All posts tagged: Heritage Travel

With Liz and Dave at the Twins game 08 05 14

Main Street, baseball, and rhubarb crisp (?)

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Main Streets and baseball. What could be more American? More  importantly, can you have a bad day when these two things converge?  Not in my book. But how did the rhubarb crisp replace apple pie?  Well, you’ll just have to read on to find out. We began our first Tuesday – Day 5 on the Not All Who Wander Are Lost cross-country tour – in tiny Spring Green, Wisconsin. For a town of 1400 (I love town signs that post the population), Spring Green had much to offer.  The downtown has a variety of interesting shops and services, and my friend Oakley Pearson – who drives through this area each year on his way home to Minnesota – recommended the Spring Green General Store for breakfast.  Claire and I took him up on that recommendation, and after a great bowl of oatmeal (see, we can eat healthy food), we’re glad we did. Business was hopping with a great mix of patrons. I stopped by one table to tell the guy wearing the 1952 Vincent Black …

Hillside detail at Taliesin

A remarkable afternoon at Taliesin

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Some days on the road are magical. Yesterday — spent at Frank Lloyd Wright‘s Taliesin — was one such afternoon. Our cross-country road trip includes a couple of places that are clearly what one could tag as a busman’s holiday. Thanks to the generous offer of my good friend Jeff Grip of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Claire and I were met at Taliesin – Wright’s Spring Green, Wisconsin, home – by Effi Casey, a member of the Taliesin Fellowship; a graduate of the architecture school at Taliesin; the widow of the long-time dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Tom Casey; and an accomplished violinist who serves as the Director of Music at the school. We were also joined for the afternoon by Floyd Hamblen, a member of the Taliesin Fellowship who serves on the faculty of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, is a practicing architect, and lives year-round with his family at Taliesin. I’m pictured with the two of them inside Effi’s home on the grounds, known locally as …

Not All Who Wander Tour 2014

Not all who wander are lost: The tour

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I have always wanted to drive cross-country. So when Claire left for college in California as a freshman in the fall of 2011, I told her about my bucket list dream and promised that one of her trips from Washington (the east coast one) to California would take place in a car with her dad. Guess who begins her senior year at the end of August?  And guess who passes a major birthday milestone next winter? With those deadlines looming, we leave on our drive tomorrow, August 1st.  It was now or never. And we are pumped about this trip! As we’d both driven much of the “southern” (i.e., direct) route in shorter trips, we decided to wander around a bit in the Midwest, the Great Plains, and the Pacific Northwest before we finally make our way to Southern California.  I’ve dubbed it our Not All Who Wander Are Lost tour.  I just wish I’d thought ahead to have t-shirts made!  (Cue the eye rolling by Claire.) So over the next 20 days, you’ll get …

Church in the old city of Stockholm March 2014

Beautiful Stockholm

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Our trip to Scandinavia last month ended with Andrew joining Candice and me for four days in Stockholm.  While Claire (who had to head back to school) visited the city a couple of years ago, it was the  first time for the three of us. We were not disappointed. Candice had booked us in a small boutique hotel in the heart of the old city, just steps from the Royal Palace and the Cathedral.  That proved to be a perfect launching point for our explorations. We knew we wanted to follow-up on our visit to the design museum in Copenhagen with a visit to the Swedish design museum. After walking over to an adjacent island (see Andrew and Candice on the bridge, with the Cathedral and Royal Palace in the background), we spent the better part of a day at the design museum and adjacent modern art museum, Moderna Museet.   We were all enthralled with Blockholm — The Fantastic City, a project where everyone was invited to rebuild Stockholm using the Minecraft computer game. The Moderna Museet collection …

Planes, trains…but no automobiles

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Unlike their American counterparts, European cities are known for their many transportation options. Copenhagen and Stockholm fit this pattern, and we tested it all during our recent trip to Scandinavian. With our family’s interest in preservation and urban planning, we headed into these cities with exploration in mind.  Andrew, after just six weeks in the country, knew Copenhagen like the back of his hand. So we had an expert guide for our first week. What did we find? First, people walk a lot. They walk to the market to get their produce, and flowers, as seen at the top of the post. Also, Copenhagen knows how to make bicycles part of a real transportation network.  One-third of the city bikes to work, and with dedicated signals and lanes with curbs, they make it very easy for everyone.  The picture above is of a cycle counter that clocks thousands of daily bike trips across a busy bridge in the center of the city. Copenhagen residents also “dress for the destination, not for the trip” – meaning …

Fallingwater (Revisited)

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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater is one of the architectural wonders of the world.  In the midst of the depression, when the Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh commissioned Wright to design their vacation home along Bear Run in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, they envisioned a location that would give them a view of the beautiful 30′ waterfall that ran through their property. However, as the world soon discovered, Wright – who was then in a period of critical decline among architectural critics and the public – saw things differently. The results immediately captivated the country when the home was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1938, and it hasn’t stopped attracting visitors and attention since. Our family is no different.  After a business trip to the National Historic Landmark in early May 1998, I immediately booked a return trip a week later with Candice and our twins – Andrew and Claire – who were five years old at the time.  Both children were eager to see this place that mom and dad described with …

Remembering Their Sacrifice

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  Our last day touring in Europe was the most emotional. If you don’t cry, you may not have a soul. We saw Normandy, and the place names from the U.S. that will resonate through history:  Utah Beach, Omaha Beach. We walked among row after row of headstones at the American cemetery.  Crosses and Star of Davids.  Most with names of men who gave the ultimate sacrifice.  Some whose names are known only to God. And it was made all the more personal because of a chance encounter last week.  When we were headed out the door to leave on this trip, we saw our 90-year-old next-door neighbor and told him we were going to Europe and would visit Normandy. “I’ve never been to Normandy,” he said, “but I was flying over it on D-Day, trying to take out a German gun placement.”  We can’t wait to show August the photos of the beaches and,  yes, the craters that remain from the bombs that fell on that day. Heroes all — and they even live …