We are now on the East Coast.  We define the east coast as the area that starts with the hills that separate the plains from the Appalachians.  We apologize to all those New Yorkers that think the east coast starts at the Hudson River, but we see it differently than those New Yorker covers.

7/17/01

We got to Pittsburgh around 8:00 PM this evening.  It would have been 7:00 PM, but we lost another hour along the way.  Grandma was all set with some dinner ready for us.  We got all caught up, and then we bored them with lots of pictures from our trip.  Today just wasn't a picture taking day due to the long drive and the drab scenery.

Tomorrow we head out to see some more houses by Frank Lloyd Wright.

7/18/01

We started the day at our usual leisurely pace.  And headed out to Kentuck Knob.  Kentuck Knob is a house that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and is owned by Lord Palumbo, financier and advisor to the British Royal House.  He wasn't home at the time, which is why we were able to get in to see the place.

There are a lot of interesting town names in PA, but this one really tickled us.  We got through Mechanicsville, and others, but this one seemed like it deserved a picture.  We didn't get to see any townspeople to verify if the label fits.

At Kentuck Knob there is a green house where they raise orchids for the house itself.  These flowers and many others were on display.  I don't really know anything about Orchids other than I really like the colors of a lot of the ones that I've seen.

The first picture is the front door of Kentuck Knob.  This house was built along the "Usonian" style, which was Wright's attempt to design a house that "normal" people could buy.  It's nothing even close to what a regular person could purchase at that time, but some of the design ideas are present.  Once again, no pictures were allowed inside the house.

The second picture is the back patio.  This is easily the most livable Wright house that I've yet seen.  I couldn't live there myself, but it's a lot closer than the rest. 

The site is beautiful, the quality of the craftsmanship is superb, and the materials give it a warm and inviting feeling.  Also, this house is still decorated much as the Palumbo's might have done if they were still living there, which technically they could since they own the place.

The grounds of the Kentuck Knob house are dappled with various pieces of modern art by well known artists like Warhol, Oldenberg, and others.  We posed by a couple of the more interesting pieces.

After we left Kentuck House we got some lunch and headed for Falling Water, one of the most famous Wright residences.  It was built as a vacation house for the Kaufman's, who were department store owners in Pittsburgh.  Once again, no inside pictures were permitted.  Besides, there are lots of images about both these houses on the web already.

As you can see in the first picture, the house is really starting to show it's age, and the cantilevers are starting to rally sag.  The steel structures in the first picture are not part of the design.

The house still is absolutely terrific on this site, and we enjoyed it a lot.  It was the first time that Caroline had been here, and it impressed her quite a bit. 

It's still not a livable house, but it's great to see, and makes you understand where a number of the design influences that you see in modern architecture get their inspiration.

7/19/01

Today we got to visit with Linda and Michael, two friends that used to live in CA but moved back to their home town of Pittsburgh.

We headed to the Pittsburgh Zoo.  It was a nice day, Caroline and I hadn't been to the zoo in a long time, so we had some lunch and went.

The large mammals weren't too impressive, even the ones that were visible.  But the new Aquarium was really nice.  Note the Amazon Dolphin behind the glass.

The new Reptile House had some really good specimens in it too.  The blue frog was a hit even though it's a very small critter.

The Komodo Dragon actually moved a bit, which was neat.  Caroline and I passed up a chance to see one in South Dakota because it just looked like a serious tourist trap.

I forget what this lizard is called, but he seemed pretty photogenic, as lizards go..

But for me, the really impressive reptile was the Albino Python.  It's white with pink eyes, and the parts that ought to be brown are yellow.  And it's a monster of a snake.  Very cool, if you like that sort of thing.

After the zoo we went back to Linda and Michael's house.  Then we picked up Grandma and Alex and headed to the Church Brew Works.  A microbrewery in a real converted church.  We had a lovely time chatting, chowing and drinking. 

One of the cool aspects of this brew pub is that the vats are right up front with the altar.  So you can always pray to something you believe in..  :-)

After dinner we came back to Grandma and Alex' house and ended up talking about flowers and gardening for a short while.  Grandma is an ace gardener and knows a lot about making green things come up healthy.  Her backyard is very colorful and well tended at all times.

After Linda and Michael left we sat around inside and chatted for a while longer until it was time to hit the hay.

Hopefully tomorrow will see the completion of the car maintenance and we can be off to NY.  We are keeping our fingers crossed.

7/20/01

Today was a heavy duty driving day.  We had to get from Pittsburgh, PA to Merrick, NY, which is on Long Island. 

There wasn't much to look at while crossing Pennsylvania, and new Jersey was the same way, especially since it was dark by the time we crossed it.  The one thing that really caught Caroline's attention were the cooling towers for this power plant somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania.

We did stop for dinner in Stroudsburg, PA, which was disappointing at best.  The Delaware Water Gap is a very pretty area, but we blew right through it on Route 80 to try and get to Merrick reasonably early.  We arrived at about 11 PM after starting the driving at about 1 PM.  That's a long day of driving, but construction delays and bad roads make the mileage short for all that time.

7/21/01

We got to Mitch and Susan's house late at night.  Mitch was up, and we talked for a while then went to bed.  The next morning we had a nice breakfast in the back yard and gave the kids some toys we picked up along the way. 

Lauren loved her Triceratops hat, and Jake really enjoyed his helicopters.  We even got one caught in a tree pretty quickly, but it came down later when the wind picked up.

After breakfast we headed off to the beach. 

Caroline needed to stick her toe in the Atlantic to fully mark her crossing of the continent.  I felt that more aggressive activities were needed so I went boogie boarding with Jake and even got some body surfing done.

Mitch and Jake, with Caroline and I headed for the beach.  Later on all of us ended up at the pool where Lauren demonstrated her swimming skills.

After a nice dinner that Mitch grilled up for us, we headed out for some miniature golf.  Lauren showed a fine technique that can be described as sweeping the ball towards the cup.

I tried to make my way down the course, but golf just escapes me as a sport.

After the golf we headed home.  Tomorrow is another day here on Long Island, or as a lot of the locals say "Lunk Oylind".

7/22/01

Today I went fishing with Mitch and some other guys.  We got started at 5:30 AM.  This is why there are no pictures.  Suffice to say that we didn't catch any fish at all, although I swear I might have felt a strike or two on my line.

After we got back from feeding the fish perfectly good bait, we had another delicious breakfast on the patio.  And we ate some really nice smoked salmon to make up for the lack of fish while fishing.

We headed off to the town pool in Hempstead.  We went to the town pool because the traffic out to the beach looked more like a two lane parking lot.  They had a diving board at the pool, which was fully used by Jake and I.  Caroline got this picture before being told she couldn't take any photographs.

Unfortunately, this town has a rule that prevents anyone from taking pictures of anyone that is swimming.  Apparently someone took some pictures of a kid and "it ended up on the internet!". 

There is no telling how ridiculous some people will get when they are demonstrating how truly ignorant they can be...

Jake is in the process of getting his adult teeth.  And while we were visiting, another one came out.  It was a momentous occasion.

Lauren has a certain dramatic flair, which can be witnessed pretty much any time she is awake.  We enjoyed it a lot, we might have even encouraged it once or twice.

Then we made our good-byes to everyone and headed for my folks' place.

My parents recently got back from a trip to Australia and New Zealand.  They picked up a Didgeradoo, which is an Aborigine instrument that makes very low tones.  My father and I practiced it a bit to see if we could get in the tribe.  I guess we are staying stateside for now.

7/23/01

Today was the the day to capture some more genealogy information.  My folks have a bunch of pictures that Caroline wanted to capture from my side of our families.  In order to make that happen, we had to buy a scanner.  Buying the scanner wasn't too much of an issue, and getting it to work with out trusty notebook computer was a snap.  But making it work with my father's old PC was more troublesome. 

We finally got my father's PC working with an upgrade to Win ME, Office XP, yada, yada, yada..  It will be a lot easier to support now, which is a gift that keeps on giving.

Caroline hard at work scanning the pictures while I work on upgrading my father's PC.

My brother Eric drops buy to see how we are progressing.  He' not really with the secret service, he's a sales guy on a hot summer day.

We had dinner with Eric, Melinda, and family at their house.  The nieces were very active all evening in a variety of ways.  It's very much a house full of girls.  Eric is completely outnumbered, but not necessarily outgunned.

After dinner we headed out to see my sister.  She lives nearby.  We stayed and chatted until we wore out from a long day.

7/24/01

We finished up all the last details of the computer activities, said our good-byes to my folks and headed into Manhattan to see my cousin Michael and Charlene.

We had lunch at the World Finance Center on lower Manhattan.  It was interesting to me because back in the old days of my career in Manhattan I was worked on the data interconnection for American Express Tower at WFC.  The place had grown quite a bit since then, and the parking is still as ugly as it was back then.

Michael is working down there, and so is Charlene.  We had a nice lunch together and got caught up a bit.  After lunch we found a spot outside for some pictures near the marina.  It was beastly hot and humid, so we popped some pics and headed out.

After lunch we escaped NYC and headed south down 95 to Washington DC, to visit with Susie, Damian, and their son Luc.

7/25/01

Today was a very relaxing day.  We got up late and went over to visit with Jim, Susan, and their boys.  One son was off playing with someone else, so we never saw him, but there was plenty of little boydom at work between the other two.

Jim and Susan live in nearby McLean.  We had some lunch with them and chatted away the entire afternoon.

The boys played in and around us, as boys will do.  They were charming and cute to watch.

We got back to the house and relaxed until dinner.  Caroline played with Luc quite a bit.  Caroline has bonded with another baby.  I'm definitely hoping this cures her need for a munchkin of her own.

Luc is a very engaging two year old.  He demonstrates an amazing ability to throw and sink baskets on his child sized basketball hoop.

After dinner Damian took over child watching so Caroline, Susie, and I could go down to the mall and see some of the memorials.  We stopped at the Albert Einstein Memorial first.  This was particularly timely since I've been reading a biography of his.

After the Einstein Memorial we headed over to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial.  TJ has withstood the test of time very well.  And his memorial still shows quite well.

After TJ we headed off to the new (relatively) FDR Memorial.  It's a very good memorial that is laid out in a way that follows his three terms. 

We were very struck by the fact that under today's circumstances he could never be elected.  The TV dominated election process would never allow someone in a wheel chair be elected.

No conversation about FDR would ever be complete without Eleanor.  There is a memorial to her as well.

We finished up by visiting the new Korean War Memorial.  This was a very interesting memorial because of the symbolism and the use of stone etching to make the faces on the wall.

The memorial has a lot of power, especially at night.  The shadows on the realistic faces and their very modern looking attire brings the war home as something still very real.  It makes you wonder how we can still be fighting wars in this modern and supposedly enlightened age. 

After we got home we had some ice cream and went to bed.  It was a very low key day for us, but one that got us thoroughly rested for the days ahead.

7/26/01

Today we went to Annapolis to visit with Ann and her new baby. 

We drove down to Ann's house to have lunch with her and see the baby, Julia.  We had perfect directions with precision down to the tenth of a mile. 

The baby is very cute and Ann seems really content with the way her life has turned out. 

We had lunch at Ann's Yacht Club.  It was the first time she had had lunch there, so I was careful to use silverware properly.  We had lunch on the deck overlooking the harbor.  You can see the spot in this picture.

After lunch we wandered around downtown Annapolis a bit.  Then we got chased off by a rain storm.  We spent a little more time with Ann before braving the traffic back to Susie and Damian's house.

While wandering around we found out that the state capital building was the capital of the colonies for year before the constitutional convention.  Just a piece of trivia for ya'..

7/27/01

Today we went into "The District" to see some museums.  We started with the Newseum, in Rosslyn, VA.  It's a museum devoted to the newspaper and news business.  It's a really good museum that will give you a sense of the development of the print and electronic media.

Also, right next to the Newseum is the Freedom Park.  This holds a number of statues, and a piece of the Berlin Wall.

This is a piece of the Berlin Wall is displayed with a guard tower overlooking it, and the accompanying sign.  It's very powerful, and captures the power of the event.  The display also chronicles the history of the wall, the fact that it was built in 1962, and then rebuilt larger and more imposing another four times before it was taken down in 1989.

This picture is a series of the banners from the Suffragette movement.  Somehow they seemed very appropriate for Caroline. There were other items there,  but these are the ones that seemed to most relevant to us.

We visited the Smithsonian Museum, specifically the Arts & Sciences and Aerospace Museums.  We got to see all the new Soviet space goodies that were brought to the US by the Perot Foundation.  We also got to see the Voyager, the plane that went around the world in nine days.  And there were lots of other goodies that appealed to me a lot more than Caroline, but she indulged me.

We walked back across the Mall, and in the tradition of having silly things on her head, we had to get this shot down.  And the Capital Building just had to be captured too..

We went back to the house, grabbed Susie and Luc and went to go see Shrek, the movie.  It was surprisingly good, we enjoyed it.  And it was Luc's first movie, and it went quite well.

After the movie we went home, had some great munchies out on the patio and closed out another great day. 

7/28/01

Today we schmoozed with Susie and Luc in the morning.  Damian had left last night for Detroit so we said our goodbyes to him last night.  Today's goal was the eastern shore of Delaware, Rehoboth Beach to be exact, to see Joe and Jesse.

Caroline played with Luc again in the AM.  And Luc showed us his tent.

We spent a long time driving to the beach.  There was a HUGE amount of traffic, accidents, and slow roads.  We were really happy to finally arrive and see everyone late in the afternoon.  We had some dinner, sat around and chatted, and then went to bed.  Tomorrow is a beach day.

7/29/01

Today it rained all day, nonstop.  Being in a beach town is really limiting when it rains.  And it gets a little more desperate when you have a bunch of little kids around that are cooped up inside, even when it's a palatial sized house like this one. 

PJ, his wife Tina, their toddler Lucy, and their brand new baby Jack were also visiting at the same time.  Unfortunately, I never got a shot of Tina since she was focused on the new baby's needs.

We had some breakfast to start the day.  Lucy enjoyed the muffins, but Zack really got into his bagel in a big way.  Jesse just looked on with maternal tolerance.

Joe and Emma enjoyed a moment at breakfast.  Then Emma and Zack got further into their muffins and bagels.  And Lucy found a hat.

After breakfast we headed for FunLand, a beach arcade.  The first ride was the swing.

Next we tried out the calliope.  Caroline chaperoned Emma and Joe did the same for Zack.

Then we tried out the bumper cars and the teacups.  I got the bumper cars, but Joe pulled teacup duty.  Zack is still too little for the bumper cars, or he would have come along too.

We rounded out the FunLand tour with the Motorcycles and Fire Engines.  There were some more rides, but the pictures didn't come out well.

After it was all finished we came home to get Jesse.  And I got to relax a bit.

We headed out to an early dinner in a nearby restaurant.  Then Caroline and I said our goodbyes and started the first leg of our trip west.  We are now homeward bound with a few stops on the way.

Tonight we stopped outside of Richmond.  Tomorrow we are heading for Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson.  This story continues on the Heading Home page.