Gettysburg, Fallingwater, and Toledo

April 21 through 23, 2000

The Eisenhower Farm was an interesting tour, with a lot of knick-knacks, but not particularly presidential. Mostly it is a home where Ike and Mamie had wanted to retire to, and it is set up more as a personal home than as a museum. No pictures were allowed from inside, so all I got for pictures are external.

The Gettysburg battlefield car tour was very well done, with quite a bit of interpretational material available. The biggest problem that we had was the weather. From the seminary ridge (where the confederates were operating on the second and third days of the battle) the haze would not let us see cemetery ridge (where the union troops were operating) less than a mile away. Despite the weather, I was very impressed with Little Round Top. This is the hill at the southern end of the Union lines. At one point, the Union general, Sickles, left his position on Little Round Top against his orders and moved his troops forward into the Peach Orchard. While the Confederate general, Longstreet, was moving his troops into position to attack what he assumed to be the heavily manned flank at Little Round Top, the Union general, C. K. Warren was sent to the top of the hill to scout out the Confederate positions. When Warren arrived and found the hill unguarded, he immediately sent for some units to defend the hill. Just as these units got there, Longstreet’s troops attacked from the Devil’s Den and the Valley of Death. The new units that Warren had called for successfully defended the hill. If they had not, the loss of the strategicly important hill would probably have caused a Union defeat at Gettysburg.

Of notice at Gettysburg, other than the military interpretations, were the dogwood and the red bud trees. Even the gray, dismal wet day couldn’t eliminate their beauty. The pictures don’t show the intensity of the color that comes through, but it does try to get the image across.

The irreverent part of me makes note of two other points at Gettysburg. First, we noticed how carefully the Civil War generals all were to have most of the important battles fought in National Parks. In addition, how could any battle where the opposing forces are stationed on Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge possibly hope to have a battle without a lot of communications confused by the similarity of the names.

We had intended to spend a little more time at Gettysburg, and then to go to Harper’s Ferry, but the weather was so disheartening that we decided just to head west. We headed up the Pennsylvania Turnpike until we got ready to call it a day, and got off at Donegal. This town had no significance for us except that it came at the point when we were tired. As we got off the turnpike, there was a sign indicating that we were less than 20 miles from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. Originally, we had intended to see this home, but somewhere along the way we had lost the information about where the home was. I had imagined it to be in eastern Pennsylvania, so when we decided to cut the trip short, we had just kind of written it off to be seen on the next trip. Now we were at just the right place. Once again it is better to be lucky than smart.

On Saturday morning, 4/22, we drove down to take the Fallingwater tour. It was great. We have seen several documentaries on Frank Lloyd Wright and on Fallingwater as well as having some books with pictures of it. None of these convey the real feeling of the place as much as being there and seeing it in person. Once again, we couldn’t take pictures from inside the house, only from the outside. Even if we had, however, I am sure that they would not have done justice to the house and the decorations. There are several aspects of the house that just left me in awe of the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright. He has really captured the “organic” design that he set out for. The building uses the forms and shapes of the surrounding rock deposits to blend into the area perfectly. He used his engineering sense and the beauty of the cantilevered design to create such grace. Finally, he innovated many interior design features such as indirect lighting and built in cabinetry and furniture that became staples of the 50’s and 60’s architecture that I enjoy so much. It is really a treat to be able to see such a work of art.

On Saturday afternoon, we left Pennsylvania and continued to head west. By the time we had gotten well into Ohio, the weather started to clear up again. As a result, we decided that we could stay over night in Toledo and do a volkswalk on Sunday morning if the weather stayed reasonable. At dawn of Sunday morning, it was very pretty, but cold. Soon it became foggy, but it wasn’t wet, so we did the volkswalk. (Since this was Easter – clearly a holy day – we figured that the morning was spent in “Holy Toledo.”) The walk we took was based around the nature center at Maumee Bay State Park. It was a nice walk on the shores of Lake Erie, but the fog precluded much of our view.