Little Road Trip

My last little road trip was a miniature one in comparison to the last couple of road trips I blogged about (those trips here: Southwest Road Trip Compilation and Road Trip of the Confederacy Compilation). But this time I stuck a little closer to home on a more meager budget to hit some of my favorite oddball spots just north of here: The House on the Rock in Southern Wisconsin and Matthiessen State Park in Northern Illinois.


The House on the Rock:

The House on the Rock is, to say the least, a strange place. Part historical oddity and part tourist trap. Wikipedia has the general rundown of the history behind the place, the people behind the place, and the dispute behind how far one should be able to bend the truth to create illusions that spark the imagination.

From a distance, the house appears to be little more than an odd overlook of some sort, pointing out over a valley (click any of the pictures to enlarge):



But after one drives down the winding driveway through a tunnel of trees and gigantic ornaments that appear to derive from some ancient culture of the orient, the place quickly seems to get a bit of an odd vibe.

The house itself is meshed with the rock foundation, with rock forming some of the walls and floors that might remind someone of a science fiction scene where someone teleports into the same space as another object. And it's certainly not friendly to tall people, so watch your head. The show stopper is the infinity room though which is the most visible aspect from the distance:



The idea of course is that the room is supposed to appear to go on forever:



The point of the room, shown below, is essentially an optical illusion using clever spacing:



A window in the floor allows folks to look down at the treetops below where the room extends over the valley:



And when you sneak up to the roof you can see that the view is pretty decent:



The house itself, and especially the rest of the complex, is full of automated music machines that range from individual music boxes (often with real instruments being mechanically played by various apparatuses) or entire rooms:





There are also various collections of "stuff"... usually unusual "stuff"... like old or strangely designed guns:





You can also find suits of armor, galleries of toys, oriental themed art, royal crowns, usually interspersed with some large examples or mockups of entire old shops, locomotives, circus parades, etc. One of the more intriguing collections is of seafaring... from massive models of ships of almost every era and related artifacts, news clippings, and so on... to whales.

This sign means what it says:



After going down a hallway of various depictions of various whales and seeing the beginnings of the seafaring collection, suddenly one finds themselves in a room with a larger than life whale in the middle of it... thrashing as it fights a giant octopus:



It's pretty much impossible for me to get a picture that truly shows how big this thing is since my camera doesn't have any wide angle lens (and it might not help that much even if it did). Some reference points might help though. These birds aren't teeny, and that metal to the left of the frame in this picture below is the walkway on the next story up. And yes, that's just the whale's tail there:





Here's a close up of the squid attacking the whale:



His tentacles can be seen here reaching over the whale's body and fin:





The whale appears annoyed:



But he might just have a french sailor... err... frog in his throat (yes that's a life size boat in his mouth):



And while going up the levels around the whale room, one can check out the various ship models, like this massive one of the titanic that I couldn't quite get all into the frame:







One of the other favorite rooms is the carousel room, which at this point of meandering through the various exhibits, one should probably assume is going to also be a very strange place. One would not be disappointed:



A carousel with no horses? Yup. Almost everything else though:



The thing is almost constantly in motion, with very unusual lighting, so out of my attempts, this was the best picture I got of the thing. The room itself, other than having a massive carousel of strange things spinning around also has angels dangling from the rafters, walls lined with unusual figures and carousel animals... and of course automated music machines, including these massive booming drums (the mannequins seen next to them are life size) :







Here's the Carousel in motion from a youtube someone posted... you can hear the automated drums booming away with the music partway through:



Like I said... strange place. From there if you aren't already feeling a bit disoriented, the next room will certainly help as you follow various paths that seem to cross, criss-cross, go every which way, and might have been inspired by some M.C. Escher concept:





But if you need to relax after that, or the massive carousels of dolls, or any of the other freaky things you encounter, you can have the orchestra play you a tune to relax... automated, of course:





Of course the oddities certainly don't end there either, so you might as well get used to some of your new friends:







It's not all bad. The Japanese Garden area is actually quite pleasant:



Here's a photo-chopped wider view of it:



If you're ever in the Madison, WI area... it's definitely an interesting place to visit.


Political Aside:

While on the road I saw many road projects in action and typically introduced by a sign just like this:



Made me wonder a couple of things. If the typical resentment of having to wait for road construction delays will create a negative association to the ARRA plan and associated policies... and another on a more "bean counter" level: I've seen the full color Recovery.org logo on everything from forms to signs now. Typically such full color stuff costs extra but perhaps the technology is improving enough for it to be an insignificant issue? It's hard to imagine that even an otherwise insignificant cost wouldn't add up with form after form, sign after sign, department of redundancy dept. government we have though.

Also saw more trucks hauling gigantic fan blades down the interstate for windfarms like this one I spotted from a rest stop:



Wind energy seems to be picking up steam in Illlinois. A fairly sizeable windfarm has been going up down the interstate from me for a while and the semi-truck traffic carrying gigantic fan blades was interesting to see becoming a regular occurence.

I'd still like to see more nuclear power as well, but these kind of generators seem fairly reasonable too as part of the solution.

Speaking of nature and the environment... part two of the pictures...


Matthiessen State Park Dells Area:

This spot in Northern Illinois is one of my favorite local area "get away" places, yet I still manage to misspell it every time I try to talk about it. I've always pronounced it "Math'-uh-sun" though I've also heard it pronounced "Matt'-uh-sun" and "Math-eye'-uh-sun." Beats me, perhaps it's none of the above and my midwestern accent will never quite get it right.

It's very near the better known Starved Rock State Park but it's worth the look-see if you've never visited. The State of Illinois has information on how to get there and what you should know about it here: Matthiessen State Park Homepage. One absolute must that seems to be missing or at least under-emphasized though is BUG SPRAY. That should probably be a given for anyone used to dealing with areas around Illinois waters in the warmer months, but just in case, do not forget BUG SPRAY. Skeeters are vicious.

The park is essentially a free stairmaster as well, so make sure any steps you're going down are also ones you're sure you'll be able to make back up. The first steps... the happy view:



The lower dells trail takes you down into the dells that lead out to the Vermillion River one direction, and up the stream towards a really nifty cove the other:





The walls of the dells are covered with various plant life and thankfully a lot of birds who help pick off the bugs. You'll see them swooping here and there fairly regularly:







The cove itself has a little waterfall where the stream drops from the upper dells to the lower dells, a small lake, some little caves you can crawl around in, and on the other side is a massive stone overhang with trees growing right up to the edge way above your head:





This is yet another spot where it is hard to get the size depicted with pictures, though I was able to pull it off fairly well once in this older picture (that's me!):



The little caves are fun to crawl through too, and lead to a unique little spot to view the waterfall:







Various mineral deposits have formed over time, creating some amazing color patterns on the rocks. The "Devil's Paintbox" has several different examples all in the same place:





Not all the bugs are annoying fortunately. This little guy let me get close enough for a close up in spite of the massive amounts of bug spray I had on me:





After that the fumes must have gotten to him though, he became a flutterby.

The upper dells are between Matthiessen Lake and the lower dells with even more to explore. My favorite spot though is the little waterfall near the lake:



The water is extremely shallow and clear here and generally free from sediment, so you're essentially standing on very smooth rock. The mist from the falls is a nice way to cool down after hiking for a while. Sometimes you'll see kids toss their socks and shoes for a while to play under the waterfall. Adults sometimes do the same... or if nobody else is around, sneak a romantic smooch under it.



Hiking back does have its definite downside, though... here are those same steps from the begginning... but from the unhappy view:



After going down into and up out of the dells a few times and the hiking in between, this part can get a wee bit ugly. But at least there are some spots to sit... or at least die comfortably:



I piled the bug spray on thick this time out and am happy to report zero mosquito bites or any other successful bug attack during the venture. Being that it's one of my favorite places near home, it was certainly a happy (though exhausting) birthday activity.

I was going to get this blog done last night, but in between the dishwasher calamity and sheer exhaustion, I was zonked even before the 10 o'clock news. Although I did get in a least a couple sips of my Old Forrester Birthday Bourbon before then.

I must be getting old... heh...