Day 35: Taliesin West

I wake up unmotivated to make the 125 mile drive to Tuscon to look at airplanes. I decide to check out a closer attraction: Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home. I get myself ready, have some awesome coffee, and head to my truck. I set my GPS to the address and start on my way.

Less than a mile down the road, I decide to take a detour to Chick-fil-a for lunch. I add Chick-fil-a to my GPS route. I get there right at noon and it is packed. Oh well, I am on vacation and I don't know when I will get Chick-fil-a again. I wait in line and finally get my chicken sandwich and lemonade. It is so good!  I continue on my way.

As I approach, my GPS gets confused. It instructs me to "continue to destination off road".  Uhhh, well, I love some off road driving but I see signs pointing me to the place that follow a road. I decide to follow the signs. I see cars coming toward me so this must be a good sign. One of the cars rolls down its windows and flags me down. I stop and roll down a window. "Hello! Are you local?" No, no I am not. Did you look at my liscence plate??  It says Alaska. He wanted recommendations of local places to eat. Sorry, I can't help you at all. I offer to look something up for him on my phone but he declines.

I head along the road and find the place. I follow the signs to the bookstore and the ticket office. This place is pretty well marked I must say.  I go to buy a ticket.  I would like the 90 minute tour please. The lady asks if I am a student. Uh, sure yes I am still. I give her my credit card and she attempts to pronounce my last name.  She gets it right. That never happens. I kill 20 minutes waiting for the tour to start.

The tour is awesome!  The tour guide was extremely knowledgeable and entertaining. The house itself is amazing.  The walls are all made of a natural rock cemented together. The place is absolutely beautiful. My pictures don't do it justice. It is so hard to photograph buildings to show just how awesome they are.  He was in interesting guy with amazing ideas. He believed in building in such a way as to be in harmony with nature. Hundreds of his ideas have been incorporated into American architecture. He also was a little arrogant and sometimes unreasonable from what it sounds like. Anyway, I highly recommend doing this tour if you are ever in the area!

Drawings he found when collecting rocks for his house.

Bedroom area

The rock walls.  This one has a cactus growing out of it!

The top of the theater area

I make the 30 minute drive back. I see some construction on the way. Coollll!!! They are pouring a concrete noise wall. Woah, that is not a pump truck, what is that machine they are using to get the concrete up there? I am dangerously distracted. I realize I need to watch the road and drive. 

I continue on the road. I decide to make another detour to a fire station and post office. This turns out to be a total failure. I get to the post office and the building is closed. Like, not even a post office anymore closed.  Oh well. I get to the fire station and the admin portion is locked.  It's only 4!  WTF people???  I don't even bother the firefighters since they always send me to the admin office. I head on my way.  I stop at the grocery store and find a mail box. At least I can get rid of my post cards!!!

I finally get back to the house, Hanna is done with school for the week so we head off to see Underworld Awakening!  Yay!  I love the Underworld movies. They are super bad ass!  We see the 3D showing.  I am kind of over the whole 3D movie thing. However, at one point, a huge Lycan jumps out of the screen, causing me to jump 2 feet off my chair. I am properly impressed with the movie. It is about on par with the other movies. The plot line is nothing spectacular and pretty easy to guess. However, it is just so full of bad assness and the heroine of the series is awesome and does the right thing almost to the point of it being a flaw so I enjoy it. 

After the movie, we go on an adventure looking for scrubs for Hanna. We stop at Home Depot (looking for something else)  They are closed. Right, 9 pm is not the ideal time for shopping.  We go to Wal Mart for scrubs. Nope, they don't have the right size. We end up buying a candle. I fail miserably trying to get the self checkout to work and end up laughing almost hysterically. Some random guy walks by me and comments on all the fun I am having. Hey, you gotta find fun in the little things or life will be no fun!! 

Anyway, we forget to buy matches so we now have a candle that can't be used. Hanna then patiently sits through a presentation of all 1328 photos from my trip with commentary. "Yup, here is driving in Cali." "Oh, dear, I look horrible, let's skip through these fast." "Oh, look here is snow!"  Profound statements.