House on the Rock, Green Spring, WI

June 25, 2022

Up until my mother-in-law, Sue, mentioned it to us, I’d never even heard of House on the Rock. She said we should go there though.

So we did.

I was absolutely stumped on how this post was going to go. We are at the main attraction, House on the Rock, for over three hours, and I wound up taking over FIVE HUNDRED pictures and videos. There’s absolutely no way I was going to recount the visit in any kind of detail.

Read on, and I’ll sum it up the best I can and direct you to a video that will help illustrate what we encountered in Green Spring, Wisconsin.

Amana Colonies

Brandy had been offered a new job that she started on Monday, June 27. Her last day at her old job was Thursday, June 23. Having that Friday off, she booked a couple of medical exams in Cedar Rapids in the early morning. I took the day off so I could go with her.

After the first of those exams were done, we took a drive down to Ronneburg Restaurant in the Amana Colonies for breakfast.

There were only a few cars in the parking lot when we got there at 9:30 and there was practically no one in the restaurant. We were seated immediately and given menus.

We each ordered coffee and water and perused the menu. Brandy landed on the Ronneburg Choice # 2 (ham, eggs (over easy), fried potatoes and toast) and I got the #3 (same thing but with sausage instead of ham (and scrambled instead of over easy.)) I also tacked on a short stack of Amana pancakes, which are billed as being thin style.

Most of our food showed up shortly. We both got our Ronneburg Choices but I was missing my pancakes. Our server said they were coming shortly, and that she’d be back with some jam for the toast.

We started in on our dishes. Our toast was toasted so completely differently from each others’ it was comical. Brandy’s was given toast that was nearly burnt, mine had taken almost no color.

When the jam came, I took note of how thin it was. It was a decidedly spoonable consistency, yet I still tried to use a knife to spread it.

The eggs were rather tasty, as was the sausage but the potatoes were a little on the bland side. Salt and pepper helped a little, but onions really would have done the trick.

Just as we were getting ready to finish our plates, my pancakes arrived. Sure enough, they were pretty thin. Not as thin as crepes but close. Following closely behind was another plate of pancakes that Brandy didn’t order. Apparently the cook messed up and made too many pancakes so we got them.

I spread butter and poured syrup over my short stack and dug in. The edges were a little crispy and the inside was more chewy than your standard buttermilk pancake, but not chewy in a bad way. The flavor was great, even to the point where Brandy actually liked them (she doesn’t usually like pancakes.) She got through about a third of hers and I finished about half of mine before we threw in the towel and asked for the check.

Once we paid, we ran across the street to the General Store in search of a magnet. We found a great little mid-century inspired piece that I loved and while browsing around, I saw a shelf of hot sauces and salsas. I took a peek through and found a salsa billed as “Chile Relleno” salsa. I picked up a jar of that and later in the day discovered that this is the best salsa I’ve found while living in Iowa. It’s no Sadie’s by any stretch but it was very good anyway.

We finished out Friday with a couple more exams for Brandy before heading home to pack up and get ready for our trip.

To Wisconsin!

We didn’t know whether were were going to spend the night in a hotel Saturday night when we left. We packed everything up just in case though, including a change of clothes, hygiene and my CPAP.

House on the Rock opens at 9:00. We wanted to get there right around opening time so we planned on heading out around 6:30.

I woke up Saturday morning to a grey and overcast sky with light rain. Brandy didn’t get up until after 6:30 so we didn’t make it out quite when we wanted to. As she got ready, I packed up the car and prepared food for our trip – some fruit, tuna salad, yogurt, and the like. I went to the bank to pull out some cash just in case and filled the gas tank.

By the time she was ready and the car was packed, it was just after 7:30. The GPS said we’d get there right after 10:15.

We headed east on I-80 for a few miles, exiting at US Hwy 151 north, through Anamosa, Dubuque and Mineral Point, then, just under 100 miles later, branched off on to WI Hwy 23 for the last dozen miles or so.

Deep Dive Into Nature

As soon as we go onto WI-23, we passed through the thriving metropolis of Dodgeville, WI. Upon exiting the small town, we passed by Governor Dodge State Park, then dove deeper into a green corridor of trees. We finally happened upon the sign that announced our arrival at House on the Rock.

We made a left turn onto the drive to the House and were immediately under a lush canopy of green, rain falling from the trees over our heads. Shortly upon our entrance to the drive, we were greeted with what I can only describe as giant sculpted urns on the side of the road. They were covered with dragons, both winged and unwinged, crawling over the face of the giant sculptures. The urns were adorned with little notches in which were brightly colored flowers contrasting against the brass patina.

We passed a couple of these large pieces of art, along with other metalwork sculptures depicting cranes, or some other long-necked birds. Soon, the drive opened onto a large, crowded parking lot. We found a recently vacated spot fairly close to the entrance of the attraction and made our way through the mist to the front door.

We had purchased our ticket online the day before so we walked up to the ticket booth and showed our confirmation before being granted access to house.

Now, here’s the part where I’m really going to struggle. The house is just so big and there’s so much to see (again, I took over 500 pictures and videos) that recounting everything just will not happen.

Instead, I’m going to direct you to this video by a YouTuber I follow, The Carpetbagger, who presents the tour in an easily digestible 47 minutes. Watch here:

I think Jacob does a fantastic job at hitting the high points of the tour, and spending the time to recount what he gives you in 47 minutes would take me years (it’s already taken me three months to break out of my paralysis to get this done.) Jacob sums it up perfectly when he says, “…it’s really… hard to fully explain the magnitude of House on the Rock without just showing you.”

Yup, you got that right buddy!

A couple of the areas I’d like to highlight as my favorite:

• The Men’s Room in the welcome building – Even the bathrooms are fully themed and decorated!
• The Gate House – Very low ceilings, amazing seating areas and fireplaces, and red carpet on EVERYTHING.
• Infinity Room – The “bridge to nowhere”, the narrow hall lined with over 3,000 pieces of glass, extends 218 feet above the valley.
• The Three Story Tall Bookcase – It’s a bookcase that’s three stories tall. Pretty self explanatory. You wind up passing by it a couple more times on the tour. You can see one of those times here and another here.
• The Streets of Yesterday – This area was very reminiscent of Meow Wolf for me, bringing an outdoor street scene indoors.
• The Carousel – Billed as the world’s largest carousel that turns, the carousel is 35 feet tall, 80 feet in diameter and weighs in at 36 tons. The carousel features over 200 ridable animals, and not one of them is a horse. Whaaaaat… (the horses are indeed in the room though…)
• The Organ Room – This was, far and away, my absolute favorite part of House on the Rock. There are indeed many organs strewn throughout the room, but they are intermingled with what appears to be distillery equipment, giant clock parts, and odd bridges crisscrossing above your head, many of which have mannequins peering eerily down at you.

• Paired with the massive red glass chandeliers and the recurring theme of bringing the outdoors in, in the form of trees lining the path, the room is like a huge fever dream. I felt like MC Escher and Salvador Dali had a love child and this room was the result.
  Please be sure you watch the video for the re-entry into the Organ Room after the break to Inspiration Point, then the three story tall doll carousel.
• Japanese Garden – As you exit the exhibit and make your way to the exit of House on the Rock, you take a brief stroll through a wonderful Japanese Garden. There’s also one as you enter the attraction, but Jacob didn’t cover it in his video (I do have a couple of pictures of that one in my Photo Diary.)

As you can see, there’s a lot to see at House on the Rock. If I was pressed into trying to describe it to someone, I would say, it’s like Tinkertown, on steroids. There’s a ton of interactivity, the attraction is broken up into various areas and themed differently across the board.

One way the attraction describes itself is it’s a collection of Alex Jordan’s collections. There are numerous collections, including guns, dolls, cameras, tobacco paraphernalia (lighters, spittoons, and the like), even cars.

It was an absolute blast and I definitely want to return, especially during haunt season when they add scare actors to the organ room!

As I mentioned, we did spend over three hours at House on the Rock. By the time we got to that second Japanese garden, we were pretty bushed and we had to sit on a bench to rest our barking dogs. After a sufficient rest, we pulled up and continued on to the exit that included, of course, a gift shop. We ducked in and picked up a magnet before heading out to depart.

We Went Home

We ultimately wound up going home after House on the Rock. It was early enough that we’d make it home at a reasonable hour so we started our trek back right away.

About halfway on the journey is Dubuque. We pulled off and explored the border town a bit, finding a wealth of street art along the way. I snapped some pics of the art and some cool looking buildings before hopping back on the highway and finishing the journey home.

Conclusion

Our trip to House on the Rock in Green Spring, Wisconsin, was absolutely fantabulous. Part museum, part art installation, part Tinkertown, part Meow Wolf, it was a perfect destination for me. I feel like I could walk through it a hundred more times and find something new every time.

It’s no wonder I wound up with over 500 pics and vids.

Speaking of, that is part of the reason why it’s taken me three months to get this post up. There is no way I was posting all 500+ of those pictures in my Photo Diary. It took quite a while to go through them all and pare them down. Ultimately, I wound up picking just under 100, which is still a ton.

There has been SOOOOOOOO much between then and now that I need to post about. Next up, I’ll make a post just generalizing what’s been going on these last couple months, then I will have a couple of more detailed posts about a couple of the trips we’ve been on.

In the meantime, don’t forget to head over to my Photo Diary and check out the pictures from this trip.

And until my next post, I leave you with this quote:

The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark

John Muir

As always, thank you for stopping by. I appreciate you.

-Phil