Extremes

I was sorry to leave my cute little motel room. It felt like stepping back in time. Still, one cannot sit in a motel forever and in particular, sleeping in for us means getting up after the sun. So we were waiting at the House of the Rock 20 minutes before it opened.


The house, built by one Alex Jordan, and his collections were… stunning. But not in that, oh there’s the queen or that wedding dress looks stunning sort of way. Let me preface this by saying it was interesting, and I’m really glad I did it, and I would tell people to do it. But oh-my-god. Okay, there were three tours, we did all three. The tour book said it should take 3 hours. We doubted. It took three hours and by the end, I was so overwhelmed and my head was spinning, I just wanted out.


The house part was like a cave. Few windows, stone walls, tiny space. It made the Wright house feel like it had cathedral ceilings - and I could touch the ceilings in Wright’s house. Flat footed. This house… poor M. I think went thru it like Quasimodo. The whole place also stunk. Literally. It was carpeted, which was not so good, but there was also a lot of trees growing into thru the building and inside water falls. I think it just wasn’t good ventilation.


The tour part leads you thru, first the house, then the “Infinity Room” then on to warehouses like spaces set up in multiple levels and display for his collections. It was maze like. Very dark and windy.


The infinity room was the exception: a cantilevered, over-sized hallway out into open air, hovering above the trees and a hundred feet above ground. Almost all glass - a nice view. He designed it so that it went to a point, with the illusion of infinity. Here is the view from afar (its that thing looking like the front end of a plane sticking out over the trees in the  kind of upper right side of this pictue:

Then back to his collection space… I don’t even know where to begin. It takes a while for me to reach true sensory overload. I usually like excessive amounts of something… this was too much. A case of 50 Mardi Gras masks next to two cases of cups with faces on them. Down a ramp with 8 cases of toy trucks. Look up in the next space - 50 large model airplanes. 200 doll houses… 75 (when I stopped counting) carousel horses lined up in rows and columns on a wall.

A working carousel (inside) with something like 200,000 lights. And so much more. Then there were gardens too. Oh and then, there was just the weird stuff. One room had a fiber glass whale being attacked by an octopus and eating a boat.. It was three stories tall. Then there was his collection of calliopes and contraptions made from musical instruments that played by forced-air or mechanical mechanisms from music boxes and player pianos. Some simulated normalcy (a full mannequin orchestra), but others:

By the time we left at noon I felt much like the time I had a pineapple orange ice cream sundae with marshmallow and fruit salad toppings, whipped cream and cherry. Ate it all and M. said my pupils were different sizes. But, like that sundae, it was good -- just not something you want to do a lot -- or possibly ever again. But one should do it once.


Thankfully we then had a nice hour ride on a scenic highway with more farms, fields and inner peace from nature. We all know, I’m not nature girl, but it is beautiful here. (This time of year. I can imagine what it’s like in winter and I bet it’s scary.) The ride was a good decompression and we stopped by a sculpture … what to call it? A sculpture farm? Garden? I dunno.


It was the home of the The Forevertron sculpture and others. http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2239 It was definitely the kind of place I sometimes think only we (or M.) can find. I have to post the pictures because - words, especially while I’m tired, just can’t express:

While there, we got to talk to the artist’s wife. That was an experience. She’s a little out there. In a round about way, she told us that the artist had a stroke while working on a piece, but kept working, and now their 46 year old son is starting to do sculpture too Then three was something about them getting a divorce, but he put her name on his work and she was crying about it in a new documentary that’s just come out, but it was in a good way. Well, if this sound confusing to you, just do what we did: smile, nod. Say thank you and back away when you can. But the work was really cool. And she was a very nice albeit odd lady. She also told us we’d just missed Peter (of Peter, Paul and Mary).


From there, I wanted to drive by Circus World. This was the winter quarters of Ringling back when he was just Ringling and new. Apparently this was home for the brothers. I didn’t want to stop though. For one thing I’ve been to the Sarasota museums several times. We also just went thru circus stuff at the House at the Rock. Lastly, I don’t really like the circus (this was recently confirmed in May when M. and I went). I like the idea of the circus. The romance of it. But the reality - not so much. So driving past the location, seeing the animal houses was both cool and sad. I can’t imagine the animals stuck in those houses especially in a Wisconsin winter.


After the circus, we were on to the International Crane Foundation. A place where animals are treated much better than at any circus. They house injured cranes from around the world. Gorgeous birds.


At which point, it was late enough to find a hotel and dinner, so we drove up the road a bit to Wisconsin Dell, where there are more water parks than any where else on earth and all I can say right now about Wisconsin Dells is Oh. My. God. We found a hotel that didn’t have a water park, a water fall in the pool or a giant fiberglass animal. This will continue tomorrow…``