Day Six

Day Six

Fallingwater.  Wow, what a place.  This was even more spectacular than I imagined, when I walked into the lounge I wooow’d out loud.  The photos really don’t do it justice, it’s only visiting the place that you get such a feel for how well it has fitted with the landscape and the owners wishes at the time.  Couple of things that stood out, the house is built on rock, and there are boulders that were on-site that remain part of the building.  Very cool.  Then there are the two rooms that are back to back, but to get between them you go out into a hallway, down some stairs, turn the corner, go back up some stairs and you are in the room right next door.  Sounds odd I know, but really gives that sense of separation, and the interest created by views into different rooms as you walk between the two rooms was pretty clever.  But my favourite was “the hatch”.  The house is built over a stream, and in the lounge is a “hatch”.  It is effectively a glass roofed section slightly higher than the floor, that opens up to provide access to a set of stairs that lead down to the stream underneath the house.  Really brings the indoors out and the outdoors in.  In summer it can be opened to provide cooling for the house.  Too clever.  This was all designed and built back in 1936-1939, during the depression when money was tight and technology not quite what it is today.

So after a very nice lunch and a visit to the gift shop, we headed to Kentuck Knob, which is another house designed by FLW just a few miles down the road.  Not allowed to take photos inside this one as we went on the cheap tour.  Quite a different house too, lots of wood and much smaller than Fallingwater, also the location was not as spectacular.  Still a fab house though, surrounded by 8000 trees planted by the owner that were all turning beautiful autumn shades and losing leaves.  We wandered though the sculpture garden and then headed off, stopping on the side of the road a few times to try and capture the colours in pictures.

Next stop was the United 93 Memorial near Shanksville, in the Pennsylvania countryside.  Have read some mixed reviews about this, some people thought the temporary memorial was better, but I thought this was just fine.  A nice way to honour the bravery of the strangers who worked together to bring down the plane, and gave their own lives in doing so, to avoid a much greater tragedy if the plane had reached it’s intended target.  This was either the Capitol building or the White House, which are just 20 minutes by air from where the plane crashed.  Behind the wall is the debris field which covers a huge area, all grassed over now.  This was the site where the most evidence was gathered, they found the cockpit voice recorders and passports of the terrorists, and were able to positively identify everyone on the plane.

After this we carried on to Gettysburg in search of a room for the night.  Lots of places booked up, there is apparently an Apple Harvest Festival on in town at the moment (who knew??)  but we found somethere that actually pretty nice after last night’s effort !  We have a tour of the Battlefield booked for Sunday morning, so now have a day of leisure tomorrow to have a look around.  Looks like an interesting place, lots of quaint old shops & buildings and people everywhere in period costume.  Had a yummy dinner at the historic Dobbin House Tavern, which is the oldest standing building here in Gettysburg, built in 1776.