We woke up in Beloit Wisconsin. Beloit, Wisconsin is home to the Angel Museum (which holds the world's largest collection of Angels), and the World's largest train engine replica. Since we had been charged by our friend Susan to send her a postcard of the World's largest something, I thought it our duty to visit both places. Besides. I felt like we had and were going to have a lot of angels on the way in different visages.
The Angel Museum was not large, which was probably good, but it was nice, and the ladies there were nice. There was no outside photography allowed, but they took our picture by some of the angels anyway
(Me playing the travel angel that Ria is praying to.)
We then saw the World's largest Train engine replica, which is not all that exciting.It was on a bridge over the Rock River, and we learned that Rock River had flooded a number of times recently. It was one high river. You could see the floods as we were leaving Beloit. They were not as bad as Iowa, but it had definitely flooded as there was water on grasslands that didn't look used to being under water.
The next few stops on our trip were recommendation of Dave O.We stopped at Taliesin, the home of Frank Lloyd Wright. We went to the visitors station and did not take the tour because it was ridiculously expensive.
But we got postcards, which is what was important anyway.We had a picnic lunch in the trees near the Wisconsin River. Ria added pita chips and raisins to my recipe of tortilla, hummus, carrots & celery, and proclaimed it delicious.
We then traveled on to the house on the rock.
I am in firm agreement with Ria that only Neil Gaiman (American Gods) can give even an utterly decent description of the House on the Rock. However my best description is that it is a collection of EVERYTHING, including oddly shaped rooms.
I mean this is what you see driving up.
Then right inside you come across this statue, and can look out on the garden.
Just so you know they are still building this place and changing it. I think they will be doing that forever. SO then you start on the tour, and it's good to have a friendly wizard point out your way.
I will not go into details of all the tours, but will eventually post all my pictures (671 total from the trip) somewhere, instead I will do some highlights, like the infinity room, which stretches and thins out and has tons of windows.
(an outside view)
(insdie before entering)
(A view from a glass covered spot which had me imagining someone out on the glass it letting go and falling onto wisconsin from an unlucky height. )The first tour ended with a spot you could look out over Wisconsin.
The second tour held nautical stuff, a mechanical fortune telling lady, random modes of transportation, creepy clowns, creepy elves, creepy masks, (creep factor varied based on your own personal childhood fears) hot air balloons, burma shave signs, lots of musical things that played themselves for a couple of tokens, and lots of little boxes of moving mechanical things that did stuff for a token or two. Here are just a few of the pictures.
It ended with the world's largest carousel, which had a ridiculous number of mounts, all of which were different, none of which were full horses.
The third tour included creepy statues in the bathroom, inspiration point which included quotes such as "Creativity requires the ability to let go of certainties"- Erich Fromm, circus stuff, a carousel of dolls, doll houses, ridiculously large pipe organs, an Asian section, an armory, the crown jewels section, multiple other things I'm sure I'm forgetting, and a different section of the garden.
We left house on the rock about a little before the time they closed. I think we spent 3-4 hours.We ate at a little roadside diner, because it had breakfast all day, and when you are eating with a vegetarian in wisconsin, breakfast all day is a good sign.
The people there were very nice. All throughout Wisconsin it was pretty and the people were nice. (some more of Wisconsin being pretty.)
We drove as far as we could into Minnesota, and slept at campground there. Thankfully this one did have night registration.Next Up: South Dakota
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