Monday art house: vacation

The daughter and I are off to north central Pennsylvania for a vacation in the woods. Though it's a mostly unstructured vacation, we do have a few activities planned: picking apples, fishing in pristine trout streams, and avoiding being shot or run over by gun-slinging ATV-driving wingnuts. We'll be roughing it at a friend's old family homestead, which he and his siblings and uncle use nowadays as a vacation cabin and hunting camp. No land line, no internet, no cell phone coverage. It's like paradise, this yearly unplugging from constantly being informed and updated. Except that it can get darn cold at night, even in August.

The last time he was up at the cabin, my friend saw 5 bears wandering in the hills around the house. That's about 6 bears too many for me, but I don't own my own vacation cabin, and beggars can't be choosers. We'll just have to build bigger campfires at night for the fish we catch.

On the way to the cabin is the fabulous metropolis of Coudersport, home of the Olga's Living with Art gallery and shop: hand-painted glass, fiber arts, pottery, and intricately painted Ukrainian eggs. The shop features a wider variety of work by Pennsylvania artists than what you usually see in my area, which is dominated by work by Pennsylvania Dutch artists or those working in that style. Which is very nice work, but you can have only so many hex signs tacked up to the garage and so much salt-glazed blue-hued pottery in your cabinets before it starts getting a little monotonous.

If you ever do the historic Pennsylvania Route 6 tour, a stop at Olga's Living with Art is probably worth your while. The building is just a block from the county courthouse, and Coudersport is a good place for lunch or dinner.