House on the Rock

On Sunday we went to one of the weirdest places in Wisconsin- if not the World. House on the Rock in Dodgeville is an eclectic selection of things, to say the least. The founder of the house moved there in the 40s in order to build his dream house. People heard about it and started to come for a look. In order to discourage them he charged an admission fee which was high for its time. It didn't stop them but it did mean that he never had to work again.

The actual house is a maze of living rooms, sofas and fireplaces all in dimly lit spendour.



Beyond the house is the actual collection which goes from a papier mache octopus lifting a blue whale in the air- more than life sized, the whale is the largest 'sea creature' in the World. It is hard to describe- as is the whole house- and even harder to photograph. And believe me that we tried!

There is a streets of yesteryear display of full sized houses. But my favourite is the infinity room

a long corridor tapering to a point, suspended in the air and sticking out over 200 feet from the cliff face- it does tend to wobble when filled with people in an alarming manner. But it offers great views of the countryside



The original owner of the house eventually sold it to a friend of his but they continued to expand the collection until his death and beyond. They have the World's largest carousel and it doesn't contain a single horse!

And more than enough scary dolls



There was a mannequin orchestra, full animated, a knitted village, a room full of doll houses, a further room full of toy zoos. It was all a little mental. And exhausting by the end.

On the way to Dodgeville we stopped at Mt Horeb, the self styled troll capital of the World. Not sure about that but this little Norwegian-based town did have some great trolls dotted around the town. I would post a photo of a great wooden troll statue but blogger won't seem to let me and I have exceeded my flickr limit again this month. Bummer.

So Sunday was a busy day and we rewarded ourselves with a lie-in on Monday. That is not to say that we didn't do anything yesterday, on the contrary, we went to the Miller Brewery in the afternoon. Our guide was not the perkiest guide around and we were a bit upset when he left 11 of us standing out on the street when the door to the beer cave closed and we were unable to get in. But there was some consolation in the fact that the tour was free and so was the beer at the end. They even let us send some postcards for free.

Last night we got some ice cream from Dairy Queen and watched the planes leave Milwaukee airport before going to play some really bad bowling. The bowling alley was interesting- it was the first one that I have ever been to where you have to add up the scores yourself. It was partway through the first game that we realised we didn't really know how the whole scoring thing worked. Ah well, we had fun and who cares who wins anyway?