As travel days go, this was a great one. Carol once again has outdone herself in finding gems of places to stop. While sorting through information about the local area in our hotel room last night she came upon the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center in Green Spring. They offer tours. It was only about 40 miles off our route and since we only had a few hundred miles to travel so we made plans for a tour at 11:30 of his 'Hillside School at Taliesin'. We were loaded and on the road by 8:30 and had a good chat with my older brother on the phone as we left the Madison area on route 90.
Soon were driving on small roads heading toward Green Spring where Frank Lloyd Wright grew up. I like this pace on the back roads much better. Somewhere along the roadside we found a place called Carr Valley Cheese, and it was open, at 9 AM, on Memorial Day! We had to stop. When we returned to the car we had cheese, more brats and several other small things. Back on the road we toured a fantastic countryside.
The farms here all seem so tidy and clean and the country is beautiful. We arrived at the visitor center an hour early which gave us time to stretch our legs and look around in the gift shop. Promptly at 11:30 we were gathered up by our tour guide Catherine and headed off to the Hillside School. This is the school of architecture the FLWright started and the school continues today as a graduate school.
We opted for this tour as the tour of the mail house only had one slot open and was a much longer tour which we just did not have time for. We may have to come back some day. The school build you see in these pictures was built by FLW in 1901. North light skylights illuminates the classroom studio as there was no electricity out here in the country and in the stonework of the house, iron rings are set into the stone as a place to tie your horse.
This is such a wonderful place and his spirit lives here and speaks loudly to all who come here. His vision was to integrate the house with nature and he did it so well. Built into the hillside on the 'brow' of the hill, which did not disturb the crown, his structure seems to be an integral part of it's natural setting. This is just an amazing place, and of course the tour was just too short as these things go. We really do need to come back.
Back on the road we finally experienced some of that Memorial Day traffic...ugh! We arrived in St. Paul late in the afternoon and after checking into the hotel we scouted the area and found the Mississippi Pub, located right on the grand old river at a marina. We had a great supper and watched the river traffic and reminisced about out river travel days, of course when we were on the Mississippi, we were about 500 or 600 miles south of here. As I write this, Carol is sleeping, the car is all gassed up and we are ready to go get our trailer in the morning. We have a 10:00 appointment at the factory, and then the adventure really begins. Hopefully I will be able to post tomorrow sometime, but we will be camping in a state park and have no idea about cell or wifi service, so if you don't here from us for a day or so just understand that I am likely making a mess of things. I promise to update again as soon as I can.
