Content area
Full Text
You can reach RoadTrip guest columnist Katy Buchanan at [email protected] or 412-263-1523.
The Monday before Thanksgiving found my husband and me driving up Route 40 in Fayette County, headed toward Kentuck Knob, the house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for ice cream maker I.N. Hagan and his wife, Bernardine, in the mid-1950s.
Under gray skies, the forested hills ahead were bare of leaves and covered with a light coating of snow.
Quite a view, and that's a bonus at Kentuck Knob this time of year, too.
We decided to visit on a lark, having spent the previous night as the only guests at a lovely bed and breakfast, the Inne at Watson's Choice just outside of Uniontown. Our plan had been to get away for a night, have a nice dinner, then take a leisurely drive back to Pittsburgh and do some antiquing on the way. But after dinner at Caleigh's Restaurant in Uniontown and a soak in our room's whirlpool tub, I found a copy of Mrs. Hagan's recent book on the building of Kentuck Knob in the inn's collection. I got about halfway through before bed. The next morning at breakfast (light and delicious buttermilk pancakes, homemade sausage, plus cinnamon rolls, vanilla custard, a cranberry compote and fresh fruit cup -- oof!), we asked innkeeper Nancy Ross if we needed a reservation to see the house, as you do at Wright's other southwestern Pennsylvania house, Fallingwater. No, she told us, you don't, and then produced a hand- drawn map, complete with mileage and landmarks to get us there. (The home's Web site recommends reservations.)