...adventures with that crazy mom of mine...

The Mom and I had a GREAT week touring around the east coast.

Remember all of the stuff we did? I have pictures!!!



This is the first house we toured. The Hampton house...the original owner was a big influence on the Baltimore area(don't really remember what he did...there were so many family stories we heard that they all mix together). I do remember that the guy owned about 350 slaves at one point. It was also the biggest house in the U.S. when it was built in the 1700's. Crazy. It was one of our favorites from the week!!




I don't want to bore you with all of the houses..so I'm putting up our favorites. This is the last house in Baltimore we toured...the Evergreen House. This house is a little newer(meaning it was built in the 1800's). These people were filthy rich. The house was complete with an art gallery, about 3 libraries(one of which had a glass floor), a theater(not for movies, but for plays), and a bowling alley. Oh and don't forget all of the art they had from Picasso, Degas, and Tiffany(as in Louis Comfort Tiffany, the glass artist). I absolutely loved that place!

On our way back to MI we stopped in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It's a little war town that sits on the Potomac River...it reminded me of Mackinac Island with the little shops and people dressed in costume. Mom suggested we head on up to the next town by following a small road that runs parallel to the river. Well, we thought we had found the road, but it turned into a gravel mess, so we went back to a shop and asked if it would take us there. The man said it would, but that it was horribly bumpy. Mom said that we should take it anyways, as she was sure it was the same one her and Dad had taken a few years back, in their little convertible. I knew if Dad had taken his pride and joy down that little road, we could do it in my car. I drive a little four door miniature car as well...off roading is not on it's list of things it likes to do. So did it get better? NOPE! The road was made up of the big stones that line the railroad beds. There were potholes about every foot. I mean we're talking BIG holes in the road...some the size of the road. It was rainy that day too, so they were all filled with about 2 inches of water. At one point, there was a small drainage pipe draining onto the road. We had to drive over part of the pipe that was helping the water over..of course, with running water moving through it. So, it couldn't get any worse right?! Wrong! The potholes kept getting bigger. The water in them was reflecting everything so you couldn't even really see how deep they were, which is really amazing when you have to drive over that. There was one point when we had to drive over a "pothole," which should officially be put on the map as a crater, Mom said "don't get too close to the edge or you'll scrape the car with that huge boulder over there." My choices were: drive through crater and fall into the center of the earth, drive to the left and hit boulder, or drive to the right..fall into river..start white water rafting/automobiling. I chose the boulder. We thought we were just about through the jungle o' potholes, craters, and boulders when we came to yet again another drainage outlet. This time it was about 30 times the size of the first one...so big that the water coming out of it was creating a very large stream. Literally, we could have opened our doors and waded in the water...maybe even fished. It did make for some amazing pictures though....



Here's the very beginning of the road. Pretty, right?




Not so pretty when the potholes became more frequent and much larger...remember..some of them were the size of the road.




The drainage outlet and the stream.




Makes for a cool pic though, right? And remember, I didn't even have to get out of my car for this pic!!




Same, just trying it in sepia! ...After crossing the river and hopping a few more craters, we finally came to the end. Although, the spot looked very familiar. Mom pointed out a nasty camping trailer and then soon enough there was another one! There were a few people standing around and a bunch of junk piled up. L, can you guess the spot? Yep, it was definitely the inlet to our tubing extravaganza!! Funny that I had come full circle in about 10 days! I showed Mom the dam we had to cross, so at least one person didn't think I was crazy. I wanted to get pics but the hippies didn't look like they would be too happy if I stopped..looked like they were waiting for a bus to come around the corner!


After Harper's Ferry we drove on to Kentuck Knob...the Frank Lloyd Wright house close to Fallingwater(the cuz and I did that one last summer). The house was amazing!! I actually liked it more than Fallingwater. Don't get me wrong, the site for Fallingwater is amazing and I would take that house in a heartbeat...but this house was pretty damn amazing itself. It wasn't overly done or huge by any means...just a reasonably sized house, sitting on a mountain, in the woods. Frank is all about fitting the house to the site..so the details are what won me over. The picture windows, sky lights in the kitchen, field stone floors, etc. I won't bore you with more, but if you're ever out that way..you've got to see it. It's completely worth every second! Here are some pics...



Frank started adding this signed tile to all of his buildings...didn't come until later in his life, which is why we didn't see it at Fallingwater, L.




The house and waterfall.




The terrace.




The view. The current owners live in that huge farm house in the valley. They still entertain at The Knob on weekends..sucks to be their friends, huh?




Thought I'd add this one in...we had lots of fun being silly! It was rainy, hence the hood...


So, that was my big adventure with the Mom. We saw a ton and had lots of Maryland crab cakes(which we thoroughly miss)!