House on the Rock

This weekend we took a much needed break from doing things around the house (especially since we have a two week vacation coming up that we plan on getting all our unfinished projects done), and took our friend to the House on the Rock in Spring Green, WI.

For those of you that are not from Wisconsin or do not currently live in or around Wisconsin, the House on the Rock really means nothing to you. So let me explain. This is a house that was built on and in a cliff in Southeastern WI by Alex Jordan, JR. It's a Japanese style house with a large collections of gardens and out buildings and just plain crazy stuff. A lot of people think that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it was not. It is just located near Taliesin, FLW's house and studio, thus the confusion of many people. The house is full of crazy and colorful items. Most of which were made by Jordan himself. There is a new section of the house that explains the history of everything, but we didn't spend a lot of time there. I mean we weren't there for a history lesson, we were there for the craziness.

Here is an example of what I mean. It's a large musical instrument playing "thing". The house if full of things like this. Rooms of instruments that look like they play themselves. It has a section that look like old timey streets and shop fronts. There is the infinity room that juts out into the landscape. Then there is this.....

A massive whale fighting an octopus.  Crazy, crazy stuff.  It's really hard to explain to people, you kinda just have to go see it for yourself.  My friend, K, was really excited to go and was lost for words when we first started through the house.  She said that everything we had told her about this place couldn't prepare her for what she was seeing.  It's that crazy.

Here J and I are posing for a nice Christmas photo.  And of course he can't just take a regular photo, he has to make it crazy.  Don't worry, we got a good one as well.  Though, he keeps telling me this is going to be the picture on our Christmas cards.  

And here I am in front of what they call the "World's largest indoor carousel" I'm not sure if it is, but it is pretty crazy. The animals are really beautiful and it doesn't include one horse. I tried to get a picture of it, but I think between my fatigue and the confusion of my camera, I just couldn't get a descent picture.

This is one of my favorite carousel animals. The llama. It's so cute and even has eyelashes.  This one isn't on the carousel, so I was able to get a good picture.  Look at how cute he is.

And then we finished our trip with some homemade fudge from the gift shoppe and some lunch back in Madison.  It was a fun and exhausting trip.  But I'm glad we went.  We had so much fun showing off one of the most crazy things Wisconsin has to offer.

But now it's back to the grind.  One more week of work for us and then two weeks off.  It sounds nice, but I know we'll be working hard.  Now I'm off, have a great Monday.