Day 4: House on the Rock continued

Tuesday, Aug 17, 2010

By Tuesday evening I was getting pretty frustrated with the Blog/wifi situation--I didn't even write about the day. But I did manage to write a very fast synopsis, which is the 2nd (I think) entry for this trip. But we had another good day in Spring Green. We spent a quiet night at Governor Dodge State Park in a very beautiful woodsy campsite, and started our morning with a walk to the park's waterfall. All three of us enjoyed the walk, and Roxy also enjoyed getting her feet wet and tasting the stream at the base of the falls. If we'd had more time and inclination, this park actually boasts a "dog beach", where we could have taken her swimming in the lake! But we had other things on our agenda rather than living with a wet dog for the day.

We also used the park dumpsite, which gave us the chance to wash off the remnants of the liquid manure we'd driven through the day before. The stuff had dried but the smell lingered, and we were glad to wash it off our mudflaps and be rid it!

We drove from the park to Dodgeville and spent an hour at the Culver's, trying to make use of their wifi. But I was still unable to transfer my written blogs into Blogger. BTW, isn't my husband da bomb??? Not only did he come up with a solution to that problem today, but I forgot to mention, he did fix our fussy refrigerator too. Once again, I have to say that I'd be afraid to take a trip like this without him along :)

We left Culver's in frustration, and drove back to the House on the Rock. The day before we'd bought a book which told about Alex Jordan and how he built the house, and it had given us the background info we'd wanted. So we had a little more insight into some of the things we were seeing that second day. Tour 2 was the longest tour, and it took us about 4 hours from beginning to end. By far our favorite part was the "music room", which contained all kinds of calliopes, music boxes, and automated instruments (like player pianos) and more elaborate orchestras. When you pay for these tours, they give you 4 tokens, and all along the way there are places where you can put your tokens in and the musical displays will play. They are so delightful, we bought extra tokens and listened to most of them.

When I say "music box", btw, it is not what most people would picture. A great example is a full size old-fashioned horse-drawn hearse, with a huge (several feet long) music-box cylinder built into it. We listened to it play some slow funereal introduction, followed by "When the Saints Go Marching In". It was a self-contained New Orleans jazz funeral! Here is a photo:

There were other kinds of music machines. The most fabulous is called The Mikado. It is installed in a room which is completely done in red and gold, as is the machine itself, which takes up the entire wall of the room. We listened to it play 4 times (almost everyone who comes in puts their tokens in) and it was amazing. The drummer in the center plays several percussion instruments, but he is surrounded by other "attendants" playing triangles, other drums, etc. as well as ladies fluttering their fans as the music plays. It is an incredible room, one of Alex Jordan's most elaborate creations.

As I try to remember what else we saw, I would not be able to recall everything without the help of my photos. We saw collections of everything from carved ivory to masks to butterflies to miniature toy cars to old fashioned brass cash registers to teddy bears to Burma Shave signs! Most of it was delightful. Our least favorite thing was the "Wonders of the Sea" room; it contained display cases of all kinds of ship models and memorabilia, but was dominated by an absolutely immense sculpture (3 stories tall) of a whale battling with a giant squid. Below are a couple of more photos:

We finally left the House on the Rock in the late afternoon, and drove a few miles up the road to a scenic overlook. This gave us an opportunity to see the Infinity Room from the outside:

We went from there to the Visitor Center of the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin tours to see about those for the next day. However we walked in at 5:28, and they closed at 5:30. I was getting very cranky by that time, and we took a brochure and decided to think about what to do next. Then we looked for a campground nearby which would have wifi, and we found one right in Spring Green. So back we went into the center of town, and then down to the river. And as my earlier post makes clear, I was able to do some quick blogging and even upload photos from the previous couple of days. And then I went to bed, to "sleep on" the decision of where to go next.

Day Three: House on the Rock

Aug. 16, 2010 We have had a wonderful day, full but not rushed, and it seems to me that we could spend an entire week in this little corner of southwestern Wisconsin. It is an absolutely lovely area, full of rolling green hills and valleys, many farms, and not many people. In fact, everywhere we go we are struck with how uncrowded it seems, beginning with our first “adventure” this morning. We started the day slowly, taking care of some housekeeping chores, and taking advantage of the nice showers in the campground. We were feeling remarkably well rested, which at first I attributed to the fact that when the alarm went off at 7 a.m., we slept until 8. But a little while after we woke up, we realized that somewhere along the way, we’d entered the Central Time zone, and although it was only 8am by our cell phones, it was 9 a.m. by our wrist watches, indicating that we’d actually had 9 hours of sleep! No wonder we were so perky!! We left our campsite in the woods and before leaving Blue Mounds State Park entirely, we drove up on top of the “mountain” (this is the highest point in southern Wisconsin.) There was absolutely no one up there when we got to the parking lot for the scenic overlook. We climbed up the wooden observation tower—even Roxy made it up despite her reluctance to go up open staircases—to find a stunning view of the surrounding valleys. Green everywhere—it was a great vista. We were up there for 10 minutes or so when a family of 4 came up the 8 flights of stairs and joined us. We decided not to stress Roxy any further and decided to climb down. We left the park heading for the Welcome Center in the town of Spring Green, figuring we could pick up more brochures and maybe even coupons before going to either Taliesin or the House on the Rock. The GPS routed us via county roads, which here are all labeled not with numbers but with letters. We took Road F to Road ID to Road Y, and followed Y for quite a long while, much to Joey’s delight. It was narrow and twisty and went through the countryside and there were NO other vehicles to be seen. That is, until a tractorish truck pulling an oddly-shaped tank trailer pulled out of a side road and passed us going the other way. We suddenly realized what was in his tank—a wide trail pungent brown liquidy stuff was laid on the road, and there was no doubt it was liquid manure. Moments after realizing that “Oy, his truck has a leak!”, we realized that WE had no choice but to cross his path—and at that point, it was Mo with the pungent smell of horse manure clinging to the wheels. The smell stayed with us for a while before fading, but late in the afternoon when we left the RV, I could smell it again. Next time we are anywhere near water, we need to spray our mud flaps! Phew! Lucky for us, we have a good sense of humor about this kind of thing. We arrived at the Visitor Center in Spring Green and discovered a totally delightful small town (population 1444, twice the size of the village of Blue Mounds.) The architecture of the town is very influenced by the proximity of Taliesin, with many buildings designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Visitor Center itself, and the bank next door, both show a lot of prairie style influence, and the town’s medical building is modeled after Taliesin. The town itself seemed so utterly quiet—there was little traffic or noise or people—but we could tell it was a thriving place. We parked Mo next to the library, which had beautiful specimen gardens planted around it; the bank, as I said, was a fascinating building, there were parks and little shops everywhere. We walked into some of them, picked up some batteries for my camera and a few small fun items, chatted with shop owners, and generally felt that the town was totally adorable. I don’t think it has a single traffic light. An utterly livable place. Below is a photo of the center of Spring Green at noon! We had some lunch in Mo, and then headed south again to visit the House on the Rock. This is a major attraction in the area, and we decided it was really a cross between the Winchester Mystery House in (I think) San Jose, and the Shelburne (VT) Museum which we fell in love with last summer. This house was the lifetime project of one Alex Jordan, who was born and grew up in this area. Like the Winchester House, the house has room after room, and like the Shelburne Museum, it houses huge collections of everything from dollhouses (over 200) to circus memorabilia (miniature model circuses, posters, painted circus wagon wheels), pipe organs, weapons, carved ivory, pipe organs, dolls, automatons, Asian artifacts, carousel horses, stained glass, and “stuff” of every conceivable description. The most stunning item of all is the carousel—it has 276 handcrafted animals (not a single horse, but everything else you can imagine!), 20,000 lights, and is 80 feet in diameter. Our jaws literally dropped when we walked in and saw it! It was simply stunning. It is housed in a room with more carved wooden horses stacked up on the walls and the ceiling was covered with angel carvings—or so I thought (more about that later.) The house itself is original attraction—it is built right into the side of the mountain, and the walls of many of the rooms are the natural stone. One room has a waterfall of natural runoff trickling through it, and many of the rooms have windows which bank out over the edge of the cliff. The ceilings are quite low and some of the passageways are narrowly cut through the stone. The high point of this section is the “Infinity Room”. Opened in 1985, it is a 218-foot room which is cantilevered out over the valley below, suspended in space. As you walk toward the end it physically narrows to a point, making it seem as if it goes on forever. At the end of the room, there is a glass floor with a view straight down into the trees below.

Above: A room with natural rock walls, a waterfall, and trees inside.

The place is so large and houses so many things that it is divided into 3 self-guiding tours with 3 separate tickets. We of course bought the entire package, but because we didn’t get there until 3 pm, we decided we’d never be able to see the entire place. So we went into Tour 1 (the house itself) and Tour 3 (including the Carousel Room, the dolls, the circus collection and all the other things I listed above. We are planning to go back tomorrow for Tour 2 (they let you use any unpunched tour tickets within a year of purchase.) We had mixed feelings about the entire place—on one hand, we loved many of the items we saw, including the carousel, a fabulous calliope playing songs from the Mikado, the automatons, which played along with the music everywhere, the pipe organ room (which was like some kind of science fiction dream), and the collection of Barranger Motion Machines. These were produced during the 1920s-1950s to display diamonds and jewelry in store windows, and are very charming.

Right: Drum Tree in the Organ Room What we didn’t like so much was that there was literally NO explanation of anything in the place. [Subsequent comment: we read in the book we bought that Alex said, "Don't education them, entertain them"-- but we WANTED to be educated!] They don’t even give you a basic map which shows where the rest rooms are, or what is in the next room. (Speaking of rest rooms, I had a “first” today—I took photos inside the Ladies Room, and even inside the stall!) But anyway, we felt that maybe Alex Jordan actually didn’t WANT people to know too much about it, in order to preserve the sense of overwhelming amazement. FX there is a room full of armor, displayed in dioramas. I didn’t find out until tonight when I was reading a tour guide that it was all made specifically for his museum. There was a HUMUNGOUS cannon, which we wondered about, and turns out he had it made right there on the premises. The most bizarre thing we saw was as we left at the very end. The tour pathway (which was circuitous and went up and down all the time) ended RIGHT up under the ceiling in the room with the carousel. That was when we could see that many of the angels suspended from the ceiling were not carved, as we’d thought, but they were store-type mannequins with wings attached! They were extremely bizarre and somewhat creepy . Joey felt that the end result was a feeling that Alex Jordan was not quite sane [g],and that for him, enough was never enough. For instance, there was NO need of the room filled with somewhat tacky-looking replicas of all the British Crown Jewels… there was plenty to see without that! Tomorrow when we go back, we will spend time in the Alex Jordan room, which is an introduction to the museum, and see what we can learn about him.

(Above: "Angels" on the ceiling and dozens of carousel horses on the walls)

We finished our tour just at 6 pm, at which point we had a snack in the RV and then, after searching for a gas station, decided to spend another night in a Wisconsin state park, this time the Governor Dodge State Park. This place is much larger than last night’s park, with a very large campground, 2 lakes, beaches, etc. Tomorrow we will go see the waterfall before we leave, and then go south just a little further to find wifi. The park ranger told me where the only place is “around here” with wifi, and we have been out of luck on that subject since we left home. I am not at all sure where we will end up by the end of the day tomorrow…. I am beginning to think that we’d better start planning to spend our entire vacation just in Wisconsin and Minnesota. There is so much to see here, and I am already one day “behind” on my schedule. But it doesn’t really matter…. It is so pleasant here, and relaxing, and we are thoroughly enjoying discovering places which we didn’t plan on but which turn out to be lovely. It was a wonderful day.

[Postscript: Camera malfunctioned--I took more photos, but when I tried to transfer them from my 3rd disk of photos, there were absolutely none. So I have no photos of the circus collections, or anything else from that part of the tour. Too bad, the circus wagon wheels were so beautiful!]

Photos from Wisconsin

Aug. 17, 2010

Here are some photos. They are in no particular order (really they are backwards!) But it's worth a try to get them up.

the Ladies Room at the House on the Rock (really!)

The Infinity Room at the House on the Rock. It is 218 feet long and suspended 158 feet above the valley below. And, as you see, all windows!

The world's largest carousel. 250-something fantastic creatures and 20,000 lightbulbs!

The local bank on the main street of Spring Green. Notice the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright in the architecture.

Joe on a wooden tower overlooking the countryside from Blue Mounds State Park, Blue Mounds, WI. We stayed there on Sunday night.

Deb looking out the windows in the House on the Rock. The house is at the edge of the rock.

Fast Update from Spring Green, WI

Aug. 17, 2010

We are having a wonderful time, but have not had ANY wifi until today. Unfortunately it seems that Blogger won't let me copy/paste my lengthy blog from MS Word into the blog. Sooooo.... no long blogs today! I will have to catch up somehow later.

We spent last night at Governor Dodge State Park in Dodgeville, WI, the home of Land's End. Went in the morning to Culver's, a cute fast food restaurant, to use the free wifi there. The wifi was fine but as i said, the blog didn't upload. We spent over an hour there, yuck! Then we headed north back toward Spring Green, where we also spent yesterday. We took two days to tour the House on the Rock, a totally amazing attraction. I can't really do it justice here--it took us probably 8 hours total to go through the whole thing. It reminded us of the Shelbourne Museum which we saw last year--rooms and rooms of eclectic collections of everything from dollhouses to carousel horses to old musical instruments to boats to firearms to cash registers to circus miniatures to almost anything you could possibly imagine! The house itself is built into the original rock, with an "infinity room" which is cantilevered out 210 feet long over the valley 150+ feet below. It was truly astonishing.

Now we are trying to decide about tomorrow, but meanwhile we're camped right on the Wisconsin River in Spring Green, an adorable little town which is heavily influenced by the work ofFrank Lloyd Wright. His home here, Taliesin, is a major attraction, which we haven't seen yet. The problem is that the tours are not too early in the morning and we are already "behind schedule" due to the huge size of the House on the Rock. I am thinking we will not make it as far as North Dakota after all... there is just too much to do in Wisconsin!

Mo has behaved quite well, although the refrigerator is being fussy. Joe has been fixing it; but we have also used our collapsible cooler when necessary. At least we grew up camping with a cooler and no fridge--it is not a deal breaker! Other small housekeeping chores have been quite easy to handle.

So that's about it--we are having a very lovely time and feel as if we've been away for a long time already. I do hope this blog uploads; and if not, check me on Facebook for brief updates!