think this was my favorite of the houses. Home to James and Dolley Madison. James Madison actually died in the house. They play a recording of an actor reading what the slave that attended his death had to say about it, while you are standing in the actual room. It was dramatic, if not a little ghoulish and morbid. Montpelier was owned by the DuPont family for a number of years and they added 31 rooms. Those additions have been removed now and it is restored to its state at the time of Madison's death. We saw where Madison wrote the Constitution, but we did not see his view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. I am afraid that the rest of our trip was of the "On a clear day you can see... BUT not today" nature. There was lots more to see here than just the house, but we were pressed for time by now and it was pouring rain!



We drove through the afternoon in mostly rain to get to Antietam Battlefield National Park about 2 hours before closing. We were happy to be able to just flash Clay's new $10 lifetime NPS pass for our entry! Technically, they close at dark, but it was nearly dark at close to 4pm when we arrived. I think official sunset a couple of days ago was after 7:15pm, so apparently the Park Service was working off something like that rather observed darkness. We had time to buy Clay a t-shirt, see the film and visit their small museum of artifacts before setting of f on the drive. Here is the problem with history, it can be hard to see. Even on a clear sunny day! On a dark and pouring afternoon, it is next to impossible. But, what we saw was well done and moving.

We were glad though that we spent the morning touring presidents' houses rather than rushing up here. The down side was that we wound up with no spare time to check out the C&O Canal park running along the Potomac River across from our hotel. Clay says we'll save that for a return to PA to visit Hershey. We had debated adding a day to go east to see that and ultimately decided no. In hindsight, an excellent decision since we would have gotten caught up in the flooding over there. We saw enough rain in southwest PA! Anyway, at dinner at the Rathskeller at our hotel for the night The Bavarian Inn, we sat near a table of people bicycle touring the C&O Canal and we definitely were happy not to be having their vacation! 



We checked in to the Bavarian Inn overlooking the Potomac River in West Virginia (Antietam was in Maryland) after dark and ready for dinner. They have an excellent German restaurant there, but Clay was inappropriately in shorts after 5:30pm already. We asked and they serve the same menu in the very small but casual Rathskeller downstairs. They suggested we make reservations since space is limited. We did and parked the car in front of our Schwarzwald Haus building. Got our bags settled in and washed up and then walked back over to the Greystone Mansion for dinner.

Probably the best meal of our trip was here at the Bavarian Inn. Clay was not really happy though, because he mis-ordered. He had something very specific in mind (which was not on the menu!) but he ordered pork in gravy which he hates anyway! Oh well. I had a roast pork dish too. I thought both were very good. Clay might have enjoyed one or the other but he had crispy pork knuckles on his mind and nothing was filling that need. We both had a starter and were too stuffed for dessert.

We waddled back across to our building and up to bed. The room here was nice, but not sure if it was worth the price difference with the Comfort Inn last night. Comfort Inn included breakfast. Comfort Inn had a mini fridge in the room. We missed that at the Bavarian Inn. But, BI had bathrobes (which we didn't use), a 2nd sink (which we did use), a balcony (um, OK we used it to take a photo of the Potomac while we were still rain drenched, but that was it!), and most importantly, the A/C unit in the wall was very quiet (for the win). Bavarian Inn had 2 apples on the table and did not include breakfast. We took the apples with us the next morning for breakfast.

We had to get up and get a really early start in the morning to make sure we had time to find Kentuck Knob by 10:15am the next day. So, we went straight to bed. We both slept soundly right through the night.

I'll be back soon with the main event of our trip, the 3 Wright houses.

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Three Wrights Historic Roadtrip, Day 1, Charlottesville VA

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Sorry the photos are not displayed in order taken. Photobucket sucks!

This trip was inspired years ago by a newspaper article which was reprinted in our News & Observer's travel section one Sunday many years ago. I cut it out and stuck it on my bulletin board and finally an opportunity arose and Clay agreed to take this trip.

Note: Frank Lloyd Wright images are closely held, so we will not be able to post any photos here. Be sure to click any links, as those will be the only FLW photos you will see of what we saw! Remember that any photo posted in this blog, you can click to view full-size. Since we took the time for this trip now to accommodate Clay's work, we had a specific number of days to use, since they were on the way we added Monticello and Antietam to the trip to the Wright houses in Pennsylvania. While we in Charlottesville, we realized there were 2 other President's homes within 30 miles, so we also visited Ash Lawn-Highlands and Montpelier.

We were up early this Sunday morning, September 4, for a quick breakfast and to start our 4-hour drive to Charlottesville to see Monticello. We had purchased tickets online for our timed entry at 1:15pm.  Instructions were to arrive at least 30 minutes in advance to pickup our tickets and take the shuttle bus up to the house from the visitors center. We got there about 11am and just beat the crowds to get our tickets. We used the restrooms and took the lay of the land.


Then we drove just a ways back down the road for the southern buffet lunch at Michie Tavern (ca.1784) at $16 or so each. It was OK. We had chicken, fried and barbecued, pulled pork barbecue in a slightly sweet, vinegary red sauce, black-eyed peas, green beans, mashed potatoes and I don't really remember what else. Dessert was extra, so we skipped it. The cornbread was very spongy!  We wandered all the grounds and visited all the shops and spent some money and got a card stamped at all 4 shops to enter a drawing for a free return trip. Drawing to be held in November, if we win we'll be back.

We were back at Monticello about 1pm to catch the bus up to the house for our 1:15pm regular tour. Today turned out to be very hot. Then, after we had our timed house tour and were taking the Plantation Life tour along the lane of house gardens and slave house foundations, it started raining. (It rained the rest of the trip. It was what was left of Tropical Storm Lee. It was a LOT of rain. I will say it has been a busy time for the mid-Atlantic states starting with the earthquake that everyone who felt it is still talking about, then Hurricane Irene and now Lee.) Anyway, we had not brought an umbrella up with us since it was so sunny and hot. So, when it started raining we left the tour and walked back down the hill, past the Jefferson family cemetery and to view the film at the Visitor's Center.

Everything was very well done and impressive. We were a bit disappointed that the tour of the house was only about 20 minutes. It was very crowded and the groups were large. I guess there is no avoiding that, but in hindsight after the hour+ long tours at the other houses, we really felt we had missed a lot. I will say that there were other tours than the one we took and we did look at the longer, more intimate and detailed tours but they did not fit our schedule. So, that is our loss.

After we left Monticello, we drove backtracking about 15-20 minutes to our hotel for the evening, Comfort Inn-Monticello. It was in a great location, a value priced for what we got. It was a standard room, clean, nice bathroom, included buffet breakfast and Internet. There was a pool much in use as it was so hot. We did not realize there was a fitness room until we went to breakfast the next day! Also, a note for light sleepers, the A/C unit was excessively loud!


But, we decided to go see UVA! We had dinner at The Virginian across the street from Jefferson's Rotunda at UVA.

The UVA campus is gorgeous with a very traditional university feel. We had a good dinner at the very conveniently located The Virginian restaurant. We were so hot and sweaty though and we were seated right by the kitchen and it was so hot and noisy there that we really didn't get the best experience I fear. Clay had ribs so he was happy anyway! We were done for the day and drove back to the Comfort Inn and to bed. That is it for today.  More tomorrow...

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