One of the very wonderful things about living in the northeast is autumn, my favorite time of year. This year we’ve had a really spectacular colorful fall. At first, I doubted that we’d have the great colors this year because of our summer drought. We’ve been bone dry for months, and on top of that it was a very hot summer, well into late September. We didn’t get our first frost until recently, so I didn’t think the leaves would turn colors but would just go brown and fall off. I was wrong!
Our fall essentially starts when we close up the cottage for the winter, which we did the next weekend after returning from cousin’s weekend. I went out to the lake on October 7 to get much of the work done. I was blessed with a bright sunny day in which to carry furniture in and get the major share of the closing up done. But I had to stop and take some photos of the beautiful day.
Beautiful early fall day at the lake
Little asters in the grass
Bearberries
A couple of days later Christine and I went to the lake to get our boat wrapped up. We didn’t have nice weather. It was very cool and very windy. The wind made wrapping up the boat very difficult. We had a 24×16 foot tarp and with about 20 mile an hour winds, we were very challenged to keep the tarp from flying away. But we succeeded.
The boat is wrapped up for the winter
Later in the afternoon the weather improved and it turned into a nice day.
Christine on the dock
The cottage is now essentially closed for the winter, always a sad day.
See you next spring, cottage!
We have this big triple stump in the side yard and it was covered with mushrooms or fungus or something. But I thought the growths looked cool. The stump is also where a friend of ours sits.
Weird fungus around a treeOur mermaid
We’ve really enjoyed the great colors this fall. Here is a collection of various photos showcasing our fabulous fall around our house in town.
Japanese anemonies
Anemonies – great fall flower
Monkshood – so striking
Foggy valley – view from our house
My friend Jim’s photo
Very vivid color near our house
Leaf closeup
Tree in our side yard
Sassafras tree in our backyard
View in back of our house
Sumac trees in backyard
We feel so blessed to live in such a beautiful area. We enjoy our house and property, and especially our view looking out over the valley. Each day brings something different and we relish in nature’s glory.
This past weekend we attended the AHDI-NEMI conference in Morgantown, WV. AHDI stands for Association for Healthcare Documentation and NEMA is our regional district, New England Middle Atlantic. Morgantown is about a 6.5 hour drive from Binghamton and was coincidentally the same route we travelled last month for cousins weekend, only about an hour farther. Therefore, it was a familiar drive through the beautiful Endless, Laurel and Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. The drive started out in rain, but then the rain stopped and we had a pretty nice drive seeing all the amazing fall colors. It truly has been a spectacular fall foliage season.
The conference was held at the Lakeview Golf Resort and Spa near Morgantown. I won’t go into any detail about the conference other than to say that it was fun seeing many familiar faces, listening to some interesting presentations,having fun hanging out with attendees, and also having some down time for resting. Christine came away with at least one good prospect for TQAudit, which is always a good thing. You can see photos of the conference on Christine’s Facebook page if you’re interested.
During cousin’s weekend last month, Christine, my brother Grant, and I visited Fallingwater, one of the most famous, and iconic, Frank Lloyd Wright homes. We loved that tour (see my previous post). Christine, a voracious literature gatherer on trips, learned that near Fallingwater, just 4 miles away, there was another Frank Lloyd Wright home called Kentuck Knob. In that we were returning home from Morgantown and driving in that general direction, Christine reserved house tour tickets for Kentuck Knob.
Kentuck Knob logo
Kentuck Knob got its name from a western Pennsylvania settler who wanted to relocate to Kentucky. He reconsidered and stayed on a tract of land that he called Little Kentucky. Eventually, the “y” got lost and it became Kentuck. Because the land was on a rounded hill, knob is the word used to describe it. Thus, Kentuck Knob.
A successful dairy company family, the Hagans (most famous for Hagan’s ice cream) bought 89 acres of the mountainous land in the early 1950s. The Hagans were friends with the Kaufmann family, owners of Fallingwater. The Hagans frequently visited Fallingwater and asked Mr. Kaufmann whether he thought Frank Lloyd Wright would design a house for them on Kentuck Knob. In 1953 Wright was very busy at the time designing the Guggenheim Museum, a synagogue, and 12 other homes. Wright was 86 at the time! He did say yes to the project, but he only paid one very short visit to the site during construction. He designed the house from topographical maps and photos. The house was completed in 1956. The Hagans invited Wright to visit the completed house, but Wright refused saying that he already knew what it looked like so he didn’t need to see it.
The style of the house is called Usonian, which Wright coined. Some say the word Usonian is something of an abbreviation for United States of North America, which during the Depression years, Wright wanted to make housing more affordable. Usonian design was rather like the first modular housing. The design featured small, one-story structures set on concrete slabs with piping for radiant heat beneath. The kitchens were incorporated into the living areas. Open car ports took the place of garages.
Courtyard and main entrance
What is great about the Hagan House is that it is nestled into the side of the hillside allowing the building to grow out of rather than dominate its setting. The house is oriented to the south and west for optimal solar exposure. Apparently, when the house was built, there were no trees around the property as it had been cleared for grazing and farmland, and so over the 30 years they owned the property, the Hagans planted thousands of seedlings, which now have grown into large trees that surround the house and property and provide a fantastic woodland shade and beauty.
The materials used for the house include the abundant local sandstone and weather-resistant tidewater red cedar. The woodworking detail was just amazing. All around the house were clerestory windows in a beautiful pattern.
Clerestory windows
Closeup of window detail
And what I was fascinated by was the fantastic dentil molding all around the house. We learned that all of it was hand-cut in a hexagonal pattern that mimicked the hexagonal shape of the entire house. It apparently took 2 years for all the dentil molding to be hand-cut in the tidewater red cedar. Wow!
Dentil molding surrounding everything
Closeup of dentil molding
The house has two wings – the public space and the private space. In the public space is the great room and dining room. The bedrooms (3) and bathrooms (2) are in the private wing. Both wings extend from a hexagonal center core which forms the huge fireplace. And the kitchen was behind the big fireplace between the two wings.
Shape of the house with its big, green copper roof (Photo of photo from booklet)
The great room seemed fairly typical of the Wright style with built-in seating and large windows looking out to the cantilevered porch. There was one really cool feature at the end of the great room. There was a huge stone planter, half inside and half outside that had a big window above it. You could not immediately tell there was a window there. It was so perfectly placed and just a beautiful view bringing the outside in. Photos weren’t allowed inside the house, but there was a photo in the Kentuck Knob booklet showing this planter and window.
Planter and window (Photo of photo from booklet)
The dining room was a wonderful space right inside the large windows to the porch. There were lots of built in cupboards and the dining table was kind of modular so it could be enlarged and even taken outside. Here’s another photo from the booklet showing the dining room.
Looking into the dining room (Photo of photo from booklet)
The porch runs the entire length of the public space of the house. It is cantilevered and the roof has wonderful hexagonal cut outs the entire length. The tour guide said it was really interesting to track the sun movement from the sun coming in through the ceiling cut outs casting hexagonal sunspots on the porch floor. And all the cut outs and along the entire length of the porch was the hand-cut dentil molding. Really beautiful!
Porch showing sun spots on floor (Photo of photo from booklet)
Cantilevered porch
End of the porch
Roof cut outs
Christine enjoying the tour
As I mentioned, the Hagans were frequent visitors to Fallingwater. Mrs. Hagan wanted in her home the sound of water so she had build a little water feature right outside her bedroom window so she could have her own falling water.
Mrs. Hagan’s falling water
Water feature outside bedroom
Here are several photos from around the property showing various features. The sandstone is quite overbearing from some views. I said that the house looks rather like a gunnery turret in places. And at the end of the porch from down below in the yard, it is described as the prow of a great ship. Wright didn’t like right angles and so we learned that there are only 2 right angles in the whole place – both in a bathroom due to plumbing reasons.
Main entrance
Front door
Pointed ship’s prow
Cantilevered roof
Looking up from below
Outside of the amazing window into great room
Courtyard and main entrance
End of public wing from courtyard
From end of porch looking towards courtyard
Above water feature
Porch length from below
End of private wing
After the tour of the house we could explore the grounds. We walked out to a wonderful overlook of the Youghiogheny River valley. It was a really beautiful vista.
Great view from Kentuck Knob
Christine enjoying the view
The Hagans lived in the Kentuck Knob house for nearly 30 years. In 1986 Lord Palumbo of London, UK bought the property for $600,000 as a vacation home. Since 1996, the Palumbo family has balanced their occupancy with a public tour program, a method of historic property management more common to their native Britain than to the United States. So the property remains a private residence but a private corporation runs the property. The Palumbos added a sculpture meadow to the site near the base of the mountain. So, in addition to the house tour, one can stroll through the woods down the mountain and into the meadow sculpture garden.
Lovely path through the woods
Christine enjoying the walk
Linda at a stone structure
Looking out from the structure
Yes, I can just fit
Linda at a sculpture of an apple core
Collection of great bird houses
Split rail fencing bordered all the property
So we greatly enjoyed our time at Kentuck Knob. Visiting Fallingwater a few weeks ago was a fantastic experience. Kentuck Knob didn’t have the “wow” appeal, but nonetheless, it is well worth the to visit. Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs are very interesting and one gets such a wonderful balance of nature with living space. Christine and I are fascinated by Wright and his work. Hopefully we’ll get to tour many other works by this renowned architect.
As we started to head home, we came to Ohioplye State Park and the Youghiogheny River. All this is within very large tracts of state game land and forests and is a huge recreational area with lots of campground and hiking trails. I ran over to the river to take a couple of photos. It was pretty at the Ohioplye park.
Youghiogheny River
Falls at Ohioplye State Park
And so we headed home. Fortunately, we only had a few spits of rain. The sky was ominous-looking in some areas, but then the clouds would break and we got some sun and blue sky. The peak fall foliage colors were past, but it was still a nice drive. We mixed it up with highways and country roads, which we enjoyed.
So our Morgantown trip was very nice. We had a great time combining business with pleasure.
(So I don’t get in trouble for using photos from the booklet, I’ll mention that the booklet is titled Kentuck Knob, designed by Martha Waskik Graphic Arts Inc., with photos by Jim Judkis, Tom Little, and Robert Ruschak. I did not see a copyright in this booklet, so I hope this citation is sufficient.)
September 30 – October 2 was our second annual cousins weekend. Growing up there were 7 cousins of my generation from Dad’s side of the family. Dad had 2 sisters, Martha Jane and Beryl. Each had 2 children – Jill and Tom (from Aunt Jane and Uncle Hank) and Jane Ann and Karen (from Aunt Beryl and Uncle Donnie). Until my family moved to Binghamton from Ohio in the early ’60s, the 7 of us cousins spent a lot of time together in Newcomerstown, OH, with the center of the family being Nannie, out grandmother. Four of the cousins remained in Newcomerstown (Jane in nearby Coshocton) and so they are much closer. As a matter of fact, Karen/Dave, Tom/Kelly and Jill live on the same street!
In later years, it was Dad who got us together occasionally with trips to Newcomerstown, but for us, we only connected with our cousins on these occasional visits. As our parents left this earth (Beryl being the only one still with us), I had been thinking that we needed to find a way to stay connected. I had suggested a cousins weekend, but we didn’t do anything about organizing one until last year. The plan was to find a place to meet about halfway between Newcomerstown and Binghamton. Last year we got together at a B&B in Westfield, NY, between Lake Chautauqua and Lake Erie. It was great fun, although we couldn’t all stay in the same house due to limited bedrooms. Finding a place with 6 or 7 bedrooms that also has kitchen/dining and hanging out space is not easy to do! This year, Jill found a house on a lake in southwestern PA that was really perfect. So we congregated at the Indian Lake house for our second annual cousins weekend.
The whole gang (minus Jane) – Jill, Karen, Linda, Kelly, Tom, Grant, Dave, Christine and Eric
The house worked out very well. The lake is fairly large but is horseshoe-shaped so you couldn’t really see the whole thing. Eric and Dave tried a little fishing but had no luck. Apparently, the lake was quite weedy off the dock, but they had fun trying. Dave and Eric are the entertainment and the two of them together are quite something. They play off of each other very well and kept us laughing and groaning the whole time we were together.
Cousins weekend house
Back of house
View from side yard
Indian Lake, PA
We all brought food to share so we stayed in for dinner both nights. This, I think, makes for a nicer time together because it’s just not the same when we are in a restaurant. Grant brought beef tenderloin and marinated chicken and cooked it on the grill. One of the things not good about the house was its limited supplies, like TP, firewood and propane for the grill. The grill had a nearly empty tank and so the guys went off looking for a tank to borrow, which came from the lakeside raised flame bowl pedestals the neighbor had. Of course, the neighbor wasn’t there and we figured the police would show up any moment since we thought maybe the neighbor had surveillance cameras around his property. But it all worked out okay. Dinner was cooked and the tank was returned.
On Saturday, we all did various different things. Christine, Grant and I set off to check off something from our bucket lists – a tour of the famous Frank Lloyd House Fallingwater. It was a little over an hour away from where we were staying, too close not to pay a visit. I must say that southwestern PA is beautiful country. The drive on Friday took us through the Endless Mountains, and the drive to Fallingwater took us through the Laurel Mountains. Both afforded us great views of lovely rolling hills and beautiful farmland in addition to going through nice forests.
The American Institute of Architects named Fallingwater “best all-time work of American architecture.” It was built in 1935 as the summer home of the Kaufmanns, of Kaufmann department store fame. I must say that it is a fabulous place to visit. The entire compound is wonderful and the conservation group that runs it does a fantastic job of moving a lot of people through the building and grounds without it seeming to be too crowded. Advanced ticket purchase is a must as the daily tours sell out fast.
Terrace over Bear Run
Terraces
Steps down to Bear Run
Lush greenery all around
The design is based on cantilevered structures that form the terraces. The cantilevered beams provided sufficient support so that the corners of the rooms do not require support structures, thereby allowing the corners to have glass windows that kept the views unrestricted. Unfortunately, no photography was permitted inside the house, but Frank Lloyd Wright’s style was clearly evident throughout the house. Wright’s passion for Japanese architecture was strongly reflected in the design of Fallingwater, particularly in the importance of interpenetrating exterior and interior spaces and the strong emphasis placed on harmony between man and nature. The house is in an incredibly beautiful location with Bear Run, a small creek, flowing fight under the large terrace off the main living room. From the living room are stairs that go right down to the creek where the Kaufmanns would fish. The design incorporates broad expanses of windows and balconies which reach out into their surroundings.
Architectural masterpiece
Beautiful stone chimneys
Lush greenery all around
Beautiful setting
The tour was well done and informative. We got to see nearly every room in the house, all furnished with original furnishings. It is an amazing house! The guest house above the main house up the hill was really beautiful as well, with a terraced dipping pool that captured spring water coming down the hill. And it’s easy to see where the logo for Fallingwater comes from!
Looks deceptively small
Fallingwater logo
I certainly would encourage a visit to Fallingwater. It is an amazing house in a fantastic location.
Fallingwater – an amazing place!
After our Fallingwater tour, stroll around the grounds and lunch at the café, we headed back to the house. We texted the others and said we would be stopping at the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, so we arranged to meet the others there. The memorial is the crash site of Flight 93, the 4th plane highjacked on 9/11 that was likely headed for a crash into the U.S. Capitol. The memorial is a very moving site and worth a visit. I actually was very surprised by the number of people who were also visiting the day we stopped. There are 2 parts – the memorial plaza and the visitor center. The plaza is where a paneled white stone wall has been erected. Each panel has a victim’s name engraved. The wall lines the border of the actual crash site and a large rock out in the field marks the impact location. The visitor center was built along the flight path of the plane prior to its crash and you can stand out on a balcony at the end of a long corridor and look down to the field where the plane crashed.
National Memorial sign
Memorial description
Visitor center
Looking out over the flight path
Impact point
Memorial Plaza
Wall panels with victim names
Momentoes left at memorial
The exhibits in the visitor center were overwhelming with videos of the other planes crashing into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. But the exhibits told the story of that 9/11 morning and all 4 of the planes. There was an animation on a flight simulator showing the final flight path of Flight 93 which corresponds with the transcription of the cockpit recorder. 40 people died in the crash and the amazing part of the story is how these people sat in the back of the plane after the terrorists took control of the plane and plotted their attack on the terrorists in an attempt to overpower them and take back control. The transcript depicted the final struggle in the cockpit. It was disturbing to watch the animation and read the transcript. Also very moving were the phone calls and texts the victims made prior to the crash. This memorial is important to visit. Christine and I have also been to the Pentagon memorial, which was also a very emotional experience. Someday we will get to the WTC memorial as well.
After visiting the memorial, we returned to the house and settled in for a nice time just sitting around catching up with each other. We had leftovers for dinner. It is amazing how much food we each brought, but none of it went to waste. Again, Eric and Dave were the entertainment and we listened to some pretty amazing stories (socks over pant legs!) and relived memories of some of the things that happened to us as children. I’m glad we are choosing to have cousins weekend, and everyone is in for next year. We all hope that cousin Jane will join us. It’s not quite right with only 6 or the 7 cousins together. We need all of us to round out the experience.
The weekend ended Sunday morning as we all packed up and loaded up our cars. It was a nice time together, but it goes by too fast. Everyone arrived back to their homes safely. Eric, Grant, Christine and I had a nice drive home through the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside. Nice to get away from home, but better returning home! But, I look forward to the third annual cousins weekend!
