From the trip materials:
The first presentation, led by Fallingwater staff, will be "The Art at Fallingwater," an insider's view as you engage with the private art collection on display within Fallingwater. While the house is a work of art in itself, the Kauffmans accrued an incredible collection from artists such as Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Ando Hiroshige, and John James Audubon, as well as notable pieces of Tiffany glass work and ancient relics. The second morning presentation will be "Frank Lloyd Wright: Holding Up Fallingwater." This will be a hands-on session to engage participants in learning about one of the key architectural principles of Fallingwater and many other Wright designs - the cantilever.
When "Junior" donated Fallingwater, he included the family's art collection.
The "hands-on" session was a hoot. We divided into teams and were challenged to make a cantilever out of limited supplies of typing paper! Once our projects were complete, blocks were piled onto our cantilevers to see how many they would hold. Our team won with 6 or 7 blocks, but the leaders said that a group of engineers (natch!) held the record with almost twice that.
After the morning presentations we loaded up the bus for our long-anticipated visit to Fallingwater.
But first...
We stopped for lunch at the Connellsville Canteen, the location of a small WWII museum. During the war, trains carrying servicemen stopped in Connellsville to change crew and engines. Local women met the trains, day and night, to greet the servicemen and give them free refreshments.
It may have been a quirky (but charming) stop, but the food was good and the museum and history presentation were engaging. We were also treated to this fabulous model train layout.
After lunch we traveled to Ohiopyle State Park.
We heard we were going to have a special treat of supper at Fallingwater, so our tour was in the late afternoon and we had time to kill.
I have very fond memories of a whitewater rafting trip on the lower Youghiogheny River (that's pronounced something like yok-i-GAIN-ee) that started in Ohiopyle. I drove out from the DC area with friends Roxanne and Tom Taylor for the adventure of a lifetime. We always planned to upgrade our white-water skills on the New & the Gauley, but never got around to it.
As I recall, much of our time on the river was a lot like this. Sometimes it was much more challenging as it went around boulders or through narrow spots.
The rafts held four people, but the three of us had a raft to ourselves AND all the drinks for the lunch rolling around in the bottom. It was excitin' -- especially at one nasty spot where Tom fell out of the raft. We had been told what to do in that instance (feet downstream, head above water), so there was no harm done.
At one point near the lunch stop, it was possible to hike upstream a ways to jump in and "bodysurf" down. Ah, youth!
One participant had a rough trip, however. She fell out of a raft and broke a leg! There is no way to get an injured person out of the gorge, so the guides put on an inflatable cast and she rode the rest of the way out in a raft. In great pain. No fun at all.
We passed some pretty gnarly rapids on our trip, but nothing quite like the Ohiopyle falls.
Yes, kayaks and canoes are allowed to shoot the falls under controlled conditions.
Our bus driver shared a harrowing story of a near escape.
He was visiting the park once-upon-a-time standing on the flat rocks to the left of the picture. A mom was playing with her small children a bit upstream in the calmer water. The kids jumped in and floated down to mom who pulled them from the water. They then ran upstream and did it all over again.
The inevitable happened and mom missed one of the kids who began to float faster downriver toward the rocks and, past them, to the falls.
Our driver, without thinking jumped in the water and grabbed the child. He wasn't sure whether he could make it to the bank or not, but with the help of others got out before going over the falls. The child at least had a life jacket -- he did not.
I hope mom never forgot that lesson.
Can't ever pass up a train station.
Ohiopyle was a bustling community before the turn of the 20th century with tourists arriving on the B&O and the Western Maryland railroads to enjoy the natural scenery. Lumber was a thriving industry.
The rise of the automobile led to a decrease in train travel and declining tourism in the area.
Tourism is still the main draw and there is still a small residential community. The trains still run by, but the nearest passenger stop is in Connellsville. A freight train passed while we were visiting, but I couldn't get there soon enough to get a picture.
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