Fallingwater, a Frank Lloyd Wright House

Sunday, June 25th, we head through Kentucky on into West Virginia and just pass into PA. Once again through this part of Kentucky are some beautiful fenced in horse paddocks, gorgeous stately homes, and open flat roads. Once into West Virginia, the terrain looks more like NH with trees on either side of the highway and hillsides with trees. We’ve been fortunate during this trip not to run into a lot of construction areas. Today we did run into one that had traffic slowed up for about 45 minutes. Not the end of the world. We exit the highway and once again are on narrow, winding roads to get to our Corp of Engineers campground on the Youghiogheny River in Confluence PA. Ten miles of narrow, winding roads with crumbling shoulder areas. Fun. I have a theory. The Corp of Engineer parks reward you with a gorgeous campground if you have the hutzpah to traverse the roads to get there. Did I mention the long straight uphill climb at one point? That one garnered a “Holy Sh**!” when I saw it. Gary just laughed.

On a sad note, we had one casualty on our drive. Shortly after turning on to this lovely expanse of roadway, a deer appeared just at the side of the road and then darted in front of us. Gary slowed down but we hit him. Felt awful, but nothing we could do.

We arrive at the campground. I’m a bit shaken by our deer casualty. Not my finest hour helping Gary back into our site, but we got there. Campground is next to the “Youg” River and dam. Lots of trout fishing going on. Very pretty. We relaxed for the remainder of the late afternoon and night. Kya found a few buddies, who she was mildly entertained by, but the real focus of her attention was a good sized bunny who appeared outside the camper.

Monday, June 26th, we head off to visit Fallingwater. One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic houses. There are actually over 70 of his houses open to the public across the U.S. This one was built in the 1930’s and 40’s for Mr. Kaufmann and his wife and son as a summer home. He owned a large, well-known department store in Pittsburgh at the time. The house was supposed to cost $35,000 but ended up costing $150,000. Homes back then cost about $5,000. The home is built in and around waterfalls so that the outside is inside and vice versa. FLW wanted an organic relationship between the home and the surroundings. The home looks so incredibly modern and contemporary. He truly was a visionary. Plus he built most of the furnishings… tables, sofas, shelving. Truly a remarkable property. The grounds are beautiful. Tons of Rhododendrons that are as large as trees. We weren’t able to take pictures of the interior of the home, just the exterior.

After touring Fallingwater we headed to the Ohiopyle Falls, which was a little find! Gorgeous falls and part of Ohiopyle State Park.

We’re on a dam at this particular campground and during the course of the day they released the spill water so now the spillway is almost a waterfall with rushing water and quite a current. Very cool. We met up with a full timing couple from South Dakota that we were chatting with over by the dam. Amazing all the people that you bump into and strike up conversations with.

Tomorrow we move on to Laurenceville, PA, just this side of New York.