Words by Stacy (parenthetical comments by David)

In response to our request for no gifts to our wedding, our friends Dan & Christy gave us a 3 night stay at the (Frank Lloyd Wright designed) Seth Peterson cottage near Wisconsin Dells. (The 4 of us had traveled to see Wright houses [Falling Water, Kentuck Knob & Taliesin West] before.) Upon calling (in 2007) to book our 3 nights we learned that 2008 was full so we asked for the weekend of 4th of July, 2009. We then received a written confirmation of this in the mail and learned that the cottage sleeps 4 adults. To punish our friends for their disobedience, we promptly invited Dan & Christy to join us in this adventure and made plans to visit Taliesin while we were "in the neighborhood".

(While we expected a ‘cottage’ to be small, and since this one had been designed by Wright it could be ‘cozy’, we did not think this would be a problem. We have lived in their house and have traveled to Italy, Mexico & Ireland together.)

Taliesin has some excellent examples of Wright architecture. It also shows the expense and troubles that comes with owning a building "blessed" with the initials FLLW. The tour we went on was very well done and provided a chance to see Union Chapel, Midway Farm, the Hillside school, the Taliesin school and Mr. Wright's own home (see Map).

(I found this a very odd experience. Wright used this house as an ongoing experiment. Every year he and his students would rip out sections of the house and try something else. It was an extremely dynamic building. Now it is treated as a static shrine. Nothing may be done, changed, thought or contemplated that was not THE WAY IT WAS! I think Wright would not like what this building has become.)

The (Seth Peterson) cottage is on Mirror Lake (see Map) and definitely far enough from the touristy scene of Wisconsin Dells. The weather was perfect (sunsets over the lake were lovely) and the place was filled with wildlife and solitude, except for the guy next door who was using this weekend to catch up on his chainsawing.