Frank Lloyd Wright Day--5/1

Today is Frank Lloyd Wright Day. We are going to both Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob. We have set the alarm for 7 AM, the first time we have set the alarm on this trip. We eat a light breakfast, throw the dishes into the sink, and head out. First down the hill, and what a hill it is. We have seen lots of steep hills on this trip, and the ones with gravel extensions to stop runaway trucks always make us a bit tense, but this hill is STEEP! I read in the camp information that they don’t recommend you come into the park on this road if you are in a large RV, probably because you couldn’t make the turns but maybe because you just couldn’t lift a large RV up the incline. I see why the campers were tired. There is no way they rode up this hill. They had to have walked it, and with a loaded bike and trailer that ain’t easy. Michelle and I are scheduled for the 8:45 2-hour in-depth tour and Norb is going on the 11:30 1-hour tour. There are 10 people on our tour and our leader is one of the senior guides. She has worked there for 10 years and warns us that she is going to cram 4 hours of information into 2 hours of tour. As we reach the bridge to the house and it’s full presence comes into sight, both Michelle and I are moved to tears. It is a truly astonishing house, even from the outside. Bear Run Creek is running full and the waterfall is roaring.

Our first stop is the kitchen (or ‘workspace’, as FLW called it) and we even get to go down into the basement, which has been carved out of the rock. A Wright basement is a very rare thing, and then to actually be in one. While the house is only 2600 square feet, it feels much bigger. Wright was truly the master of space. The house falls, layer on layer. The stone inhabits the house. The house inhabits the stone. You can open any window and hear the stream below. You can go down a series of steps and dangle your feet in the stream. You open the windows in the corner of the master bedroom and there is open air, no steel to support the corner. When the tour leader opens it up, some of the people in the group gasp. The balconies have low ledges so that you can sit in a chair and see over them. The table can be expanded to seat 20. Unlike other Wright houses, the Kaufmans brought in their own furniture and art work. We see every nook and cranny in the house and hear the stories and ask all our questions. We go to the guest house and see the pool, fed by the mountain streams that overflows into the creek below. It is all wonderful. Of course, we hike to the vista across the way to see the house from its most famous aspect. Wright said that if you can see the waterfall all the time, you would begin to not see it. So he wanted you to have to go out of the house and hike a short way to see it. It is 11:30 when we get back to the Visitor’s Center and Norb has left on his tour.

Michelle and I check out the museum store and when Norb returns we eat lunch at the café. Then on to Kentuck Knob, back up that terrible hill. KK is now owned by Lord Palumbo and Lady Hyatt and while it is an interesting house, it is not in the same league as Fallingwater. They are 20 years apart; KK is one of Wright’s Usonian homes and was built for much less than Falllingwater. FW was budgeted for $30,000 and ended up costing $150,000, which was a fortune in the 30’s. KK was built for much less. Given the choice, we should have done them in reverse order, but we had no choice. They only do the 2 hour tours in the early morning. It’s sort of like rafting on almost anything after having rafted the Grand Canyon.

We go back into Ohiopyle, check out the bike trail, get some ice cream, walk around town, ooh and aah at the waterfalls and rushing water. The town doesn’t seem to be doing too well, but the woman at the visitor center assures us that come summer it is hopping with bicyclists. There are 3 or 4 restaurants in town, and an equal number of companies offering rafting on the river (Class 1 and 2 upriver, Class 3 and 4 downriver), so it appears that it does hop some time. We stop and buy some wood on our way back into the park and have a campfire after supper.