2014-09-26 Let the Frank Lloyd Wright-athon Begin

Yesterday we had a day off. I had a great day. Did some laundry. While it was going I went and played 5 rounds of a 9-hole disc golf course that is setup in a field on the property of this RV park. Karen kicked back for a while and soaked up the sun. When I got back with the laundry she folded it all and ironed the wrinkled stuff.

I also did a quick modification to the spare tire on the back of 5th wheel. It wobbled back and forth enough to bend the mount earlier this year before we left home. In order to stop the wobble I consulted with my chief mod engineer, Erik, and he gave me some pieces to solve the problem. The gray conduit with the rubber tips push against the tire on each side and have stopped the wobble.

We hitched up and hit the road earlier than normal this morning in order to try and get in on an additional tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) property called Taliesin.

The drive was a little over an hour. We dropped the 5th wheel in the Avoca Lakeside Campground and then took off for the FLW Visitor's Center in Spring Green, WI.

The gentleman at the front desk looked at the tours we were going on in the next two days and suggested that the additional tour we were requesting would be a duplicated of what we had. We took his advice and didn't go on it.

Instead, we shopped in the gift shop for a while and then went to lunch in town.

Our 1:30 pm tour started on time, we loaded into our 20 passenger bus, and our guide started us off with some background on FLW and why he designed the school we were heading for.

On the 600 acres across the street from the Visitor's Center was Taliesin (his residence), the Midway Barns (actual barns for managing the land), and the Hillside School.

He designed and had built in 1902 this Hillside (boarding) School for his two aunts. This was the first of his open concept designs. It was also one of the earliest examples of outside building materials being used inside the structure.


In thinking about an open concept design remember that most buildings of the time had rooms separated by walls. You enter a house and there's a room on the left and a room on the right. A little further in the same thing. His design was similar to a Great Room where furniture would give the space the division between study area and conversation area. An open concept for living room, dining room, and kitchen in modern day homes are very popular these days.


Sometime during the 1930's the school was rebranded as the FLW School of Architecture, and it is still in operation today. There are 20 students each paying $40,000 per year being taught by 3 teachers. Oddly, the school shuts down in the winter (the building has never had a furnace nor an air conditioner) and the students all move to Taliesen West in Arizona.

There were students being taught as we moved through the building. Some were working on their own in the drafting room while others were in a classroom looking at building designs and sketching.

Of course, there were no pictures allowed inside but the outside of the school is indicative of his designs during this period including the frameless corner window.

After the tour we headed over to the cemetery where he was buried beside the church that his father had started in 1886.

Tomorrow we will tour the whole grounds and get to go inside Taliesin.

2014-09-24 Bennett Studios in Wisconsin Dells

Not many outside of Wisconsin have heard of Wisconsin Dells (WD). It's actually the name of their town here; a town not unlike Anaheim or Williamsburg or Orlando.

An attraction is created like Disneyland or Williamsburg Colonial or Walt Disney World and a whole industry of T-shirt shops, hotel/motels, restaurants, and funky attractions grows up around it.

Here in the Dells a man named H.H. Bennett in the 1870's came and photographed the unique landscape. He created 3D stereoscope pictures, sold them, and enticed people to come and visit the area.

His photography studio is here in town and has been in the same location in the same brick building for over 140 years, owned by his family until a 15 years ago when they gave it to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

It's a very nice museum with some hands-on displays.

His studio and all of the tools he used is still here.

His large format camera is even setup for you to take a portrait of your loved one.

Unfortunately, as with all good things, this too had to end. In the late 1800's the Brownie camera was introduced and consumers started taking their own pictures.

To survive he resorted to selling souvenirs of the Wisconsin Dells but still made his stereoscope pictures available as well.

Thanks to the Bennetts' everywhere, there are hundreds of people employed in cities selling boat rides, driving duck boats, giving amusement park rides, hawking t-shirts, and introducing people to their history through museums.

2014-09-23 Wisconsin River Boat Tours

The Wisconsin Dells. It sounds like a nice place. But who's ever heard of it? And what IS a Dell?

Much like Walt Disney enhanced the awareness of cities like Anaheim and Orlando, H.H. Bennett, a 3-D stereographer in the mid 1800's, is credited with making the Wisconsin Dells famous. His photographs showed vacationers that "nature as a playground" was to be enjoyed and not feared.

Because of him there are boat tours on both sides of the dam that splits this town, as well as the Original Wisconsin Ducks tour boats. Not wanting to miss a minute of water time, we went on all three.

The weather was spectacular once again and since we had a choice we did decide to do the 3 boat rides back to back to back.

Our first ride was a 2 hour journey on the lake above the dam. Although the tour boat had two levels, there were only enough people to fill the upper level where the best view was.

The guide narrated points of interest and stories as we headed for our first destination, Witches Gulch. Along the way we saw various rock formations of potsdam rock carved by the water. This rock and the strange erotions is only found in Potsdam, Germany, Potsdam, New York, and on a 12 mile stretch of the Wisconsin River.

Witches Gulch is a crack in the rocks created by a stream where they've built a wooden walkway hanging within the crack. It goes for about a quarter mile back to ... a Snack Shack. As we were walking back the lady behind us said it reminded her of the walk near Banff, BC. I turned around and said, "It's called Johnston Creek". Karen and I had been there 30 years ago and we both remember it fondly.

Back in the boat we went across the lake to the other shore to a place called Stand Rock. Hmm. How to describe this. There is this table rock about 60 feet high that is about 6' distance from the mainland. Back in the 1800's Bennett perfected stop action photographer and caught a guy in mid air jumping across the gap. Now, the job has gone to the dogs.

For the Lower Boat Tour we boarded a similar boat just below the dam.

We went downriver and viewed similar rock formations but heard some different stories.

Hawk's Beak was pretty cool.

The best ride of the day though had to be the Original Wisconsin Ducks Tour made special by our enthusiastic, funny, Jungle Cruise-like driver. These Ducks ARE the original. Started in 1946 using WWII military surplus DUKW amphibious craft. They are the same style you've seen in many cities, including Seattle.

What we expected was to travel through the city tour-bus style and then hit the water for a few minutes. Instead we wound through a paved forest, roller coaster style. Yeeha! Corny joke after corny joke, we all groaned.

The water part of the tour covered similar "ground" as the Lower Boat Tour but the jokes were better. We headed up a creek to get out of the river and then crashed into Lake Delton a few short minutes later.

Lake Delton had an influx of rain water in 2008 and breached County Road C. As the roadway deteriated, ALL of the water left the lake and emptied into the Wisconsin River. We got to see the repaired area from the river and also from the lake side. 5 houses were swept away at the time. There is just a field there now and the road has been rebuilt. Lake Delton is on the right and the Wisconsin River is at the tree line to the left of the red truck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wqxIT5zAtI

Oh, and the "Dell" thing. Early French explorers called it "dalles", a rapids or narrows on a river. We anglicized it to Dells.

2014-09-22 Along the Mississippi River Once Again

We've been in Minneapolis for a whole week and we've had a wonderful time exploring this city and St. Paul, but it is time to be moving further south since Fall arrived yesterday and we must keep ahead of the weather.

As we've always done, we have routed ourselves along the Mississippi River for as long as we can before we need to head East.

Our first overlook of the river comes in Prescott. The Visitor's Center is closed on Mondays but the view is still there!

We quickly travel into Red Wing and without realizing it we are shuttled back to the highway without a place to turn around and so we continued on. Lake City is only a few miles down the road and we found a very nice place next to the marina, overlooking the lake, to have lunch.

Lake Peppin is created by damming up the Mississippi River with Lock and Dam #5. It's claim to fame is the origin of water skiing.

The Great River Road connects a series of river towns from Little Falls, MN to Venice, LA. Wabasha, MN is on the road and is a wonderful place to stop and visit. The town is decorated to the hilt with Halloween things. The Antique Barn had lots of home made items from the area.

Along the streets were vignettes setup for photo ops.

The riverfront had an area setup with carnival-type games and you could play at any time during the day.

It had been 10 years since we were here last and they have really made a lot of improvements to the town. It still looks beautiful and inviting.

Before we knew it we had spent a couple of hours here and when we return will will spend even more time.

Heading further south toward La Crosse we are seeking a Best Buy so that we can buy a new camera. I dropped ours within the 1st week of the trip and the lens is scratched. We find the BB but they don't have the camera we want. 2nd BB we've tried to find it at. Bummer.

Feeling gloomy, we brighten ourselves up with dinner across the street at Culvers. They have these "butterburgers" but they don't taste any different than regular ones to me. Karen has the Fish Sandwich.

Our 5th wheel follows us toward the East now as we try to get to Wisconsin Dells before sunset. I had a great time spending 2 hours in Wabasha but I'm hopeful I don't have to set up camp in the dark.

We get to our RV park, Fox Hill Campground, and get our site information paperwork off of the store door. Our site is easy enough to find and it's a pull through which really makes life easy. It is 30 minutes before sundown which gives us plenty of time to setup.

This place is REALLY nice. We went for a walk around the camp and we see that there are a dozen seasonal RVs setup but no one in them, one group of tenters who will probably be having a good time a little later this evening, and about 6 RVs like ours who are spending the night here.

There's a giant chess board, a checker board, disc golf course, swings, tricycles to rent, laundry room, clean bathrooms, and volleyball set up. THIS is a nice resort with things to do. The RV sites have gravel with nice green lawns between the uncrowded sites. I'm glad we're spending 4 days here.

2014-09-21 Valleyfair! Amusement Park

Our love of amusement parks is well known to our friends and family. There was a time 30 years ago when we left our 4 and 5 year old boys with Karen's parents and headed out across the USA to ride roller coasters for 5 weeks. I know, we're bad parents. BUT, most times we took them with us!

So here we are retired and without the boys again and we are back to doing amusement parks without them. Today we visited Valleyfair!. (Yes, they spell it with and "!".) This is a park we have been to before and with our sons.

There were only a few of us heading for the rides when the rope dropped, signalling the opening of the park. We headed back to a coaster we hadn't been on before and stopped off at the Wild Mouse to get our feet wet in coastering again.

Further on we found the queue line for Renegade. A lone bald guy was riding it as we got up to the station. We hopped on the train in the second to the last seat and enjoyed a most amazing ride on a wooden roller coaster. This thing is 7 years old and it is as smooth riding as the newer steel coasters.

We rode it about 3 times in a row before heading for lunch (Panda Express) and then other rides in the park.

The cool thing about being at a park this time of year is that most of them are enticing fans to attend by having Halloween Haunt Nights with themed Halloween things everywhere. Tombstones in the pathways, special scary stuff in the rides, characters in costumes, themed stuff for the kids to do, and corn stocks everywhere. We aren't fans of Halloween but it did make the park more interesting.

Sundays (today) were reserved for children and Halloween so it wasn't a "scare" day. The kids dressed up and got to go trick-or-treating at the different venues by using their map.

Karen remembered that the last time she'd been here she got heat stroke and had to go sit in the air-conditioned car and drink water. She has such a remarkable memory for the details of our life.

She also remembered that Brian and I rode and rode and rode the Wild Thing roller coaster. So, Karen and I took a couple of rides on it for old times sake.

We found a coaster (Steel Venom) to ride that we knew we shouldn't have, but rode it anyway. I love to find strange new rides that only a teenager would enjoy. This park had two of them. The Xtreme Swing was actually scary (and not in a Halloween sort of way). I usually like to prove how brave and unafraid I am by not holding on. This ride tested my mental capacity to do that.

We arrived at 11am and by 4pm we had done everything we wanted to do. The crowds were very light. We hardly waited in a line for anything we wanted to ride. THAT'S a great day at an amusement park.

When we left, the bald guy (3rd seat from the rear) was still riding Renegade. I'm sure he was trying to set some sort of riding record.