Day 23, 24 Traveling and Fallingwater tour

Leaving Davenport, we had 2 days of travel through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to reach the Ohiopyle State Park in western PA to camp nearby Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house.
We walked around the small town of Ohiopyle (known for white water rafting and kayaking) after we ate dinner in the camper. 

A beautiful waterfall in the town of Ohiopyle.

 Cuumber Falls a short way from the road to our campground.

A great pedestrian bridge in the town.

Vernon looking at the bridge (for cars) from the middle of the pedestrian bridge.

The setting sun lit up the windows in this 1890's Methodist church.





Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater house

Completed in the mid 1930's Fallingwater has been called "the best all time work of American architecture".
I loved the way that the outdoors was incorporated and blended with the inside of this house.  Many glass walls allowing you to view the beautiful forest and windows in columns in the corners of the rooms that allowed fresh air to pass through.  They installed screens later which Mr. Wright didn't approve of.

 No pictures allowed to be taken inside the house.

These steps go down to the creek because the Kauffmans (the family he build this house for) liked to wade in the creek. There were terraced windows at the floor level at the top of the stairs to close off the stairway.  There was a big central fireplace that goes up all 3 levels and there were fireplaces in all the bedrooms and in the living room. Beautiful terraces which go out from each bedroom too!
The furniture was mostly designed and installed by Wright too.  Lots of horizonal, simple lines in the furniture (some built in) and some shelves built into the stone walls. 

 The visitor center was even a beautiful design!!

 Also in the visitor center.

Walking up to the visitor center in the rain.  



Home today!  Thank you Lord for safe travels.  We didn't have that particular, special destination -- Ben and family's home in San Jose, CA -- like we did on our first cross country trip in 2017.  But we saw some beautiful places in this great country that we are blessed to live in!!

Total mileage:  about 6700

Day 21 Davenport, Iowa: Dr. Irene visits her alma mater, Palmer College of Chiropractic

It's been 34 years since I graduated from chiropractic college!  The old Student Union is no longer there.   That's where I met my first husband, Mike (the father of my 3 wonderful sons!).  I met him just a few weeks before graduation  It was Halloween and I was dressed as a cat on my way with a friend to an exercise class in town in which you were to dress in costume. We stopped in to the Student Union before the class. Mike was there -- dressed as a nerd. He didn't make a big impression on me at first.  The next time I saw him was in the campus cafeteria.  He was looking very dapper in a tweed sport jacket.  The rest is history . . . . 

Not much is the same on the campus as it was 34 years ago.

This statue of the founder of chiropractic, D.D. Palmer wasn't there either.  It's in the courtyard, a popular student hangout back when I was there.  Vernon snapped this picture of me "getting adjusted".

This statue represents D.D. Palmer's first adjustment which restored a man's hearing!



A young lady -- current chiropractic student took me on a tour of the campus while Vernon took the truck for an appointment to get the oil changed!

There used to be these sayings of B.J. Palmer (the son of D.D. Palmer) --  the developer of chiropractic profession -- all through the halls of the college.  Now that they are 'modernizing' and growing there are only a fraction of the original sayings around.

There are many improvements since I've been to Palmer such as the addition of business courses and a state of the art gym.

Tour of the Palmer family mansion (adjoining the campus)

This photo was among the hundreds of items of memorabilia in the Palmer mansion of B. J. and Mabel Palmer's accomplishments and world travels.  Among the many accomplishments of B.J. Palmer -- he started the first experimental radio station west of the Mississippi River sometime before 1922.  He used the radio station to advertise and educate people about chiropractic along with broadcasting farm reports, drama and music on Sundays.  Ronald Reagan's first job was as an announcer on his radio station!  He's shown here in his announcing job with Leslie Howard, the actor who played "Ashley" in "Gone With the Wind".

There's that moose again!  (In the Palmer mansion)

Bust of B.J. Palmer a few years before he died.  And a bust -- made from a plaster cast --  of a young Abraham Lincoln -- one of only 9 in the world,  because it was so painful to have a cast made on his face, he never allowed it to be done again!  This is also in the Palmer mansion where Vernon and I took a tour this afternoon.

Lock and Dam 15 on the Mississippi River.  It's on the National Register of Historic Places.  It's the largest roller dam in the world.  It spans between Davenport, Iowa and Rock Island, Illinois.

This tug boat is pushing 10 barges through the lock to go down river.

The Mississippi River was flowing very fast and was so high that it splashed our feet a little when I took this picture.   There was a great amount of flooding this spring in the midwest.


A couple of the Palmer student hangouts in Davenport were still around 35 years later:

"The Filling Station" bar and restaurant had old gas pumps outside and tops of the old gas pumps with different brands of gas displayed above the bar.  My campus guide today said she goes there to eat and study sometimes.

"Whitey's Ice cream" was (and is) the best ice cream in town.

Tomorrow: traveling through Illinois, Indiana and into Ohio.  I'm very glad that Vernon likes to drive!

Day 18 Driving east across (very flat) Wyoming to start toward home

Taking a break from the blog.  One picture though we need to put in.  Leaving our campground in Alpine, Wyoming and traveling toward Interstate 80, I saw a moose on the side of the road and got very excited and yelled "STOP, STOP!!  A moose!! We need to get a picture!!" 

It was a fake moose!  It takes some kind of perverse mind to do that!!  We had a good laugh.

Tomorrow:  driving across Nebraska into Iowa

Day 17 Huckleberry milkshake in Victor and Bar J Chuckwagon supper!

This morning we took a historical 'walking tour' in Jackson.  So interesting -- we learned that it was named after Davy Jackson (a distant cousin of President Andrew Jackson) a 'n'er-do-well' who, after failing at a remarkable number of occupations and his marriage, answered an ad (around 1870?) that called for strong, young men to travel out west in the wilderness for a 2 year period and expect hardships and extreme danger and also make a lot of money.  He jumped at the chance and went with a team who had to live off the land, survive in the winter and trap beavers.

Because of the rage back east for beaver fur caps, they did end up making a lot of money.  Eventually Jackson bought the fur company from the owner, and continued making money this way.   He lived in the Jackson area for 8 years and someone just decided to call the large lake and the town after him.

Jackson residents didn't have many ways to make money and after the depression (1930) the townspeople decided that people back east would like to come west and pretend to be cowboys, so they started up dude ranches and then much later the ski resorts came in.  Now it's a famous tourist and skiing destination.  Lots of wealthy residents.

                         The middle of the Jackson Town Center.

Jackson, WY town center.  There are 4 elk horn arches on the 4 entrances to the square.  No elk died to make these arches.  The males shed their antlers every year and they were collected to make these arches.  No wires used to keep these together.  (Sorry this picture doesn't show the top of the arch.)

 Jackson town ordinance restricts buildings to a 3 story max (most are 2 story) and must have the western look.

This house was an exception. It's a New England/Cape Cod style.   For a time (late 1800's/early 1900's) it was a rooming house for single men -- mostly cowboys.

The lady who ran the boarding house.  She complained of the cowboys' rowdy behavior.  But she kept them in line.  The bulge in her pocket is a pair of brass knuckles!

The cowboy bar has been there for a long time.  The original owner (late 1800's?) thought that easterners would pay a premium price to come in and have a drink at the bar sitting on a saddle.  Well, he was right, and you can still sit in a saddle at the bar and pay a premium price for a drink. 

One of several ski slopes that you can see from the center of town.

Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote.  This group of ladies were the first elected female legislators in the country.  It started out (around 1870) that they would would get together in town for their poker club.  (They told their husbands that it was a nutrition club.  Who knows, maybe they did talk nutrition.)  They would talk about what was going on in town and decided something should be done about the pot holes in the streets, and some issues concerning their children.  They told the town leaders who didn't do much.  Then they realized that the town hadn't collected taxes for the past 5 years from the residents, so they collected back taxes and now they had the money to fix the roads and make other improvements.




Jackson's first female marshal, Pearl Williams was only 5'1" but was  a 'crack shot' (skilled marksman) and a skilled horse woman.  But mostly her job consisted of keeping the cattle out of the square.

























There were some tough ladies out in the Jackson area back then.  Vernon and I noticed that there still are!





We took a drive in the woods outside of Jackson on Rt 390.  We could only go so far before the road was closed due to Grizzly bear activity.  There were ripened berry bushes that the bears were interested in.  Didn't see any grizzlies but we did see a beautiful young elk:

We got to see this young cow elk.. Notice the bigger ears compared to a deer.




Finally got to see moose! 

Just kidding. I wish we did! This is a photo of moose that was hanging in one of the 43! art galleries in Jackson.
The photographer, Thomas Mangelsen has lived in Jackson for 40 years.

Mangelsen also also took this photo -- in Alaska I think.

Vernon and I drove over the Teton Pass into Idaho (about 15 miles) and visited the Victor Emporium where they make delicious huckleberry milkshakes!

This is just one of the many beautiful scenes driving on the Teton Pass through the Grand Teton mountain range.  It leads from Jackson, WY to Idaho where we were going to get a Huckleberry milkshake.  Thank you 'Miss T' --  a patient of mine who grew up in Idaho -- for recommending this and also the Bar J Chuckwagon for supper!  We thoroughly enjoyed both of them!!, 

                                Huckleberry milkshake in Victor, Idaho
While we were at the ice cream fountain we had a nice chat with a Jackson resident (shown with his son) who commutes to work a few days at a time to a nuclear power plant in Michigan. His wife is a nurse at a hospital in Jackson. He and his son are doing the last lawn mowing and got their wood supply for the winter.  Buttoning up for winter is a serious task here!  Whenever I mentioned to a few Jackson residents that they must be very hardy to make it through the winter here, they all said , "Oh it's so beautiful though and it's a DRY cold!"  Still -- an average of 108 inches of snow every winter! (U.S. average is 28 inches)
Actually it sounds lovely to me.  Call me crazy.

Vernon liked the diagonal street parking in Victor that you can back your car into.

Bar J Chuckwagon  for dinner and live western music

The food -- bbq beef, baked potatoes and baked beans was really good.  Ok, so they use aluminum plates and cups -- I'll bring parchment paper to cover the plate next time!

These guys were really good -- great harmonies, and the fiddle player was fantastic.  He's won first place in all kinds of national and international fiddle contests.  
And refreshingly non-politically correct!


Next:  driving day -- across Wyoming to start our journey back home.

Day 16 A buffalo back up on the way to the Tetons

It was 31 degrees this morning when Vernon disconnected the hookups and hitched the camper up!  Here is our view this morning from our campsite:

Looking west from our campsite this morning

 On the way to Yellowstone to see Old Faithful, we passed a field with horses in a frosty field.


                                                 The buffalo traffic back up

 We were held up for nearly 10 minutes in traffic.  Apparently this buffalo was walking up the road and people were stopping in their cars to take pictures causing the back up!

He finally decided to cross the road -- and chose our truck to pass in front!

Then around to the driver's side -- Vernon could have reached out and touched him!

The steam coming up from the Madison River in the early on a cold morning is different from the steam coming out of the ground in the next picture:

This is steam from the 'mudpot' field up ahead. They warned not to step into the mud because the mud is so full of sulfuric acid, it could eat away your shoe.
 It was like driving through some fog from the heat bubbling out of the mudpots hitting the cold air.

Guess whose lovely feet these are!  I couldn't resist seeing what this beautiful, clean water felt like.  I loved that this lake was so easily accessible from the road. 

Old Faithful erupts after a 1 1/2 hour wait.  It was pretty impressive against the blue sky.





                      The Grand Tetons and the Snake River

People rafting on the Snake River

The Grand Tetons

Jackson, Wyoming with a ski slope behind!

Tomorrow:  The Tetons and the Bar J Chuckwagon for dinner!  Yee Haw!