My intentions were to stay at a rest stop last night but it was only another hour to Racine where we had a campground reservation for tomorrow night so "we proceeded on" to Cliffside Campground. Boy, what a nice place. Water and electric only, with a dump station on the way out. Pretty normal for these public campgrounds. Nice easy gravel spaces to back into and grass everywhere else.
The right half of the park is camping sites that are first-come first-serve. The left side are reservation only spots. We had a reservation for tomorrow so they blocked off the site and put our name on it. We just unblocked it and went to the pay station and paid for the night.
Our tour this morning was at the Wright-designed Wingspread Estate, only a couple of miles away. Four arms radiated from the central core. And what a wonderful core it was - a huge fireplace with 4 openings.
In 1938 while he was also designing the Johnson Wax Headquarters the CEO asked Wright to design him a house.
It is easy to see why these craftsman style homes are Karen's favorites. The wood designs are just so pleasing to the eye.
The centerpiece was the fireplace but the spiral staircase up to the glass-enclosed crow's nest was uber cool.
She took a million pictures but here's a few to give you the feel for the size of the home.
She had to walk a ways away to get a picture of two of the wings in one shot.
We spent a good couple of hours here and then headed to downtown Racine to tour the Johnson Wax Headquarters Research Facility. This was used in the 50's and 60's to create such products as Pledge, RAID, Glade, and OFF. Johnson has transformed a couple of floors into the way these labs looked back in those highly productive days.
This Wright-designed building was one of only two vertical buildings that he ever created. It too leaked, as most of his buildings did. His design elements were ahead of their time and we had not yet perfected ways to make them watertight. See, the outside of the building is comprised of hundreds of tubes of glass held in with vinyl molding - that leaked. When silicone sealant became widely available in the 1960's it was used to stop the leaks.
There WERE problems with the functionality of the Tower, although the form was beautiful. On the bright sunny day we were there, we can attest to the fact that the workers weren't just whining when they demanded sunglasses so they could work in the building. It WAS very bright.
And it was HOT on the sunny side as well. While no pictures were allowed I'm sure you can imagine that sun shining though clear glass tubes would transmit a lot of heat and light.
The Tower closed down in 1982 due to fire regulations. It only had a 29" circular staircase for an emergency exit. That staircase was our means of entry and exit when we toured the 3rd and 4th floor and it was one person up or one person down at a time.
Next door was the Golden Rondelle building, a building Johnson built for the 1964 World's Fair. Normally on Sunday they would be showing the 1964 movie by Johnson Wax called To Be Alive!, but because of the special tour of the Tower they were not. It WAS something Karen was looking forward to and a major reason we came to Racine. Now we'll have a reason to return some day.
After all of our touring for the day there was still more excitement coming up for the evening. Karen's father's sister's daughter, Robin, and her husband, Rick, drove over an hour to come to our campsite to see our RV and visit with us.
We talked for a good while around and in the RV about our families and our RVing plans and then we headed out to dinner at an unknown place, Erv's Mug, that turned out to have great food. After almost a month on the road it was great to see some more family.
No comments:
Post a Comment