Valley Falls, West Virginia.

For the first part of the trip, we went to the northern part of West Virginia to visit our friend Mary Wade. 

The northern part of West Virginia is quite beautiful, and she showed us a few of these charming areas, including Valley Falls, where we came across this mushroom on our walk. 

You may ponder the brilliance of beginning these pictures of West Virginia by showing a mushroom.

Valley Falls, not far from the mushroom, and down by where there would be a waterfall if it were not summer.  Beautiful tree, eh?

When Mary Wade shows us the northern part of West Virginia, she leaves no stone unturned.  Here, she takes us to the Dairy Creme Corner.  Another good call by MW, the peanut butter and chocolate ice cream sundae was excellent.  They also served funnel cakes.

Mary Wade is a journalist, and wrote a fun and insightful article that ran in the Sept. 12, 2006 edition of the Times West Virginian, discussing this very trip to West Virginia and how it can be interesting to view her own state through someone else's experience.

A lovely house in Pennsylvania, just across the border from West Virginia.  I quite frankly can't remember what this house is exactly. I believe the home might be used as a nursing home now. 

And yes, there's more fine captions where this came from.

One of the numerous traffic signs in Pennsylvania we saw while driving towards Ohiopyle and Frank Lloyd Wright's magnificent Fallingwater house.

Fallingwater, Pennsylvania, designed in 1935 for the Kaufmanns.  The Kaufmanns had expected him to place the house in front of the waterfalls to maximize the view. 

However, Wright had other ideas, choosing instead to place the house over the falls in a series of cantilevered concrete "trays."

This house was voted "the best all-time work of American architecture" by a poll of members of the American Institute of Architects in 1991.

Fallingwater is considered one of the finest examples of Frank Lloyd Wright's concept of organic architecture, which promotes harmony between man and nature through design so well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition.

The interior of Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.

Fallingwater, showing the house's location sitting over the waterfalls.  The construction of the house began in 1936, and was finished in 1939.

The Kaufmanns continued to use the house as a weekend retreat, but eventually entrusted it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.  This was, depending on who you speak to, either a commendable act of preservation during a time in which many Wright-designed buildings were being demolished or in serious states of disrepair, or a way to quickly dump off a giant money pit that was starting to corrode and fall apart.

In either case, I have never seen a house more finely integrated with its natural surroundings.  The house is an architectural marvel, and shows a great deal of thought to maximizing its surroundings and creating a comfortable living environment through the best technology available at the time of design.

Kayaks near Ohiopyle in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania.

An old farm house by the side of the road in Pennsylvania.

Piggy banks and cherry butter.

Sadly, they were closed.