STILL in Milwaukee

August 21 – Uh oh!  Both of us received a recorded message call to our phones at the same time this morning!  It was the ferry company letting us know all ferries for today were cancelled due to 7 -10 waves on the lake.  Crap!  We had said yesterday we could have used another day, so looks like we’re going to get it.

First thing was to call the front desk and extend our room another night.  Then to call Enterprise and let them know we were keeping the car another day.  We called the ferry and told them we wanted to try for tomorrow.  Once those tasks were completed we went for breakfast.  They pretty much have the same things as Comfort Inn.  They had bacon today

A Frank Lloyd Wright House

and more waffles, fresh fruit, 2 types of eggs and hash browns, plus oatmeal, boxed cereal and pastries.  No one was going hungry.

We started our day by going to see the Frank Lloyd Wright American Build homes.  He designed them to be economical homes.  Some were single

Single family house

family and some were 2 family condo type houses.  If you know his work you can tell immediately that they are his design.  Some are privately owned and some are in a foundation but they were not open to the public today.  Surprise, surprise!

Inside the dome

Closer in to the city is the St. Josephat Basilica that I read was really worth seeing so that was out next stop.  It is breathtaking!  It reminds you of the old churches and cathedrals in Europe.  The stained glass, the painted dome, the overly ornate columns, walls and niches are so European.  The gentleman working in the

One of the stained glass
windows

gift shop was very informative regarding the hierarchy of the church.  Pictures do not do it justice, for sure. 

Time for lunch!  Where to go?  We decided to hunt up one the places that honor the Miller tokens and ended up kind of down

The Basilica

town.  We both had the brisket and it melted in our mouths.  Wow!  I had a Blue Moon with my lunch and gave the other token to our server.

As we were pulling out of our parking spot we noticed a “going out of business” sale so re-parked and went to check it out.  This was a Boston Store, part of the Younkers stores.  We spent a little time there and boy was it getting down to the nitty gritty.  I bought 2 tops and a couple other things at such a good price!

I googled used book stores and found there were 2 big ones in the area, but one was literally at the airport and we didn’t want to deal with airport parking and all that so we went to the other one.  It reminded us of Bookman’s in Tucson.  We left with 20 used books!  Yeehaw!

For dinner we went to El Bizo, a Mexican place.  Neither of us was very hungry so Bill got their taco special and I had a tamale and a fish taco, no beans, no rice and that was plenty. 

We did most of our packing as we bought way more stuff than we can carry on, so we planned to check my cooler bag and our duffel and carry on the rest of our stuff in a heavy duty shopping bag.  The question is:  will the ferry run tomorrow????

It was nice to lay in bed and read, very relaxing!

The good, the bad and the strange!

June 24 - This morning we were blessed with a beautiful day! The sun was out but not too

hot and the weather was just perfect. Once we had our first real Sunday breakfast in a while, which was waffles, fruit and bacon, we got on the road for today’s adventure. We had figured it would take about an hour to our first stop, House on the Rock. However, along the way we saw signs for a National Landmark called Cave of the Mounds. Since we had time we thought we would take a little detour and check it out. If we had the time and had brought jackets, we would’ve gone on one of the cave tours there because I love caves, however, since it was such a beautiful day and we did not know what to expect we did not take jackets.

Entry to House on the Rock

We got back on the road which was only about a mile and headed to the town of Spring Green to see this famous House on the Rrock. I’m not even sure how to describe it. It’s deep in the woods and you cannot see the house exterior. Since its beginning a number of buildings have been built to house additional exhibits so when you go you decide whether you want to see everything or just specific sections.

The House on the Rock was started by Alex Jordan in 1945. He

One of the living rooms

had no experience in architecture or design but new he wanted to create a place to retreat to on weekends and be able to invite friends to.  So what started as a house with no bedrooms or bathrooms became a compound of numerous buildings, that is broken up into three sections for touring purposes. Based on our time because I had a tour for myself of a Frank Lloyd Wright house in the afternoon, we optioned to do two sections which should  be about two hours.

Typical artwork

The first section is the actual house he started.  It’s got the most peculiar lay out because it’s not really build as a house but is built into the rock so there are trees that go through the ceiling. There are low ceilings where you can barely stand and it is multiple layers.  I guess they are floors because there is no direct path for anything. He never married but had a long term girlfriend and they each maintained their own homes but came to this house for the weekends. He managed to sell it to someone he trusted to

In the center of the house

continue what he had built and add to his collection of museum quality pieces although some are a bit off-center. He died just a couple of months after he completed the sale. It’s really an unusual place and I would highly recommend it to anyone in the area. Probably my favorite thing was the very last thing we got to see.  It was the most humongous carousel. I believe it was over 129 different animals on it and all these lit up chandeliers but you could not ride on it.

Once we finished our two hours of walking 2 sections, we drove into town. About the only place we could fairly quickly get a meal was Culvers. There was a street festival going on and Culvers was packed but since people ate and left we managed to get a table.

From the bus window "Taliesin"

I had a reservation for the 3 o’clock to tour Taliesin. Bill is not interested in that type of thing and that’s fine.  He brought a book so I told him he could go into the visitor center where it was air-conditioned and read his book and have a soda. Each tour has a maximum of 18 people and they take you on a small bus up to the house which sits on an estate of about 1000 acres.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s design style remains

From this view it does not look
 like 3 stories

the same in all of the houses that I have seen so far. Being only 5’ 4” he did not use tall ceilings in most of the common areas, but only in the rooms where he wanted to impress people. His studio has huge peaked ceilings and his favorite color is Cherokee red. He uses that all over and he also sneaks in squares. You can go in just about any room that he designs and find little square objects and they are usually painted Cherokee red.

We got to see the studio, the main floor of the house and a lot of the grounds but they are still using the dormitory area for students still enrolled in his architecture school.   I believe it is still being overseen by his last wife. Since she was about 30 years younger than him she is still alive and well. Also some of the staff lives in the upstairs of the main home where there are extra bedrooms. The kitchen in the main house is very tiny and you can’t even bring a tour group and there it is that small.

The drive home was uneventful, which is good thing.  We had our leftovers and just relaxed a bit.

June 1 – What a GREAT day!  Any day you can start off with riding in a 1916 carrousel, it’s

a great day!  We started our day at the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum in North Tonawanda, NY.  They were also hosting a Renaissance Faire.  We didn’t do much but walk around the Faire but we always enjoy seeing the costumes.  Allan Herschell and James Armitage started the Armitage Herschell company and ran it together from 1892 – 1902, when Allen left and joined his brother in law in creating the Herschell-Spillman company.  Herschell took ill and left the company for a period, then it became Spillman Engineering and later Herschell came back and it was named the Allen Herschell Company.  The museum offers a nice collection of mostly wooden carved horses but also some novelty carrousel animals such as a frog, cat and

kangaroo.  Some date back to 1905 but the photos displayed of the factory and workers are from 1919.  There were several carvers in the woodmill that we were able to talk to and ask a gazillon questions.  Making a carrousel horse is nothing like I thought it was.  These gentlemen mostly carve other pieces for their own pleasure and are volunteers to show guests the tools of the trade and explain the process.  One man was making a mahogany Morgan horse that has very intricate wood carving for the saddle.  The horse starts as 1 inch boards, 12 inches wide.  Then the wood blocks are carved into the body, the 4 legs, the neck and the head and are all glued together with wood block dowels.  Back in the day they didn’t use mahogany but basswood or yellow poplar.  Journeymen carvers did the legs and less intricate parts and only master carvers did the heads and detailed parts.  In 1919 the going rate for a master carver was .35 an hour.  Once the horse was carved and sanded it received 5-6 coats of primer and was then painted with the colorful paint and designs.  Then 6-7 coats of varnish protected the paint.

 

After touring the woodmill and the museum collection we saw an operational children’s carrousel and then we each got a ride on the 1916 #1 Special carrousel.  This one only had horses and a couple of “sleds” for those who were afraid of horses.  We took turns riding so we could take each other’s photos and video.  That’s when Bill discovered that the video was out of space.  At least we did get a couple of good photos.  I would love to own a wooden carrousel horse.  I’ve looked at them many times but can’t figure where I’d put one.  www.carrouselmuseum.org

 

I guess I left my reading glasses at the RV so it was not easy to read maps and give directions without them. On our way from the museum we spotted a Dollar Tree next to a Subway, so it was a good stop to solved two problems at one time.  I bought 2 pair to leave in the truck for next time.

 

From North Tonawanda we headed into Buffalo to the Darwin Martin House, which was designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright from 1903-1905.  Bill wasn’t interested in the tour so he came in the VC to see the exhibit and watch the movie but he went out and took the photos while I went on the tour.  The house, sister’s house, stable and gardener’s quarters took up 1 ½ acres.  It was actually a complex, a huge complex that was all connected except for the gardener’s cottage.  Darwin Martin was married with 2 children, living  in  a modest,  

but nice house that he really was not happy with once he gained much success working for a major soap product company in Buffalo.  By the time he built the house he was a millionaire.  The house without furniture or the art glass windows cost $145,000.  There were 400 art glass windows commissioned and the foundation has recovered about 200 at  The house was abandoned by the family in 1935 after Martin’s death as he died penniless after the Depression and his wife could not afford the house.  His son sold and gave away most of the valuable furnishings and windows as he knew the value of them and did not want them left in the house for thieves or vandals.  The house was sold for taxes finally in the 1950’s I believe.  About half of the complex had been demolished and apartment buildings built but an architect bought the main house and rented out 2 parts of it and started doing some renovations but it was too extensive and later the house was purchased by a group of Buffalo citizens to save one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s greatest homes.  It’s a Prairie style house that was nothing like the other homes in the area and had all very large rooms.  Wright even designed the furniture and where it was all to be in the home.   I found one of the most impressive things was you could be in the receiving room and look thru 4 art glass windows inside to the 5^th window to the outside of the other side of the house.  Everything was totally symmetrical.  The book cases were numerous but very well hidden, and were designed to cover where the furnaces are and could be swiveled out to get to the furnace for repairs.  It’s quite the place!  www.darwinmartinhouse.org

We had planned to go to the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural site but it was closed by the time I finished my tour.  We headed back to the park and on the way we found a Best Buy so I could ask how to get the video off of my camera.  I had checked my cords and didn’t bring one that looked like it would fit the various plugs in the camera.  Well, duh, it has a built in USB plug so all I needed to do was attach it directly to my computer.

 

On the way home the skies opened up and we got a drenching.  At the park we had to put raincoats on to begin to get from the truck to the RV.  I was glad I put dinner in the crock pot so we had a nice dinner with no work.

 

Well, when I got into the videos I realized why I didn’t actually know how to download my videos:  I never took any off from the time we bought the camera!  Then I didn’t feel quite so stupid.  There were videos from June 2010.  So I spent part of the evening cleaning up some of the camera so it would be ready for tomorrow.

June 24

It was only a short trip to our stop for tonight, the Double J RV Resort in Chatham, IL. We left just before 9, stopped to top off the air in the RV and truck tires then headed right on. We took the interstate, then rural route, then interstate. The small road was great. Lots of truck traffic which meant it was a good road. Very straight, only a few 4 way stops along the way.

We’re just south of Springfield, IL. The resort had gotten a lot of the rain the last few days so some of the sites were too wet and blocked off. They are VERY picky here with a list of rules a mile long, no, make that a mile and a half. They are sticklers on being perfectly straight on the site and the truck has to be straight in the front or back of the RV. They want you centered on the space. We have a pull thru and the parking “guide” would NOT leave until we were just like she wanted. I could have backed in easier than all the back and forth to get centered just so!

They could have at least given us one of the dryer spaces as we saw several. We had to step in water to hook up the water, electric and poop hose. THEN, the sewer connection was way to the back of the space and we had long enough hoses to put together to reach it, but didn’t have but 1 connector. Bill never thought we’d need it to be 30 feet long, so when we were out and about we found an RV sales place and got in right as they were locking the door and bought one. At least we got lucky on that one! I was planning to do some wash tonight so had to have it connected. Bill got ‘er done and I did 2 loads of wash. However, once we got settled in it was lunch time so we ate, watched a bit of TV, then headed into Springfield.

We went to the Dana-Taylor House which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was amazing! He not only designed the house, but every piece of furniture and every art glass window, every piece of art displayed, the organ, literally everything in the house. The really unusual thing was this house was built in 1904 and looks like a house you’d see built now. It was 12,000 sq ft with a dining room that would serve 40. I wasn’t sure Bill would like it but he enjoyed seeing all of the unusual things Mr. Wright did in the process. By the time we left it was after 4 and too late to go to anything else, so that’s when we looked for a place to get our hose connector.

On the way back after that we saw the Route 66 Drive In and A-Team is playing so we might go to the drive in movie tomorrow night. We called and they have 2 screens and each shows a double feature, but since it doesn’t start til 9, one feature is all we’ll last through. I made a steak for Bill tonight and I had salmon with a lemon/dill seasoning, whole wheat orzo with an artichoke pesto sauce and steamed broccoli. I think we will grill enough tomorrow night for 2 dinners. We sat outside for a while after dinner. Today was the coolest day since we left, high was 83 and the evening was so pleasant. Since the Internet was working, Bill got on for the first time since we left home and did some of his email. We put our cactus out and Chief Wahoo and our personalized sign, so everyone will now know Bill is a Cleveland fan, in case they didn’t notice the Chief Wahoo on the truck in 2 places or the tag on the truck that says “Wahoo44” or that he wears Cleveland stuff most of the time! Time for bed, a big tourist day tomorrow.