Road Trip MD, PA, OH, MI, IN 

What appears to be becoming an annual trip to my childhood home on Round Lake in Southern Michigan, now an airbnb, was once again a huge success. Since being semi-retired I don’t have to try and make it there in a hurry so plan on taking different routes each time.

My first stop this year was in Middleburg, VA. It was just a short stop to revisit Nature Composed Garden Shop, which I found last year. I had torrential rain until just south of town, so my timing was perfect!

Middleburg, too, has suffered from an unusually hot summer so their outdoor plants didn’t look so great but I did get a few nice shots. I love a shop like this where presentation is just as important as what is sold. A painting of this shop is on my list to do.

Another fabulous, new shop in Middleburg is Every Little Something. I’m out of the retail business but I still love looking at shops that are well done, and this is one of them! What makes a great shop in my opinion? They have a theme and stick to it, the merchandise is presented in a beautiful and logical way, and they have things that you don’t find in every other shop in town.

I often go into museum shops and think, wow, they have really missed an opportunity to not only promote their collection but to have unique items not found anywhere else in the world. Then again, I can think of two off the bat that are very well done: one is The Clark in Williamstown, MA, in the Berkshires; and another is the North Carolina Museum of Art.

So after a quick retail fix I stopped at Blooming Hill Lavender Farm. While the field was no longer in bloom, they have a sweet-looking building that they sell their goods in.

Oatlands was next … as a plantation and site of enslavement, Oatlands initially encompassed 3,408 acres and produced wheat in addition to running grist and saw mills. Over 154 years of private ownership, the property was reduced in size and its mansion repurposed as a boarding house, a summer home, and girls school.

Ownership changed through the years and the last owners were the Eustis. When Mrs. Eustis passed away in 1964, her daughters, Margaret Eustis Finley and Anne Eustis Emmett, donated the Oatlands mansion, its furnishings, and 261 acres around it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. I only toured the garden since I missed the guided tour of the home. The garden is unique in that it is planted on many narrow terraces.

Surreybrooke is a garden center near Frederick with an extensive garden and event space. The plants for sale portion was past its prime but the gardens more than made up for that. Just when I thought I’d seen it all there was another sweet space.

I drove through Leesburg but nothing caught my eye so I continued to Frederick.

The Frederick Downtown is lovely with lots of nice shops and restaurants. The thing that really drew me was the park they have created, Carroll Creek Linear Park, that crosses the main shopping street. I’m sure when they built this it totally transformed the Downtown.

The history of the park is that the river would occasionally flood the entire downtown so conduits were built to control the flooding but it left an unattractive concrete walkway. Over several decades it was converted to a park and it’s one of the most beautiful and visited in the city with public art, decorative boats in winter and tropical blooming water plants in summer. It’s lined with shops, restaurants and breweries.

It just so happens that they were practicing for the High Wheel Bike Race during my visit. Who knew there were that many people riding high wheel bikes these days!? It looks kind of dangerous to me but also fun to watch.

I’ve been avoiding red meat lately but broke down and had a filet at Hootch and Banter. Oh my, I think it was the best steak I’ve ever had in a restaurant. The brandy cream & green peppercorn sauce probably contributed to my conclusion. If you are there you need to try the Filet me Down.

When I first started drawing (late 1960s) I was attracted to complex things (still am), and one of those things was steam locomotives. So I would visit tourist trains all over the country to take photos. The stand out tourist railroad in the country is the East Broad Top Railroad.  Most tourist railroads might have a depot, cars and locomotive they have collected.

Well, the East Broad Top is a totally intact railyard with its original equipment and buildings from the 1870s. It’s a long story but briefly, when the railroad shut down in 1956 they parked the equipment in the roundhouse and locked the doors. It sat untouched until it opened as a tourist attraction in 1960.

I first visited in the early 1970s but did not tour the buildings. That’s what I did this time and it was amazing. They have enough original equipment that they can rebuild any part of a locomotive or rail car.

I’m so glad I returned. Back to me drawing locomotives….. while looking at locomotives I started noticing the depots and the distinctive architecture. So I started drawing the depots which lead me to notice other buildings. Buildings are still my favorite subject matter to draw and paint over 50 years later. The Michigan Historical Society owns many of my Michigan depot drawings and the Western History Collection in Denver, CO, owns many of the drawings I did of Colorado railroads.

While passing through western Pennsylvania I happened upon the Flight 93 National Memorial. I’ve passed it before but decided to stop this time. I had no idea it was so extensive. As I drove back into it, I couldn’t help but think this was the last thing these folks saw. It was quite sobering. I was surprised too how many people were there because it is kind of in the middle of nowhere.

Then I made a bee line to Columbus, OH, and visited the Franklin Park Conservatory and Gardens.

The Palm House was built in 1895 and the grounds have continued to evolve since then. Some highlights are the extensive Children’s Garden, the neat Garden Railroad, of course the plants, and their permanent collection of Chihuly sculptures and paintings.

I also visited German village which a a neighborhood adjacent to the Downtown. It has beautiful brick streets, sidewalks, houses, restaurants, and shops. I loved the scale of it. The development of the neighborhood started in 1840 with German immigrants. I read that a large part of the population of Columbus has always been German.

I remembered that a former city manager came from Dublin, a suburb of Columbus, so stopped there just to check it out. The Scioto River cuts through the middle of town (its BIG)! On one side of the river everything is brand new and looks like a planned city, and the other side is the older part of town.

The main shopping street reminded me of Breckenridge, CO, with a combination of small historic homes with shops, and new buildings mixed in. I didn’t take the time to go into anything but enjoyed seeing it and lots of young people on the sidewalk.

I finally arrived at my childhood home and spent three days with my nieces and their families hanging out, swimming, laughing, telling stories, and eating of course! I’m grateful that they care enough to travel to see me.

Then three nieces and I went to the Ann Arbor Street Fair. It is always held on the hottest days of the year but miraculously this year the temperature was perfect, probably the first time in 20 years or so. We walked every inch of the show. I was pleased to see some artists whose work I used to carry at Carolina Creations and stopped to remininisce.

Meridith from Glass City Blews, John Furches and his beautiful etchings, Paul Willsea and his fabulous glass, and others. The parts I miss about owning a gallery are seeing my artists and my customers.

Of course I can’t NOT buy somethings, one item was a beautiful little vase by a young artist, it reminds me somewhat of my own black pottery.

One of the most exciting things I saw (other than what I saw at the show) was at A2AC where they had a display of large-scale printmaking. I did a lot of printmaking in college but haven’t done much since.

While talking to one of the folks their they told me about Big Ink. It’s a program where you carve a large woodblock then get together for a day long workshop and print everyone’s pieces. Most presses are fairly small so normally you would print a big one by rubbing the back of the paper with a wooden spoon. On a big print that could be very time consuming and you don’t always come up with satisfactory results. The Big ink program uses a giant press.

Unfortunately, I read that a Big Ink workshop will take place in Asheville in the fall, of course I had to sign up for it. What was I thinking? I already have more ideas of things to painting and not enough time to do all those. But it will be exciting and fun.

I’ll have to get some new tools, do a refresher on technique (my last experience with wood block printing was in the the early 1970s), and carve a big block of wood before the event! All this just before the Studio Tour, Christmas, and fitting in around my travels. But I’m looking forward to it.

To participate your block needs to be at least 24 by 36 inches and no larger than 40 by 96 inches. The wood I have ordered is 30 x 40. I’ll do a blog post about the process and the workshop. The lady that curated the show is Helen Gotlib. She was also a participant in the Street Fair so I got to meet her there.

Here are a couple of her pieces measuring 30 x 40 inches and the round dots on the pond are done in gold leaf, the prints were beautiful.

One of my nieces talked about Urban Fairy Doors they have around town so we tracked down a few of those. It started out as a project in the artist’s home to delight his daughter. Then he started placing them in businesses and on the fronts of buildings throughout the downtown. It’s fun to try to find them all.

The doors are generally about 8 inches tall and are usually close to the ground.

On my way south I passed through downtown Sylvania, OH. I have always thought they had a very atractive small downtown but the only thing I ever stopped at was a Greek Restaurant. Granted, I’m talking 50 years ago….. times have sure changed.

They have a fabulous art supply store The Art Supply Depot that used to be in Downtown Toledo, and a couple nice galleries. My favorite was Hudson Gallery, where I could not resist buying a piece of sculpture. And I really enjoyed seeing the work of Alan Maciag, too.

Next up, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, they have a very eclectic collection and in every room was a place to sit and in most there was some kind of interactive project you could do.

It is a very unusual collection. I think most of the time I’ve spent in Indy before was to go to the 500. I don’t know that I ever was in the heart of the downtown. They have this giant monument on a small square, called the Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

Driving into the downtown I was not too impressed, lots of homeless looking people, ratty neighborhoods, etc but once I got right downtown there was a lot of action! I wondered where all the people were coming from, it turned out there was a Catholic conference with about 60,000 attendees!

I also have read that Carmel is supposed to be one of the hot places to live in the US. I hate to say it but it is obviously a planned city and the downtown is just a series of massive buildings with no character in my opinion.

The main reason for taking this route through Indiana was to visit the TC Steele State Historic Site. He was an American Impressionist painter known for his landscapes, although he made most of his money from his portrait work.

The Historic site is in a beautiful spot and his home and studio were nice to see. I love the fact that he became wealthy in his lifetime unlike someone like Van Gogh.

The site is near the town of Nashville, IN. It’s a cute small tourist town. I was told that since its establishment in the early 1800s, it was always intended to be just that, a tourist attraction.

Silly, but the thing that impressed me the most about the town is that I saw three stand-alone restroom buildings just a few short blocks from one another!

It is in the heart of Brown County which is known for its beauty and as an artists colony.

I have to admit I did not take the time to go into any of the shops but I’m told that the Art Guild Gallery is very nice with work from the Colony.

And you can’t drive through Indiana without stopping to see at least one covered bridge.

Then I decided I needed to really think about getting home.

I like to drive through the downtown of cities just to see the shape they are in. I think you can tell the health of a city by what their downtown looks like.

Here is my assessement of some of the ones I visited on this trip. Middleburg thriving; Leesburg looked ok but difficult to park; Frederick excellent with lots of young people; Wheeling, VA, really bad, many, many empty buildings, but to their credit they are redoing all the streets. but why tear the whole thing up at once?, Columbus, OH, thriving. Ann Arbor thriving. Indianapolis a mixed bag – lots of homeless looking people but then thriving in other parts. Louisville, KY, looked good but no people on a Sunday.

My take on Social Districts – the downtowns that might benefit from them are the towns that are dead, ours is not! But also, I don’t see the point of walking around with a drink in your hand anyway.

My last night was in Asheville. I visited the Asheville Print Studio where Big Ink will take place then sped home!

Now I have to rest up for my next big adventure to Europe the middle of August, hope it has cooled off some there by then.

Addendum.

I took one more trip this spring that I did not write about, it was short in days but long in miles. I just got a new car and wanted to check it out before I drove it to Michigan. The mileage was much more than I expected.

Among the places I stopped were …..

…. The Mosaic House in Durham.

…. The Lake Lure Flowering Bridge…

…. Brevard, where I visited some nice galleries. There was a lot more to see there but I was on a mission!

….. Friends had told me about Blue Ridge, GA, which has a tourist railroad. It was getting late so I didn’t go into any shops or galleries but it looked like there are some nice ones. I spent the night at a winery near Dahlonega which was lovely and I had the entire annex to myself.

….. Dahlonega – I was moved driving into town by the crosses and flags I passed honoring the service and sacrifice of many. They went for miles.

I love a town with a town square, and it was nice but most of the shops were pretty country for me but the town is surrounded by pretty country! Fortunately, the town was not a bust because they were part of a several county wide studio tour.

I visited seven or eight studios in the area, my last stop being an art museum at Piedmont University called the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art, which was lovely.

After that I made a bee line for home.