Intercourse, of Course

This morning we started the day by visiting Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Emporium.  They have over 12,000 elephant knick-knacks of all shapes and sizes.  Plus candies of all sorts.  We loaded up on the caramelicous goodness of candies such as Mary Janes, Slowpokes, Bit-O-Honey, Longboys, and Amy's new favorite: Squirrel Nut Zippers!

Then it was off to Gettysburg and the National Military Park there.  The museum has many artifacts and tells the story of the civil war with an emphasis on the most famous battle at Gettysburg where over 7,000 were killed, 33,000 wounded and 10,000 missing.  Pretty somber.  One quote said "Ye advocates of war, come here and look, and answer what compensation is there for this carnival of death."

After all that we took a detour to visit the factory outlet stores for Utz potato chips and Snyder pretzels.  We purchased a bag of snacks at each place.  That should get us through our trip and then some.

On a lighter note, we traveled the backroads towards our hotel outside of Philadelphia.  The journey took us through the town of Intercourse, near Lancaster.  Amy wanted a double entendre in Intercourse, so we stopped and Dave gave her one. Sadly, it seemed that all the Amish stores are closed on Sundays.  We passed many buggies and Amish farms.  It is always fascinating to see how two different cultures coexist in the same space.

A nice Chinese dinner and some light shopping followed our checkin at the hotel.  Now it is just time for unwinding and relaxing before we hit the big city tomorrow.

Frank Lloyd Wright Day

Today we spent some time at two Frank Lloyd Wright houses: Falling Water and Kentuck Knob.  Both are in Pennsylvania south of Pittsburgh.

We left out hotel at 7 am (after arriving at 1 am - ouch!) for about an 75 minute drive to Falling Water, which is probably the most amazing house built in the 20th century.  We had tickets for the special in depth tour that is available early mornings on the weekends.  It allows visitors to see spaces at a more leisurely pace and see spaces not on the normal house tour.  What and amazing place!  This was a built as a summer weekend home for a Pittsburgh department store owner in the mid to late 1930's.  Their only son was gay and never had children, so he left it in a public trust as a museum.  Here are a few pictures, but they do not capture the sense of space and the connection the house has with the landscape.

 

We had a nice lunch in the little town of Ohiopyle, on the way to Kentuck Knob.  The town was filled with activity.  In addition to the FLW houses, the area has several state parks, a very popular rafting river, and the Great Allegheny Passage (a 150 mile long rails to trails path from Pittsburgh to Cumberland, MD).  We had a window seat for buses filled to the rafters with rafters.  My favorite sight was a cyclist carrying about 10 kayak/canoe paddles in his hands as he peddled his bike through town.

Our next destination was Kentuck Knob, where we had 1 pm tickets.  It was a short tour and a smaller house.  The current owners do not allow interior photos.  It was an interesting house built using regular hexagons and triangles as a motif and as the footprint.  Here are a few pictures:

On the property there were a few small garden spaces and some large sculptural pieces.  There was also a piece of the Berlin wall.

We did a little tasting at a local winery near our evening hotel in Chambersburg, just west of Gettysburg.  Then it was off to dinner at the Roy Pitz brew pub.  We sampled some of their "liquid art." Dave had a nice IPA (not too much of a surprise) and Amy had a lighter lager.  Afterward we came back to the hotel for some relaxation and blogging.

Summer 2015 Roadtrip

The summer travel season is here.  Dave is traveling to two conferences and Amy has some vacation time and will be doing some professional development work.  Dave is headed to the Bridges conference in Baltimore which is the largest annual mathematical art conference in the world, and then to MathFest in Washington, DC which is an annual summer mathematics conference.

After a late start, we began our summer road trip last night.  We left Michigan and headed for Pennsylvania.  We had planned to visit the Rubik's cube exhibition at the Cleveland science museum and then the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but our delayed start allowed us only time to travel.  Leaving in the evening meant that we missed most of the heavy weekend traffic.  However, there was plenty of construction.  Just when I thought we escaped, we came upon the largest water main break I had every seen;  the four land road was reduced to two lanes as the the water had turned the outer lanes into a raging river for about a mile.  We got to the hotel around 1 am and spent a brief night near Pittsburgh.

Hats off to Starbuck's along the Ohio Turnpike for feeding Dave's art addiction by supplying about 75 cardboard coffee cup sleeves.  Stay tuned for pictures....