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Sunday, Feb. 09, 2003 - 7:19 p.m.

(Part 1 of )My �1-day vacation� with the lovely Lease��..

That is the best description I can come up with for yesterday. A 1-day vacation.

We left home early, and arrived in Springpatch by noon.

Our first stop was lunch. Before we left home, I downloaded a page on the Internet that listed all of the restaurant choices available t us in Springpatch. We have fallen into a rut when choosing where we eat when in Springpatch. Don�t get me wrong- I love the olive Garden. But Springpatch is a pretty big town, and it being the capitol, there are tons of non-chain food establishments.

After scanning the web page, we settled on a place called �Caf� Rio�. The short description said they specialized in Caribbean/Island/Mexican fare. That covers a lot of territory.

The place was located in downtown Springpatch, just a few blocks from the capitol dome. The owners have renovated an old downtown storefront location, and kept the original ceilings and trimwork, painted up in bright, tropical colors.

They have also built seating into the front window, giving diners on the facing side of each table a nice view of the outside world. Lease had that seat, mainly because it was a little cool inside of the restaurant. I took the colder window seat:

Not a great picture of Lease, but you can at least see that she was there with me....

The food was excellent, if a little too spicy hot for Lease�s tastes. The menu was labeled �Brunch�, but was mainly lunch fare. I had a dish of shrimp, scallions, and bacon pieces cooked in a pepper-infused butter sauce, served over white cheddar grits. Very hot, but you know I like it that way. Lease had the chicken breast sandwich with pesto/sun dried tomato spread, with baby russet potato fries with Cajun seasoning. I ended up finishing her sandwich, due to her mouth being on fire�.


From there, we headed to a local architectural landmark, the Dana-Thomas house.

Designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright, probably the greatest architectural designer in the history of this country. He was commissioned to construct this house for the wealthy socialite Susan Lawrence Dana, a widow with a desire to throw lavish parties and a large fortune to spend on this pursuit. Her husband had made his money in mining in the late 1800�s,and had the misfortune to die inside one of his silver mines. Frank Lloyd Wright had recently left the firm that had given him his start, and had already built a reputation as a forward thinking designer. Together they put together the plans for a multi-level home built around the original mansion already in place. The Dana-Thomas house also had over 100 pieces of furniture built by Wright (many of which have been repurchased from others, after being sold at auctions in the past), along with a full-length �duckpin� bowling alley, a full library, an indoor water fountain, and a formal ballroom with space for a small musical group to perform for her guests. Altogether, it took him 2 1/2 years to complete this monumental task.

I would have loved to take a few photos inside of this place, but that is not allowed. They even took my camera away from me, locking it up in a cabinet.

They do allow photos from the outside, so I walked around the property after out tour until my fingers started turning numb. Lease stayed inside, toasty warm.

I wish I could have shot a few pictures inside to show you the art glass Lloyd Wright had installed in every window. He liked to have a natural �theme� for each home he built, and on this project the plant was the Red Sumac. He had glass representations of this plant in each room, and on the multi-floored areas he had the lower stalk in the bottom floors, and the blooming top of the plant in the upper floor. Hard to explain, but very cool.

This is about the best I could do with the glass from the outside:

This photo is of the main entrance to the house. Lloyd Wright loved using sharp lines, and this entry combines those elements with arches:

One last shot, from the west courtyard to show the typical nearly-flat roof and use of fraises Frank Lloyd Wright was known for:

We have been in Springpatch many times throughout our marriage, but have never stopped and taken the tour before yesterday. Since our finances are very tight now, this $3 visit was money well spent.


Yeah, I know�too many photos again.

I haven�t even posted one photo from the regional Orchid show we visited after the Dana- Thomas house. I went a little crazy there, and brought home over 50 photos of the amazing blooms on display.

I will post some of those tomorrow. I already slowed your browser down enough with the 5 pictures up above.

You are wondering where all the storage space for these photos came from, right?

I found out last week that our Internet provider (and Lease�s employer) allows you up to 6 e-mail accounts per subscription. With each email address, you get 10 megs of storage space.

Since we only had two email accounts set up, that meant I had another 40 megs of space being unclaimed.

Looks like I will be posting as many photos as I want to here at D-land. At least for the foreseeable future, anyway��

Antique - Futuristic


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