Our last stops of the roadtrip were Olympia, WA and Corvallis and Ashland in Oregan.  We are heading home tomorrow and we are ending the trip on a high note.  We had a great time in Olympia, hosted by the Witkowski clan and in Corvallis where our hosts were Paul and Janet Hochfeld.  We visited the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, the delta where the freshwater of the Nisqually River meets the saltwater of the Puget Sound, and were lucky enough to spot a Bald Eagle and a few other birds we had not seen in our travels to date.  The Fourth of July was an adventure - the Olympians do love their fire works and we spent the evening doing our best to calm four very upset Witkowski dogs - we were not successful. 

Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge home to almost 300 hundred species of migratory birds.

Rick and Penny Witkowski with 4 of their 6 children, George Michael, Taco Miguel, Cali Marie and Owen Michael

Post Fourth of July bonfire

BJ and Marty with the Cali,Taco, George and Owen--we have gone to the dogs

What a great trip it has been.  Thank you hosts and friends who made room in your schedules and homes for us.  Please come visit California!!

We've been on the road for the past few days, mostly driving but have managed to see some beautiful country along the way.  We visited the Grand Coulee Dam and took Route 20 through the North Cascades National Park to Seattle where we met up with an old friends and had our first home cooked meal in weeks.  Before he was famous, Jack Keroac spent months in the North Cascades working as a fire-lookout and wrote about it with a great deal of well deserved reverence.  The Cascades have it all -- snow covered peaks, alpine lakes, rushing rivers, pristine waterfalls, etc. - we'll be back.

As we were driving to Butte, we read in Wikipedia that it was famous for its pork chop sandwiches.  BJ spotted this sign as we were driving along and proved that her Camry could do a hard right into a busy parking lot while going 50 mph!

Grand Coulee Dam was very full

North Cascades National Park

Another view of North Cascades National Park

Wildflowers along Route 20 through North Cascades National Park.

Our dear friend Bret Dodson who treated us to a great lunch at Cuoco in Seattle -two thumbs up for both Bret and Cuaco.

The mid-west part of our trip is focused less on art and architecture and more on the great outdoors.  We have visited a number of natural, and unnatural, i.e., man made, wonders.  The natural include the Badlands of South Dakota and the Devils Tower in Wyoming where we had a Close Encounter of the Third Kind. The manmade wonders were Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorials.  We also took the time to visit Deadwood, SD where Wild Bill Hickcock was killed holding a poker hand of aces and eights, now known as the Dead Man's Hand, and toured a "Little House on the Prairie", aka, the 1906 sod house which was the center of the 160 acre homestead of the Brown family who came to South Dakota as part of a government program intended to attract settlers to this rather desolate part of the world.

One of the many impressive formations that make up the Badlands of South Dakota

Another view of the Badlands

Laura Ingalls Wilder, looking an awful lot like BJ, in front of the Brown prairie home

The magnificent sculptures on Mount Rushmore

Another view of Mount Rushmore

 

 

 

 

 

 

The unfinished Crazy Horse Memorial - the head seen in profile above is 87 feet high (the heads on Mount Rushmore are 60 feet high)

The model for the Crazy Horse memorial - it should look something like this in another 20 or 30 years.

We took this photo - it's not a still shot from Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Detail of the rock formation that make up the Devils Tower

Since leaving Chicago, we continued our tour of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in Madison, WI and added South Dakota ear-chitecture.  (Sorry about that pun - we can't help ourselves.)  We stopped to visit friends and relatives in West Concord, Minnesota.  Marty had the opportunity to visit cousin Debbie Avery and family and BJ had a reunion with college friend, Dr. H.C. Tronnier, whom she had not seen in 35+ years. Had to put a padlock on our purses when we visited the 96 acre Mall of the Americas just outside of St. Paul. We also saw lots of corn; fields and fields (and fields) of corn as we drove across country as well as 275,000 ears of corn decorating the Corn Palace in Mitchell SD.  Not quite as elegant as a FLW building but a lot of fun.  Tomorrow, Mount Rushmore.

Walter Rudin House in Madison, one of FLW's prefab houses designed for the middle class.

Detail of FLW's Monona Convention Center in Madison, WI

FLW's Unitarian Meeting House - the design was based on a pair of hands folded in prayer.

Our view from the car window for most of our drive through Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Marty and cousin, Debbie Avery, resident of West Concord, MN

Early photo of the Corn Palace.  Relatively new construction around the building makes it impossible to get a full photo of the palace today.

Detail of corncob design on 2012 Corn Palace.

BJ's words to live by  - You can't buy happiness but you can buy ice cream and that's kind of the same thing.

Three days and four nights in the City of the Big Shoulders - it wasn't nearly enough time.  Chicago has it all - spectacular architecture, great art (both in museums and on the streets), excellent restaurants, etc.  We focused on food and architecture.  Memorable meals included dinner at the Obama's favorite, Spiaggio, and  wonderful tortas at the more modest, Xoco, Rick Bayliss's latest venture.  We viewed Chicago's famous skyscrapers both from the river (Architecture Foundation of Chicago river cruise) and on foot, and walked at least four miles through Oakpark to see many of Frank Lloyd Wright's early homes.  See our favorites below.

Chicago Cityscape on 33 West Wacker Drive Building

Trump Tower.  Can't stand the man.  Love the tower.

Studio Gang's Aqua tower

Marina Towers

Detail of ornamental metalwork on the Sullivan Center, soon to be home of a Target store.

Frank Lloyd Wright's 1902 Arthur Heurtley House

FLW's 1901 Frank W. Thomas House in Oakpark.

Detail of Marc Chagal's Four Seasons mosaic at the Chase Plaza.

Niagara Falls was AWESOME!  We went to Buffalo primarily to visit Niagara Falls.  We were thrilled to find that the Buffalo area is also home of the Roycroft Campus, a handicraft community founded by Elbert Hubbard in the late 1800s which today continues to attract and train artists who produce pottery, furniture, copper ware, iron work and stained glass in the arts and crafts style.  The Campus includes the Copper Shop which sells the best selection of arts and crafts items we've ever seen.  Unfortunately (or fortunately for these two jobless women) most of the items were out of our price range.  We also toured the Darwin Martin House built by Frank Lloyd Wright and one of the best existing examples of his prairie style houses.

Horse Shoe, Bridal Veil and American Falls, collectively, Niagara Falls

(A) a satellite photo of the perfect storm or (B) the Whirlpool Rapids on the Niagara Gorge?

Close up of the top of Bridal Veil Falls

Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House in Buffalo

Boston was our last stop before turning left and heading back towards the West Coast.  We couldn't have had a better time, thanks in part to our great hosts pictured below.  True to form, our first stops were art museums (Museum of Fine Art and the Isabella Stuart Gardiner Museum - the new wing is fantastic) but we got out long enough to walk the Freedom Trail, visit Walden Pond, the Louisa Mae Alcott Museum, Trinity Church, walk through ritzy Beacon Hill, etc.  BJ visited with friends from her college days. 

The Halfpenny Weitzel family, Dave and Mary with Emma, Hannah and Simon.

The Massachusetts State House designed by Charles Bullfinch.

Old State House, the center of Boston's civic life in the 18th century.

BJ on the Boston Common

Walden Pond today.  What would Thoreau think?