August 3, 2018
Day 2 Friday - More Liquid Sunshine, Admiring Architecture and Mesmerized by Memorials
Frank Lloyd Wright House and Flight 93 Memorial for Early Arrivals
We awoke at the Parker House to the sound of steady rain, after some heavy rain over night. We (the early arrivals Carole/John, June/Chris, Rick/Maggie) IxNayed plans for biking and shifted into tourist mode. Since Rick and Maggie already had reservations to tour the Frank Lloyd Wright House at Kentuck Knob, I went online and was able to get 4 tickets for us on an earlier tour. While leaving Confluence, we passed some hardier cyclists who weren't letting the rain change their plans.
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The Kentuck Knob house, like Falling Water, is pretty amazing. You can't take pictures from inside the house, but you can read about the history and see some shots of the interior here.
The house has a big outdoor deck under a cantilevered roof and the roof has a number of hexagonal (everything in the house is based on hexagons or triangles, there are very few right angles) "ports" that are open to the elements. This was mainly done to relieve wind pressure that might lift up the roof, but also allowed light shadows to move across the deck - providing a unique sundial effect. There wasn't much sun the day we were there, though.
When the house was built (1950s), the entire area had been clear cut and the deck had tremendous views from the "knob." The original owners had 8,000 trees planted which over time obscured the view, but there is a path through the woods that includes the view above.
The current owners live in London and have an extensive art collection. They have scattered many interesting pieces along the trail, including an actual piece of the graffiti-ed Berlin Wall.
One piece of "art" was a circular stone "room" with narrow openings that Carole and June (above) and Chris had no problem traversing. To get in and take the picture, I had to rub myself with butter, which also protected me in case there were any loose lobsters around.
Outside the vistor center/gift shop/snack bar (great Hagan ice cream, since the Hagan's were the original owners) the art was equally whimsical.
On the way back we stopped to check out the water levels at Cucumber Falls and the natural water slide. All the recent rain had the levels up, but not crazy high - or at least that was what we told the late arrivals who were planning to go white water rafting on Saturday...
Back at Confluence, we had lunch at the recently renovated and reopened "Mitch's Food and Fuel" which once again actually pumps gas but also added diner-like food. The food wasn't great but the toolbox condiment dispenser was cute, cute, cute.
The rain had ended by then, and Dan and Andi had arrived, so the group split in three: Chris and Dan did a 20 mile RT bike ride to the Pinkerton Tunnel and Casselman River bridge on the GAP; John/Carole/Andi drove up to Somerset PA to visit the Flight 93 memorial; Rick/Maggie did some grocery shopping and tested out various places to sit at the Parker House.
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Going from the serenity of Kentuck Knob to the stark reality of the Flight 93 memorial was pretty jarring. The exhibits in the visitor center give you a detailed tick-tock of September 11th 2001 and just made me angry about it all over again. That is probably a good thing overall - we take a lot for granted and complain about a lot of minor inconveniences.
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The outdoor site of the crash is contained by a 2 mile walking path that is lined with newly planted native trees and some large memorial walls along the flight path to impact. It is very simplistic and sobering, but essentially gets across recovery and regrowth in a very natural way.
They are building a concrete wind chime tower at the entrance that will open on September 11th 2018. It has 40 big chimes, each tuned to a different note to honor the 40 passengers and crew who were killed in the crash. The 40 notes will combine harmonically to produce one coherent and unique note.
Following a tradition from previous years, dinner that night was a "fuddle" at the Confluence House - everyone brought food for themselves and some to share. There still seemed to be some confusion, but we ended up with more than enough food for everyone, including some great strombolis from the Riverside Pizza, Bakery and Cafe in Confluence. Chris volunteered to carry the strombolis back to the house and sacrifice his shorts to soak up a few gallons of grease that ran out of the bottom of the boxes. The night concluded with cupcakes celebrating Rick's 23rd anniversary of his 39th birthday.
Today's ride: 20 miles (32 km)
Total: 60 miles (97 km)
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