Cincinnati

 We drove down to Cincinnati in one day.  Andrew and Bob were leaving for five days to go fishing in Port O'Connor Texas and I was staying with Julia and the kids to help out.  They were very busy fixing up their new house prior to their move on July 30.  Here Elsa is helping Bob play his guitar (he had sent her a CD for Christmas with songs he sang and played).






Henry was comando crawling when we arrived and developed to pretty consistently crawling and was pulling himself up on everything in preparation for cruising.  He is a happy boy, though Elsa grabs everything from him as soon as he decides to play with it.  He loves his mommy and daddy and cries when they leave.  Eventually he got used to me and he actually cried when I left the room.






On Sunday, the day after Andrew and Bob left, we went to Coney Island Amusement Park (developed for younger kids) as a reward to Elsa for having been dragged around to the new house and sitting through meetings.  We met a friend of Elsa's from music class and her parents and rode on the rides and ate a picnic lunch.  Julia was taking care of Henry.  That meant I got to ride on all the rides with Elsa (if she needed an adult).  It's a good thing I like amusement parks.

















This was the scariest ride we went on.  It was a cross between a roller coaster and a swing with centrifigal force.  When we started Elsa just started giggling, though she got a little scared when the operator stopped the machine twice to change what it did.



























Julia thought Elsa would like the bumper cars, and boy did she ever.  She went on them three times and declared they were her favorite.  She was pretty good at driving the car and loved to bump into people.









Julia and I took turns taking care of the kids and painting.  This is their new house.  They were having the floors sanded, stained and coated while we were there and the chimneys redone and putting critter guards on the top.  Julia does all the painting because she has lots of experience and doesn't think most painters do a good job.  She had finished Elsa's room.  I primed and painted shelves in the master bedroom closet, primed and painted the trim in Henry's room (at the ceiling, the floor and a chair rail, along with all around the closets, doors and windows), and primed and painted the same three trims and a fireplace mantle and surround in the master bedroom.  The house had been built in the 1960's and had lots of wallpaper.  It hadn't been updated since.  After Andrew and Bob returned, we continued to take turns painting.  Bob and Andrew fixed the back deck (putting in a new post, sistering up some other posts, straightening the stairs and installing plastic mesh on the railing so kids don't fall through.

This is the view from Henry's room.  Note the stream in the lower left.  The house sits on 1.7 acres, most of which is in trees.

















We celebrated Andrew's birthday when he returned.  Julia baked a cake and I helped Elsa bake blueberry banana muffins.  Here she is presenting them and the card which had pictures of all the ingredients.










It is a tradition with Andrew and Julia that everyone wears birthday hats (in fact we wore them for all meals for two days).

The movers come on July 30 to pack up their house.  They are trying to move some stuff with every trip over.  It is exhausting for them.  I think we helped a little.

Wisconsin

We drove to a campground near Lone Rock, WI, on the Wisconsin River.  There was a big campground in Spring Green, but it had reviews saying it was filled with people who like to get drunk and stay up late.  Our campground was quiet, but very buggy.  We hooked up with Helen and Bill and old friends from Bob's childhood in Madison for dinner on Wednesday night.  On the 4th of July, we all (20 people) met to canoe 10 miles on the Wisconsin River.  Due to all the rain, the river was flooding and there were very few sandbars (the preferred place to stop and eat lunch because of the lack of mosquitoes).  We found an island and stopped for lunch and a swim and           continued on.  The only wild
 life we saw was lots of turtles.  They are quite shy and plop in the water as soon as they hear paddles.  Bob and I were leading the flotilla (we tend to paddle hard and fast).  It was a great way to spend a warm day.  In the evening we went to dinner with Chuck, Ann, Bill and Helen (the Burton contingent) at the restaurant in the Taliesen Visitor Center (the only free-standing restaurant Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed).  It was quiet, overlooked the Wisconsin River, and the food was delicious.







On July 5th Ann, Bob and I took the estate tour (4 hours) of Taliesen.  It was led by a 75-year old guide who had been an actress and had been a guide for 15 years.  She was extremely knowledgeable.  It started at this Unity Church (Unitarian) that Wright designed when he was 19.  In the graveyard next to this chuch he is buried, along with Mahmeh Borthwick (his lover), 7 of his 8 children, his mother and various other Lloyds (who owned most of this valley).  Wright died at Taliesen West and was shipped home and buried in a plain wood casket here.  After over 25 years his fourth wife's family disinterred him and brought what remains were left to Taliesen West to be cremated and buried beside her.  The Lloyds had left Wales because they were persecuted for their Unitarian beliefs.





The next stop was Hillside School (which Wright designed for his two aunts who developed a boarding school on the site).  It was built in 1902.  It is now the site of the architecture school at Taliesen.  There are only 11 apprentices there now.  The studio is to the right of this building (which is a two story meeting room with a floating second floor and a cafeteria in the back).  The studio has a very unusual roof that was built so that the light is the same at all times of the day.


The tour includes 1 1/2 miles of walking.  From Hillside we walked up to Romeo and Juliet (the water tower seen behind this house.  Romeo is the tall part with the windmill on top and Juliet has a balcony and is where the water was stored.  Wright designed this for his aunt's school.  Scattered around Romeo and Juliet are three houses for his aunts.





We continued on to the farm, in Wright's characteristic red (made from ground sandstone mixed with paint).  The roads at Taliesen all curve around, following the hills.  Wright wanted people to walk or ride their horses to Taliesen.








We walked up to Taliesen, which does not sit on the top of a hill.  It was a favorite place of Wrights and is in the center of this photo.  The house surrounds three sides of the hill.  There is the living area (which has burned twice), the studio (separated by a breezeway and saved from burning), and the farm.  They are constantly working on restoration on this 100 year old site.  It is truly a remarkable place and it was great to see it after seeing Taliesen West a few years ago.





July 6 was the wedding day of Julia Burton, Bob's first cousin once removed (but really our niece) and Steve Voelker at Hillside Event site.  They were married under this Catalba Tree by a Unitarian Minister from Madison.  It was a beautiful ceremony.  It was followed by hors deuvers, Oregon Pinot Noir, Wisconsin beer and a dinner catered by a caterer who specializes in local foods.  We all ate under a tent-like structure.




We adjourned to a pavilion for dancing to a Madison bluegrass band.  They were great to listen and dance to.  The cake was served with little ceremony (everyone just took a piece, including the bride and groom).  There was a bus that took people back and forth to the hotel so we didn't need to drive.  We finally left around 10 p.m., tired and bitten by mosquitoes.


































We left early Sunday morning for Saugatuck, MI where Julia's parents have a house on Lake Michigan.

Colorado, South Dakota and Family

 We drove from the Moab area to Lafayette, CO in one relatively short day over I-70 and through the Eisenhower Tunnel (which is celebrating its 40th anniversary).  We arrived Friday night and spent Saturday morning getting ready to go to Lyons (about 45 minutes away) to work on Goldie and Gail's house.  We packed the most amazing quantity of food, a stove, and multiple bottles of water.  Their house is at about 6,500' feet, up a dirt road and has this amazing view over the valley below.  Our job was to install a floating cork floor in the basement and paint the walls.


 It was full moon and the moon was visible while the sun was setting over the valley.  Though it was pretty warm, and got warmer, it was at least 7 degrees cooler in Lyons and we were working in the basement, which was cooler yet.








 The first thing that had to be done was to install a 220V receptical so that we could plug in the stove we had brought from Lyons.  Goldie and Gail had brought up a refrigerator the prior weekend.  Without their stove, we would have been cooking on the two-burner stove in Snoopy and wouldn't have eaten nearly as well.  Gail was not comfortable working with 220V.  Bob watched a video on U-Tube and set to work.  It worked!  So, we had a stove and Goldie and Gail now have a workable kitchen.  There is no well or water supply in Lyons except for a cistern, and they didn't know how much water was in it and didn't want to drink it.  That was the reason for bringing all the bottles of water.

Gail had started laying the cork floor in the back betdroom (to the right through the door).  When we arrived she and I finished painting the bedroom.  It took Bob to remember that we could pound the pieces of 1x3' cork into place by using bits that were cut off so that the tongue and groove matched and we weren't destroying them when we pounded.  We worked from the bedroom, into two closets there, out into the hall (having laid a chalk line to make sure everything was straight) and into the family room.  On the left you can see the edge of the stone hearth we had to work around.  The front of the room came to a point, so there was lots of cutting and fitting to be done.  At times the work went quickly; at times very slowly as we cut and fit and swore.

Goldie, Gail and the two dogs slept in the basement bedroom while Bob and I slept in Snoopy.  Luckily it cooled off sufficiently at night.  We returned to Lafayette mid-week for a shower and some tools and for good on Friday morning.  We had some adventures with the plumbing, as it became apparent that some roots had blocked the drainage pipes into the septic system.  


We left Sunday morning early for the Black Hills and Jewel Cave in particular.  We had visited Wind Cave several years ago and wanted to visit Jewel Cave this time.  After parking Snoopy at Camanche Park USFS Campground (named after a horse that a soldier received from the Indians and who was the only survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn), we headed to Jewel Cave National Monument to find that all the cave tours for Sunday were full.  Bob took a nap while I went to the National Wood Carver's Museum in Custer, which houses wooden carvings, mainly caracatures, made by a chiropractor who made his fortune with two inventions (one of which put electric pulses through the body and one of which was to lose weight) and could retire early and carve.  In addition to carving, he made by hand all of the workings to make parts move (a man milking a cow whose tail is swinging while a pig, whose tail is twirling, is knocking over the pail of milk).  He was hired by Walt Disney to design many parts of the original Disneyland.  It was kitchy, but very Americana.

We woke up early Monday morning to get to the cave when it opened.  Jewel Cave is renowned for all the calcite crystals in it.  Almost every surface is covered with them, though most of them don't shine like the first example.  They are laid down in thick layers (visible in the second photo) which often fall down.  Jewel Cave is probably the largest cave in the world.  It is estimated to have 5,000 miles of caverns (though only 166.86 miles have been mapped so far) and may connect with Wind Cave.  There was a big push to discover more of the cave this past weekend.  These other photos show the calcite crystals, some with stalagtites and flow stone associated with them.



















This cave bacon (24' long) is the largest example of cave bacon in the cave.

















We continued across SD 44, a beautiful road in southern SD that went through the Badlands and the Pine Ridge Reservation and had very little traffic.  We stopped for the night at a state park on the Missouri River and continued on SD 44 until it connected with US 18 in Iowa.  We stopped for lunch in Sanborn, Iowa where Bob played a wonderful 18-hole disc golf course and I read Spanish and knitted.  As we continued east we destroyed the trailer tire (the second time I have been driving and heard/felt something funny and looked back to see pieces of rubber flying off).  This time at least we knew how to lower the spare and it wasn't quite so difficult to change the tire as last summer in the middle of Nevada.  We continued on to Emmetsburg, Iowa where we got a replacement tire from a very friendly tire store.  We are now in Clear Lake, Iowa, near Mason City, and will be heading for Spring Green, WI and Julia Burton's wedding tomorrow.