Wright on Time (Day 5)

For the first time in quite a few days, we needed to get someplace by a certain time. That place - Taliesin, the summertime studio and home of Frank Lloyd Wright, where we scheduled the super-duper four hour (expensive) tour of the grounds.

We got to the Taliesin visitors center early. The tour was great - not only is there the main house and studio to see, but you also see the Wright family chapel and the buildings and studio for the architecture school that is still going. The simple wood drafting boards (which look like dorm room furniture I made in college) now have computers, but students still have to live on campus and are assigned certain maintenance and housekeeping chores in a communal arrangement.

We love this kind of architecture - our mid-century modern house is similar to a Wright Usonian, and we’ve toured Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob in Pennsylvania. Taliesin is different to those, because Wright was spending his own money here, not his client’s cash. Combine that with the fact that much of the house was built with student labor (learning by doing, and Wright kept many of the mistakes intact as lessons),Wright glossing over of structural issues, and an infestation of groundhogs that burrow underneath the stone work and causing upheavals and settling, and the place needs some work.

Still, the buildings are amazing, with more thought put into the design of one corner than many houses have in their entirety.

The grounds are impressive as well (Wright owned and used a road grader and bulldozer, even changing the pond) although the students don’t raise farm animals anymore as they did when Wright was alive.

It doesn’t mean all of the animals are gone. Sherpa the cat lives in the house, climbing on the shelves and alcoves, enjoying some creamer from the tea, coffee, and tasty snacks served to super-duper tour guests.

They don’t allow you to take pictures inside (I don’t understand why, since the days of flash bulbs and their incurring damage are long gone - maybe to sell more books with pictures in them), but I tried to get a shot inside the bathroom at the school’s stage/concert hall. (It was a really nice bathroom, with clearstory windows and paneled woodwork like a yacht.) Sadly, the pics didn’t come out too well.

One neat thing on the property:: Romeo and Juliet are the names given to the windmill structure. Appearing to be two structures from afar, they are actually one. Juliet sheds the wind from the taller Romeo, keeping it from being destroyed. (Wright’s family, who commissioned this from him, bet that it would be blown down in a storm. It out survived all of them.)

So, here is a picture of Juliet with Juliet.

After a nice lunch in the visitors center (supposedly the plans, drawn up by the staff at Taliesin, for this restaurant were “lost” so that the students wouldn’t also have to bus tables and cook there, as well as repair and build and farm), we drove to Trempealeau Wisconsin. Three hours in the car was a short day for us, but we were still pretty tired; the long days of pushing out West (the meat of the trip) are catching up.

Another shortcoming of our long drive: we don’t get to spend as much time in nice places like our campground. On the shores of Trempealeau Bay on the Mississippi River, we’d love to put in our kayaks and paddle around the bay. But getting here at 5:30 at night and leaving the next morning limits that. We did get in a nice walk, seeing beavers swimming, frogs, and garter snakes.

It’s also a nice campsite, with plenty of space, easy backing-in, and electric hook-ups. Bit of a walk for water, as I found out when our water tank ran dry.

Dinner was at the Trempealeau Hotel. They have several entrees featuring walnuts as a veggie burger-like substitute for ground beef. Juliet had a walnut burger and I had lasagna with walnut burger-stuff and spinach. All very good and with a fantastic view of the river from the porch where we ate.

Another big driving day tomorrow into South Dakota. We’re getting close to getting to a place where we spend more than a night….

Tom