Weekend Adventures

Last Saturday I met up with Birchie and Anne for a real Wisconsin adventure. We were going to  House on the Rock! This is a weird little tourist attraction and I can't believe I've lived here for over ten years, but hadn't made the time to go. Oh, well. No time like the present. As you drive up the driveway, you see about a half dozen of these planters.

The history of this place is that an eccentric man named Alex Jordan built a very strange cavelike house on a rock that looked out over a lovely valley in south-central Wisconsin. And then he kept building on theme rooms. Weird themes. He was a collector. Why have only ten thingamabobs when you can have five hundred? He also built these "music machines" which were mechanical musical playing devices that ranged from rooms of junk playing music to cabinets of scenes playing music. So this is a known weird place, but I can't express to you just how weird it was. 

There are three main sections of the House and we did them all, although I have to admit that we were really cruising by the third part. The themes of the rooms ranged from "Music of Yesterday" to "Heritage of the Sea" to "Circus." I'm also going to warn you that there was a doll room. And it also has the world's largest carousel, although you can't ride the carousel, so don't get excited.

We were, to a person, quite disappointed that we couldn't ride this.

It's a fake ride.

My favorite room, by far, was the insane Ocean room with a family-friendly octopus music machine followed by an enormous sea creature devouring everything in sight.

It looks innocuous, doesn't it?

It's not innocuous at all! This sea monster is THREE STORIES tall.

Anne, Birchie, and me! 

One more sort of cool theme room was the Infinity Room, which is just a very long room that stretches out more than two hundred feet over the valley. It's windowed on all sides and is terrifying, but also very cool.

If you look out those windows, it's hundreds of feet to the ground.

Birchie and Anne were nice enough to tell my I was very brave about going in this room. I found it incredibly frightening and maybe I need to deal with my bridges/heights issues.

Don't look out the window. Don't look out the window. Don't look out the window.

Okay, I need to get to the heart of the weirdness of this place. It's oddly musty and smells like mold. There is carpet on most floors, walls, and ceilings. It is loud. There is so much stuff. It's bizarre and this post is not really capturing the level of strangeness of this place. We used the words weird, strange, bizarre, and finally settled into a state of wandering around just shaking our heads at the unrealness of the whole place.

I just want you tell me what's going on here. Just guess.

Should you go to the House on the Rock? I don't know. It's literally awesome, as in I found myself walking around with my mouth hanging open way more frequently than I should admit. It's a feast/overwhelm for all of your senses, but it's three days later and I sort of feel like I'm just now reorienting to what it's like in a world where I know this place exists. 

The grounds are lovely and it was delightful whenever we would get to be outside for a few minutes in between the three areas. A literal breath of fresh air.

I "hid" a rock that Kim made for me there, too. 

So, should you go? I think I'm going to leave that up to you. You'll know if this experience is right for you or not. If you do go, spring for some tokens. It's nice to be able to play some of the music machines or get your fortune read.

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We drove to Spring Green stopping at the scenic overlook on the way. There was nothing scenic about the overlook, folks, so don't bother stopping there.

We ate at Wander Provisions, where I spent $13 for a sandwich. It was a really good sandwich, but $13! I sometimes wonder how much damage the $5 footlong commercials for Subway really did to my understanding of how much food should cost. Do not worry, friends! I packed a cooler and enjoyed a fizzy water, cheese stick, and Kind bar with my lunch.

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We said goodbye to Anne at this point and she headed home because The House on the Rock had, quite understandably, done her in. Birchie and I head to Cave of the Mounds where we paid for an hour-long tour. It was a cave. Our tour guide was sort of terrible, but he was young so I'm going to let that slide.

Speleologists don't understand how those beehive like stalactites are formed.

If you're into caves, this is a nice one. The rooms are big, the path is pretty even, and there are only one or two tight spaces. They do the thing where they shut off the lights and you're in total darkness and that's freaky, so just FYI if that sort of thing makes you nervous. 

The grounds are lovely, too. We had a few minutes before the start of our tour and it was nice to wander around the gardens.  Thumbs up for the landscape designers.  

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And that was a wrap. Birchie and I parted ways, her to go on a bike ride (!) and me to collapse on the couch and talk to my husband about what a weird place the House on the Rock was. 

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Have you been to House on the Rock? Have you ever been on a tour of a cave? Are you super jealous that I got to hang out with Birchie and Anne?