6/16/21: Madison: Monastery, Mustard & Frank Lloyd Wright!

After Steven and I visited Madison's beautiful statehouse and Olbrich Botanical Gardens, a stop out in the country at the Holy Wisdom Monastery sounded like a great change of pace. When the Benedictine sisters moved from Iowa to the Madison Diocese in 1953, they initially opened a girls' high school and then a retreat and conference center. The Saint Benedict Center welcomed Christians and people of all faiths and, in 1998, the monastic community extended its membership to all Christian women. The center was located on a hill overlooking Lake Mendota and Madison's skyline.

The opportunity to explore the nature trails that surrounded the monastery was what had brought us to Holy Wisdom. It was a perfect place for quiet reflection. 

The Mary and Elizabeth Hermitages were classified as retreats.

When the Benedictine sisters moved to the property, the original 40 acres had consisted of farmland that had been cleared in the early 1900s. In 1996, the sisters and numerous volunteers began a ten-year project of restoring 95 acres of farmland to the prairie. A 10,000-year-old glacial lake was dredged and restored to its original size. 

From the trails, we had great views of the North Mendota Wildlife Area.

One of the trails took us through the Oak Woodlands.

Another place of quietude was The Pines.

Never had we seen a bench like this in any park.

A pamphlet identified the deep orange wildflowers as Butterfly Weed which bloomed in the Midwest from mid-June until August.

With the sisters' commitment to the environment and caring for the earth, they decided to replace Benedict House with a building that would earn the highest LEED rating from the US Green Building Council. When the monastery was finished in 2009, it was certified under LEED-NC with 63 of 69 points, a world record for new construction projects.

The Gathering Area and Assembly Room or chapel was illuminated by a dramatic skylight. The north-facing windows ensured that the entire room received ample natural light during the day. I read that highly efficient fluorescent light fixtures tucked into the soffits reflected light off the upper walls and ceiling.

The engineered bamboo floor was twice as durable as oak.

The four triangles cut into one wall were also illuminated by the skylights and their shape reflected the sisters' logo.

After these bells were removed from the old monastery, they were refurbished and installed in the new Bell Tower to call people to prayer. The monastery had been a pleasant interlude from the city's crowds.

I don't think we could possibly have found a more dramatic change from the monastery to the National Mustard Museum in nearby Middleton!

In case you were wondering why the museum was in the Madison suburb of Middleton, here's the short story! Barry Levenson, a fanatical Boston Red Sox fan and native of Worcester, Massachusetts, grew up rooting for his hometown baseball team. Even after moving to Wisconsin in 1970 to become the Assistant Attorney General for the state, Levenson continued to be an avowed Red Sox fan. You can therefore perhaps understand as he watched in despair as his hometown baseball team lost a chance yet again to win the World Series in 1986. 

Levenson was depressed beyond words that his team had "snatched defeat from the jaws of victory" as they had been so, so close to winning. I could almost imagine his despair as the Sox hadn't won the World Series since 1918. 

After the loss, Levenson walked the aisles of an all-night grocery store looking for the 'meaning of life.' Deciding he needed a hobby to distract himself from his 'Red Sox angst,' he figured he'd collect something and that was, as you probably figured out by now, all things mustard. In 1991, he gave up the law and opened up what is now the world's largest collection of mustards and mustard memorabilia.

One of my favorite images:

Barry Levenson aka Mona Mustard!

For a very humorous take on Mona Mustard: The Other Da Vinci Masterpiece, I encourage you to click on the image to make it easier to read!

In the gift shop upstairs, I would take a guess and say they had a couple of hundred mustard varieties. Two of our four children are mustard aficionados so I texted photos of oodles of varieties, asking them to choose their favorite. Steven was also delighted with his Authentic Stadium Mustard and has been using it ever since on his hot dogs. I, however, am a woman of simple tastes and like good ol' French's mustard - no fancy condiments for me, thanks!

Even if you're not a mustard fan, I think you'll be amused by these photos.

For a 'mere' $1,000 donation to the National Mustard Museum, this Wisconsin license plate could be yours!

A sign said visitors could play the Mustard Ring Toss for a buck and that the money should be put in the donation box on the honor system because mustard lovers are always honest!

This was just a partial collection of mustards from around the world!

And just some from my adopted state of Colorado:

Reinhold Schlegelmilch established a porcelain factory in 1869 in Suhl in what was then Prussia, now Germany. As R.S. porcelain exemplified the finest in European tableware, its delicate vases, plates, and mustard pots became famous throughout the world. 

Kansan collectors C.L. and Lavonne Shirley donated their extensive collection of the earliest days of Schlegelmilch production to the museum in 2012.

What a hoot the entire museum and shop was - just the quirky type of place Steven and I liked to discover on this long road trip through America's heartland!

Steven told me that night that there had been a Canadiana section at the museum that I had somehow missed. I was pretty bummed as I always try and stay tuned for "Canadian content" when we travel! I called up the museum and ended up speaking to Barry Levenson, the owner, founder, and model for the Mona Lisa mustard lookalike, who kindly said he'd take the following photos for me. My sincere thanks to Barry for going the extra mile for me.

Looking back on it, our day in Madison was really quite strange with a tour of the capitol building, the Olbrich Botanical Gardens, the Holy Wisdom Monastery, the National Mustard Museum, and finally, the First Unitarian Society of Madison that had been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1949. The largest Unitarian Universalist congregation in North America commissioned Wright to design its Meeting House as he was a church member and son of two of its founders.

I read that the church building had been recognized as one of the most innovative examples of church architecture and, in 1960, was designated as one of 17 buildings to be retained as an example of Wright's contribution to American culture. "The dramatic result has been variously interpreted as the prow of a ship, a plow cutting through the prairie, and hands folded in prayer."

Before the standard 50-year cutoff for historic buildings, the Meeting House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. It was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service in 2004.

Though the church had been closed since the beginning of the pandemic, members had lovingly adorned exterior pillars with colorful handknitted coverings.

If we ever return to Madison, I would love to see the Meeting House's interior to see more of Wright's genius. 

Next post: Milwaukee's Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Pabst beer, The Fonze, and other Milwaukee trivia!

Posted on the last day of July 2021, again from Gulf Shores, Alabama, where we're enjoying catching up on reading and finalizing details for our upcoming trip to Europe in September in between hours spent at the pool and at the beach. Not a bad life, I hasten to add!!

9/27-10/10/20: Grayton Beach State Park on Florida's Panhandle

Steven and I had spent the last ten days or so last September bopping around the Carolinas and Tennessee on a hiatus from our beach time staying in one of the cabins at Grayton Beach State Park on Florida's Panhandle. As state rules prohibit anyone from staying longer than 14 consecutive days at any one park, that was the primary reason for our extended tour of the Blue Ridge Parkway and other favorite sights. Now, though, it was time to return for another two weeks to our favorite place to just enjoy being beach bums and not on the go every moment every day as is our style when traveling.

As we drove from Montgomery, Alabama to Grayton Beach, I spotted this mural in Brantley, Alabama, pointing us in the right direction! The distances weren't accurate but it was a fun mural nonetheless.

Since Steven and I first discovered the state park well over a dozen years, we have returned every summer, staying in a progression of trailers for the first eight or so years until we went upscale, selling the last trailer and staying in the basic park cabins. Our custom each time we return has been to take a selfie our first evening - this was last September's version. Sure looks like time spent with Lady Clairol was needed PDQ to hide my gray roots!

9/29: A pretty sunset walk past some nearby lakes that border the Gulf of Mexico:

A nearby development across from the lakes:

One of the things that we have always loved about the Grayton state park is that it's quite varied, with stupendous views of the emerald gulf waters and also an inland forest.

The pretty Gardens & Gallery of Monet were billed as a unique event space in the very small village of Grayton Beach. We'd passed it by literally countless times over the years but this view was as close as we ever got.

'

Steven on the obviously empty beach!

Crazy weather: The day before the temperature had been in the 80s and here we were wearing coats in northern Florida in late September!

As the beach is on a flight path for the nearby Eglin Air Force Base and commercial flights from the city of Pensacola, we regularly hear the roar of planes overhead, many of them flying surprisingly low.

9/30:

10/1: Only in the last two or three years had we watched people stand up paddle boarding or doing SUP.

Another reason we have always loved Grayton is the often empty beach.

Walking along the beach from the state park to the adjacent community of Grayton, we had to carefully make our way through deep water that had come in from one of the lakes we'd walked past previously. 

The Gulf waters are normally far too choppy to allow sailboats safe passage.

My honeybun doing what he loves best - reading in the sun!

In order to take a sunset walk down at Grayton Beach State Park, we have to make sure to eat dinner very early to get a walk in while we can still see the path and road.  That's because the sun sets at 6:25 this time of year as the park is about two hours west of the EST time change. I took the initial photos on the path to the Gulf at 6:30. The others were taken at 6:50 shortly after sunset while the sky still had that lovely rosy glow.

10/2:  We noticed the oddest light when we got to the beach that morning and looked to the east - never did we remember seeing the sky and water looking so ghostly pale.

Never had we seen the gulf as calm all day like this. Normally, it's only so calm until mid-morning and then the waves start crashing to the shore. It looked a little freaky and other-worldly!

Another view of Little Red Fish Lake:

It was one of the 15 named coastal dune lakes that are so rare they're only found in Madagascar, Australia, and here in South Walton County in northern Florida. As we'd already seen, these dune lakes were the only ones to periodically connect with a larger body of water, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico.

10/3: Fortunately, in all the years we've swum and played in the Gulf waters, we've only ever seen a few jellyfish and luckily never been stung. However, on our strolls along the beach, we have seen a fair number of them stranded on the beach.

10/4: Invasion of the body snatchers, aka the dog flies, hits the beach. The park ranger called them house flies with fangs! We had never been to Grayton so late in the season and doubt we ever would again as the dog flies made the experience pretty miserable. Not a lot of fun being at the beach and having to cover yourself from head to toe, I can tell you.

To get away from as many of the dog flies as possible, Steven walked up and down the beach almost all day long, simultaneously doing a Sudoku puzzle.

10/5: 

Steven joked we had just closed down the bar, i.e. the beach in this case - I think it was the dog flies that got the best of everyone!

So sad, there was nothing to do but watch the seagulls and pelicans!

Ever since our initial visits to the state park more than a dozen years ago, Steven and I have watched this older man take his mid-afternoon, very slow and solo walk on the beach. As he's always appeared so much older than we are, I keep wondering if we'll see him again when we return. I am keeping my fingers crossed that when we're back at Grayton on August 6th for a couple of weeks that we'll spot him again. I will know then that all is right with our little corner of the world.

10/6: In all our years of staying at the state park we'd never known its history until last October. That was when we learned that since the soil wasn't very suitable for farming and timber, the area of Grayton Beach remained owned by the federal government and unsettled until 1885 when Army Major Charles Gray homesteaded the area. In 1990, two other families mapped the small village with streets and named it Grayton in honor of its original homesteader.

Without bridges over the Choctawhatchee Bay and unimproved roads, reaching Grayton was very tough. In 1913, after W.H. Butler and his son made the day-long trip from Defuniak Springs to Grayton, they decided to stay and purchased most of the land that is now Grayton Beach to build a resort community. The family built and rented cottages, sold an occasional lot, and operated the town's general store and dance hall. 

The village remained small thanks to the state of Florida that surrounded the community with parklands. The state park was created in 1967 and opened to the public the following year. After years of lobbying by residents, the beachfront, dunes, and forest lands to the west and north of Grayton Beach were purchased by the state in 1985. As a result, people from all over have since been enjoying the beaches, and the park's full camping and cabin facilities while swimming, kayaking, picnicking, and wildlife viewing. 

After the construction of the Highway 331 Bridge and of Highway 98 in the 1930s, the small village began to boom. The addition of electricity and the beginning of WW II brought more people to the area. The US Coast Guard established a 40-man station and, in 1942, the federal government rented many of the homes for barracks and offices. 

The town's original home 

The state park boundary was indicated by the brown state park sign.

Steven and I spend endless amounts of time watching the shorebirds.

Ahh, another not-so-fun time trying to hide from the house flies with fangs! BTW, my towel was as close as I have gotten in many decades to a bikini.

10/7: The dog flies had been as bad the last few days at the cabin beach, Steven suggested we drive to the state park's camping beach two miles east in the hope there would be fewer of them there. Wow - did he call it perfectly as we saw and felt no more than a handful all day long.

However, I couldn't get over the huge number of people at this beach in early October. It was as packed then as at the height of the summer with the parking lot full to overflowing being our first hint of what we should expect. We kept having to move our chairs further down the beach as more and more families squeezed themselves into available spots of sand. I found myself wondering whether it had been worth giving up our almost empty but dog fly-filled beach for these boisterous crowds who loved their beach games and amplified music. Quite a toss-up!

There seemed to be almost as many school-aged kids there, too, as there had always been in the middle of summer. We couldn't understand what was up with their being out of school - was it because of Covid-19 and the children were learning from 'home?'

The sea oats on the dunes just before reaching the sandy beach were another of our favorite sights we look forward to viewing every year.

10/8: The red flag that greeted us atop the walkway to the beach meant there would be no swimming or even playing in the water that day. The purple flag indicated the presence of marine life.

We returned to our normal enclave, the cabin beach, hoping that the dog flies that had been so bothersome there for the better part of the week might have headed inland. What a huge relief to find they had. Don't know whether it was news of the impending Hurricane Delta that had caused people staying in the cabins to perhaps hunker down or something else but we had the entire state park beach to ourselves. We sure didn't complain, mind you!

Never had we seen so many jellyfish that had washed up on the beach, some huge like these, others that were only a few inches in size. As we looked to the east, we could spot them on the sand glistening in the sun.

It was fun playing hide and seek with a crab from the comfort of my beach chair. For a long time, I waited, with my camera at the ready, trying to catch photos of the tiny, sand-colored, sand crab as it would periodically poke its head out of its hiding place!

Another low-flying plane disturbed our otherwise quiet beach time.

The clouds looked especially foreboding as they rolled in that afternoon.

10/9: The reason was now made clear why no swimming had been permitted -  the appearance of Hurricane Delta in the Gulf. We were lucky that the hurricane wasn't forecast to be especially severe so we weren't forced to scramble and evacuate from the park this time on very short notice.

We didn't recall the water ever reaching so close to the dunes as it did that afternoon.

Not a good sign - both water closed to the public flag and a high hazard flag!

Pounding surf and 'our' crab to entertain us!

As we knew nothing of marine life, we couldn't identify this banana-looking thing!

10/10: Our last day on the beach until next year, boohoo.

We had to run back to the car when the ominous-looking clouds threatened rain. I normally walk down to the beach from our cabin and Steven drives the car and gear. I was sure glad the car was so close when the rain began!

As we walked past the state park boundary marker on the beach that last afternoon, we saw a group of people building very elaborate sandcastles that looked like Machu Picchu and the Great Pyramid!

Our last sunset: 

As you can see, my hair gets so very curly in the humid Florida weather, I have no need for a perm!

Next post: Back to Montgomery to explore more of the city's civil rights history. As I write this almost ten months later, we have already made reservations to be in Montgomery next week for three nights before heading to Grayton - it's like a full circle.

Posted on July 29th, 2021, from the condo we rented in what may become another favorite beach getaway, Gulf Shores, Alabama, just 100 or so miles west of Grayton. With the number of cases from the pandemic's Delta variant increasing so drastically, I hope you will take every precaution to be safe.