Kyle in Front of Things

By: goodislove

Jan 09 2012

Tags: blue whale, frank lloyd wright, wall carpet

Category: Wisconsin

2 Comments

Going away from home gives you the chance to see your home through new eyes each time you return.

“What was the name of that place people come from all over the world to visit that I never got to visit?”

“Oh yeah, House on the Rock (or just insert any other random attraction that doesn’t attract your attention even though it’s only an hour away).”

At one point and time I thought of my random moves from Wisconsin to Guatemala to New Mexico to Germany as a sneaky way to give family and friends excuses to travel. Travel is more tempting when you have someone living there. I now realize it works in the other direction as well.

Each time I find myself back in Wisconsin I end up taking a spin through Roadside America or Nerdy Day Trips (they need your help to log more great crap!) with my family or friends. Later we end up in a car to some place we’d always heard about or seen in ads for but never actually visited.

And so on this day we found ourselves on the road to  House on the Rock, which is a house built on a rock. Though the wall-to-wall carpet has lost a lot of its luster and most of its pile, the home stands up as an interesting tribute an architect wannabe who – after being slighted by Frank Lloyd Wright – decided to try and show him up by creating a wandering, somewhat misinformed, awesome tree fort bolted to a rock spire.

And as if that wasn’t enough, he went on collecting oodles of objects to pile up in warehouses hidden under the trees and eventually created an almost completely contextless museum of mirth and delight that culminates in what is purportedly the world’s largest carousel. Oh yeah, there’s also this giant fanciful (as they describe it) sea creature that is basically a blue whale with teeth.*

*Though much of this may sound somewhat snarky, this whole damn show is without doubt worth the price of admission. Please go now. Oh yeah, and they filmed 10,000 Maniacs cover of the song “More than this” here too.