This week’s travels take us north into Wisconsin, about 200 miles from home. We’re in Southwest Wisconsin, in a small town called Spring Green. We’re staying at the Wisconsin Riverside Resort on the north shore of the Wisconsin River. We’ve been to Eastern WI before, but not to this area, so it’s all new territory!

Our drive was uneventful which is always a good thing! We were at the campground and settled in before 4pm…and it was SO hot! Apparently this week in Wisconsin is unusually hot, in the upper 80s, which is at least 7-8 degrees higher than their average June temperature. We didn’t really think this trip would be a hot one…boy were we wrong! There are a couple interesting things about our campground…the soil is very sandy, and we have absolutely no cell signal. We’ve been to quite a few remote places, and this is the first campground where Verizon apparently does not have any towers. Fortunately, the T-Mobile hotspot that I borrowed from our library does seem to have a decent signal. The campground offers WiFi but it’s not great…definitely not meant for much more than checking email.

Tuesday morning we headed to Devil’s Lake State Park, about 45 minutes away in Baraboo, WI. The drive was so pretty – we were really amazed at how hilly the area is, considering how flat Illinois is, and there was such a wide variety of farms – a mix of dairy and crops.

The park is absolutely beautiful. Devil’s Lake was left behind when the last glaciers melted about 15,000 years ago. The lake is surrounded by quartzite stone, and we went for a wonderful hike on the “tumbled rocks trail”…the sheer volume and size of all the rocks was impressive! And the colors in the rocks…so beautiful! It’s clearly a very popular destination, as both the North Shore and the South Shore were VERY busy for a Tuesday! I can only imagine how insane it must be on the weekends!

Wednesday morning was project time. Mark has an ongoing project to try and fix the sliding barn door that we have between the bedroom and the bathroom. As much as we secure it during travel, it has a mind of its own and keeps shifting around. Mark is on about fix number five, and hopefully this one will do the trick! But, if this is the most annoying issue we have with RoVer Too, we’re good! And, thanks to a Facebook group for Grand Design owners that Mark joined, we had a fun project with the refrigerator. A fellow Imagine owner shared that she cleverly covered the refrigerator with peel-and-stick wallpaper, and then used that ‘blank canvas’ to showcase the stickers they were collecting during their travels. When Mark showed this to me, I immediately knew I wanted to do it! The black finish on the fridge was constantly showing fingerprints which my OCD-self hates, and we had a stack of stickers we’ve collected and needed to do something with. So, I found the perfect linen-look wallpaper on Amazon and gathered all my stickers together, knowing we’d have some time to work on it during this trip. Before, during and after photos for your entertainment…and I’m THRILLED with the outcome!

Wednesday afternoon brought the reason we are in this small town of Spring Green…it’s the location of one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous homes, Taliesen, along with several other buildings he designed. We had an interesting and in-depth two hour tour of the home and the nearby Hillside Studio. This is actually Taliesen III…the first two versions burned (the first was arson, and seven people were murdered there at the same time, including Wright’s mistress). Taliesen West, in Scottsdale, is where Wright spent his winters and is the warm weather partner to Taliesen.

Taliesen sits on land that was purchased by Wright’s grandparents when they emigrated from Wales, and it means “Shining Brow” in Welsh. Interestingly, when Wright’s widow passed away, she left in her will that the people living at Taliesen could remain there…so there are several centenarians living in the home!

The school has an interesting history as a boarding school run by Wright’s aunts, and ultimately served as the home of the Taliesen Foundation for architectural training. Wright welcomed these students and gave them plenty of opportunities to learn and to work by building various structures on his land; some were able to build homes and live on the property, a well.

This is the Romeo & Juliet windmill which served as a water pump. It’s the oldest Wright design on the property. I love how beautiful this is in it’s simplicity!

Taliesen I was built for Wright’s mistress; he shared Taliesen II with his 2^nd wife, and Taliesen III with his 3^rd wife…and it was the only incarnation where children lived (her daughter from a previous marriage and their daughter together) so it was much larger than the others. The interior is full of Wright’s signature design elements and Japanese art that he loved so much. There’s also the influence of his wife who loved pinks and blues. I was most impressed by the incredible views from every window – again, it’s such a beautiful area of Wisconsin, and Wright obviously wanted to ensure the outdoors was as much a part of the home as the design.

Some of the incredible views from the home…

From our tour, we headed to the Unity Chapel which is a private chapel still owned by the Wright family. The neighboring cemetery is the site of many family graves, and was FLW’s original burial spot. After his widow passed away in the 1980s, his remains were exhumed and the two were cremated together and their ashes scattered at Taliesen West. So, while he was born in nearby Richland Center, Wisconsin is not his final resting place.

We also stopped to see the Wyoming Valley School; Frank donated the land and the design for this original two-room schoolhouse. It’s now a community cultural arts center.

It was so interesting to see this UNESCO World Heritage Site and the land that inspired Wright and his designs. There was no stained glass/art glass at Taliesen; instead, it was the landscape surrounding Taliesen that inspired so much of the art glass that appears in Wright’s other homes! Very interesting!