He told me that his dad used to fly the SR-71 and that there was a memorial bench at the museum right next to the SR-71 on display at the museum.
He also sent a picture of his dad ready to fly. Dad is on the left.
He also had a great picture of dad at the museum.
These pictures reminded me that all of these neat airplanes we were looking at are more than just old airplanes.
These airplanes represent millions of courageous people who built, maintained and operated them in unbelievably difficult and dangerous circumstances and that these patriots did it for us without ever looking back or asking for anything but a thank you.
Thank you Colonel Daubs and all of those who have served.
After leaving Dubuque, Iowa, we had a short drive into Wisconsin where we planned on spending most of the day visiting our favorite tourist attraction of all time, near Spring Green, Wisconsin.
House on the Rock.
This is going to be a difficult museum to tell you about because it has as much stuff as Pioneer Village but it is all organized and presented in a much more elegant way.
In order to understand just how amazing this place is, I will tell you the story of how this amazing place came to be.
Once upon a time, sometime in the 1930's, a young man named Alex Jordan Jr. was growing up in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Alex was a loner and at some point he discovered a large rock located a few miles from town at the top of a ridge line in the middle of a forest.
At first, Alex would climb to the top of the rock and sit and stare out over the beautiful valley below. Later, he put a tent on top of the rock and would camp there as an adventure, cooking his meals on a hibachi before having to return to Spring Green for school and later work.
When the tent blew away in a storm, Alex decided to build something more permanent. He took stones from a nearby quarry along with sand and cement and began to build a more substantial and weatherproof structure on the rock.
The construction presented a few problems like getting the building materials up onto the rock. In the beginning, Alex put things in a wicker basket that he tied to his back and then climbed up the side of the rock. That system wasn't very efficient and was soon improved to include some type of a hoist to make lifting the heavy construction materials a little easier.
As the construction continued and the project started getting bigger and bigger, another problem became apparent.
Alex did not own the rock!
Alex eventually resolved this problem by leasing the rock from the actual property owner for $7.50 per year for 40 years. That arrangement was eventually superseded when Alex was able to purchase the rock and the property around it.
In the early 1950's, when Alex was in his 30's, construction began in earnest. Helpers were hired and the house expanded.
As construction continued, a rope ladder that Alex used to make climbing up the rock easier was replaced by a stairway and eventually by a ramp.
As the house developed, people would stop by and ask to see what Alex was building. These people became such a bother and took up so much of their construction time that Alex decided that if people wanted to see the house that bad that they could and would pay an admission price. The next thing he knew, Alex had a substantial revenue stream that helped further the construction project.
Here we see Alex laying brick on top of the rock. Notice the 90 pound bags of cement and the milk can used to hold the water necessary to make mortar.
Alex was a big man, 6'4" tall and around 250 pounds and was well suited for this heavy construction.
As the tourists continued to visit, Alex made lots of friends and they would play a role in the future.
As mentioned earlier, Alex was a loner and was in love with his rock. He did have a female friend who was his lifelong companion, although they never married. Her name was Jennie Olson.
Alex did not like to travel and that is where the friends came into play. We will hear more about that later but lets get started on our visit to the House on the Rock.
Everything about the house was done on a grand scale and that begins as you enter the huge parking lot. The parking lot is huge because the House on the Rock is the #1 tourist attraction in Wisconsin.
This seems like an amazing fact because in all of our travels and discussions with other RVer's who travel all over the country, we hardly ever talk to anyone that has ever heard of House on the Rock.
As you wind your way down the long entrance driveway, you see lots of large, decorative flower pots and sculptures.
At first glance , it looks like someone made a metal sculpture of some kind of bird. Closer examination reveals just how creative they were in utilizing all kinds of common scrap.
Pliers, sink drain, starter ring gears, old horns and who knows what else was used on this sculpture.
When you saw the flower pots in the preceding picture, you really don't get a feel for the grand scale.
Here is our motorhome next to a flower pot.
This pot looks pretty big.
Depending on how you frame the picture, you can get the REAL size.
We first visited the House on the Rock in 2004. Even though Alex Jordan died in 1989, construction has continued and the displays continue to expand.
This is the new entrance to the visitor center and ticket sales counter.
After buying our tickets, we looked around the new displays that we had not seen before in the visitors center. We also watched a short video about the life of Alex Jordan.
Then, we started up the ramp, just like visitors from long ago, toward the front door.
About halfway up the ramp, you come to a small structure called the Gate House. Inside the Gate House is a small fireplace and some couch like furniture built into the rock.
This is a photo of Alex Jordan.
You are getting a hint from this picture of just how big this house is going to be.
It is fair to say that this whole structure started out more like a tree house than a world class museum. You can see that there isn't much decoration in the previous picture.
As the structure grew, it ended up being quite large with big, empty rooms. Alex was well read and had many ideas of how he would like to furnish the rooms.
We have all heard of a player piano. One of the things that Alex knew about and we had never heard of was a player orchestra.
It turns out that a player orchestra is a large group of orchestra instruments that are powered by compressed air and receive their instructions from a paper roll like a player piano.
Since Alex didn't like to travel and he spent every spare minute working on the House, he didn't have time to travel and look for items to furnish his House.
Instead, he called many of the friends he had met over the years. He mentioned to them that he had heard of a thing called a player orchestra and asked them to keep their eyes open during their travels and try to find him a player orchestra. If they found one, he asked them to purchase it and send it to him and he would send them a check for it.
The next thing he knew, he had a whole bunch of player orchestras. After looking them over, he decided that he could display one of the smaller orchestras in the gate house.
Here is a video of that orchestra playing "Bolero" in the Gate House. (For all of you old farts, click on the arrow to play the video and turn on your sound)
You leave the Gate House and continue up the ramp to the front door of the main house. This is a picture looking down the ramp from the front door toward the Gate House.
Suzie at the front door.
The entire facility is set up as a one way self guided tour. They have things arranged so that you enter one room and then exit that room to the next and so on through the house.
This is just inside the front door and is a hallway leading to the first room.
Note the carpet covering the ceiling. Alex Jordan was 6'4" tall and I am 6'3" tall and I had to stoop as I walked through many of the rooms to keep from dragging my head against the carpeted ceiling.
We think the ceilings in some of the rooms were intentionally made low to give a more cozy feeling and it really worked.
This is one of the library rooms. The flash has brightened the picture but it spoils the atmosphere of the room. All of the rooms are very dark and mysterious, and it is very mystical.
This is one of the many fireplaces. Shouldn't have any trouble getting this one lit with the big bellows.
Another den like area.
This hallway connected two rooms and integrated a large piece of the rock.
This is another fireplace.
There were little nooks and crannies all over and they were all filled with something interesting.
This was another player orchestra. All of the player orchestras worked and your admission price included a handful of tokens that you could use to play them.
This is another dark room full of all kinds of interesting do dads.
This is the same photo after lightening with photoshop.
As Alex Jordan was trying to furnish the house, he decided he needed a grand piano. He called his people and said he wanted them to keep their eyes open for a nice piano and if they found one, send it to him and he would send them a check.
That is how he got the nice piano in the previous picture, but it also got a whole bunch of other pianos from other friends. Rather than pick the best one and get rid of the rest, Alex put the spare pianos and player orchestras into big storage buildings on the property and kept building.
This is another cozy little room with the rock on one side and a bank of windows looking out over the valley below.
This is the stairway leading to the observation deck on the roof.
From the roof, you can see one of the warehouses that Alex stored all of the stuff that he couldn't fit into the house.
As you continue through the house, there was still lots to see.
Another library
A very low ceiling.
Just when you think this is the best treehouse you have ever seen, you come to the infinity room.
Alex wanted to build a room out into space and finally figured out how to do it.
Here is a drawing of his idea.
The infinity room is accessed directly off of one of the large rooms in the house.
The room starts at the doorway where the man in the red sweatshirt is standing. Once through the doorway, you walk out into space. The infinity room is made in a tapered shape so that it looks like it goes on forever.
Suzie is at the end of the walkway and the rest is really an optical illusion into infinity.
The house has been reconfigured and expanded since our first visit in 2004.
Now, after you finish the tour of the house, you follow some covered walkways to the warehouse areas where the tour continues.
You pass beautiful garden areas.
These are shots of the outside of the house.
Once you arrive at the warehouse buildings, the tour continues as if you had never left the house. Everything is beautifully displayed and organized.
By this time in the tour, it was time for a pit stop and when you go to the House on the Rock, you must make it a point to visit ALL of the restrooms.
In this mens room, I saw a urinal like I have never seen before. I was really glad I was the only person in the restroom at the time I was using it but I guess if someone else would have come in, we could have had a real face to face conversation.
In another restroom, the great outdoors was the theme.
There were displays of everything imaginable or collectable. This is the beginning of the guns.
Ivory
In this closeup of the previous picture, you can see a portrait of the owner carved into the pistol grip.
There was an entire room dedicated to scrimshaw and ivory carving.
Closeup of the tower portion of the previous picture showing the detail.
This is a piece of tusk.
Turtle shells and large teeth.
You have to remember that all of these displays are the result of Alex contacting his friends and asking them to send him something that he was interested in and then Alex receiving a flood of items from all of his contacts. He kept it all and it is here for us to be amazed at.
One of the most amazing things is that although this whole thing seems kind of crazy, Alex was a genius at recognizing the beauty of so many different things and then having the vision to build displays that will just blow your mind.
Alex decided that no display would be complete without a nautical representation so he built a huge room to display things from the sea.
Amazing model ships were everywhere and the detail of the craftsmen that assembled them is indescribable so we will let the pictures explain.
The room with all of the ship memorabilia was about 3 stories tall and the displays were arranged all around the walls and viewed from a ramp that wound around the walls as it ascended to the top floor.
From the top floor, you could look out a the GIANT whale that completely filled the room!!
When we first visited the House in 2004, we were actually on our way to Oshkosh, Wisconsin to visit the Experimental Aircraft Association aircraft museum. I was really looking forward to that but we had to stop at the House on the Rock because it was on our way and my parents said "YOU HAVE TO GO TO HOUSE ON THE ROCK".
Suzie had been reading to us about the House in the AAA guidebook on our way to the House. The guidebook said it was an interesting museum and to plan on at least an hour to take the self guided tour.
At that time, we were new to this traveling life and I wasn't much into museums and I told Suzie that I figured it would take us no more than 1/2 hour to run through the House on the Rock and then we would go someplace for lunch and visit Oshkosh in the afternoon.
After we got done being amazed by the whale, we headed off down a dark hallway that ended in a corridor filled with photographs.
A sign at the beginning of the long hall of photos said that Alex Jordan was not a public person and did not like to have his picture taken and the wall of pictures we were about to see were most of the known pictures of him.
As we started down the hall, I told Suzie that I was tired and hungry and had to go to the bathroom and that I couldn't believe that we had been here for over 3 hours already.
As we continued down the hall of photos, we came to a sign in the middle of the photos that said:
CONGRATULATIONS . . . . YOU ARE HALF WAY THROUGH!!
We couldn't believe it.
At the end of the hall, we went around a corner and down another short hallway and popped out at . . . . a food court!
As we were sitting at the food court eating pizza, we reflected on how much the House on the Rock had changed since our first visit in 2004.
The displays that we had visited so far were basically the same as our visits before except more items had been added and the path through the museum was a little different.
The sign that said we were halfway through was gone and that hallway was now opened up into a large display room. We wondered if we were still halfway through or if the whole thing had gotten bigger.
After our snack and a short rest, off we went to find out.
As Alex began to work full time on the House, he acquired many skilled craftsmen to help build out the structures to make more room for displays. They also helped develop displays that Alex could not acquire elsewhere.
When Alex decided that he needed a large cannon for one of his displays, they just couldn't find one out in the world that fit the bill so he had his craftsmen build him one.
His instructions were to build him a BIG cannon. This is what they came up with.
You can't really tell from the previous picture just what Alex had in mind when he ordered up a BIG cannon, so here is the picture again with my finger out of the way.
The man standing next to the cannon gives a better feel for just how BIG it really is.
In 2004, when Suzie and I first visited the House, we had not seen the book that I took the cannon picture from and on that visit, although we visited every room and display at the House, we missed seeing the cannon.
On subsequent visits, we made it a point to find the cannon and we were surprised to see that the cannon had been there in plain sight all along but because the displays are so immense, we had missed it among all of the other things in the room with the cannon.
The displays just go on and on and include such things as guns, suits of armor, replicas of the crown jewels of England, scrimshaw, doll houses, cameras, circus dioramas and just about anything else you can collect.
One of the collections included all kinds of model trains. This is a hand made train engine.
The display included examples of the hand made parts used to build the model.
Circus dioramas.
To go with the circus theme, Alex used some of the full size elephants and more mannequins for a 3 story tall display.
This was an interesting doll house. Notice how it doesn't have any walls but they hung the window frames to give it a sense of completeness.
There were hundreds of doll houses and the detail on each one was amazing.
Everybody needs a tile covered Lincoln Continental.
Note the Rolls Royce grill.
As Alex began sorting through all of his collections and organizing things for display, he realized that having large player orchestras with the instruments lying on the floor just didn't look right so he tried this.
Instruments sitting on chairs making music just didn't seem right so Alex called all of his people and asked them to keep their eyes open and if they found any mannequins, marching band uniforms, or formal attire, please send it to him and he would send them a check.
This is how that helped.
Here is a short sample of how it sounded. (Click on the arrow to play the video and turn on your sound)
Alex developed a desire to have some organs so he asked his people to send some. Notice the size of the pipes in the background.
These were the pipes from just one of the many organs in this room.
When Alex would ask his friends to send something, he would often get LOTS of of that something and Alex didn't throw anything away.
What do you do with all of the extra mannequins that showed up?
Decorate the ceiling with angels.
Then, Alex decided that the House needed a carousel, so he asked all of his people to look for old carousel horses and send them to him. They sent 100's of horses and Alex realized that carousel horses were pretty common so he wouldn't put them on HIS carousel.
What do you do with surplus carousel horses. Cover the walls with them.
Alex then set his craftsmen to work building his carousel and instructed them that it was not to have any horses.
This is what they ended up with. (Click on the arrow to play the video and turn on your sound)
It is important to note that what I have shown you here is just the tip of the iceberg at the House on the Rock. Suzie took over 900 pictures on just this visit!
The displays are so well thought out that you would think they were composed by a fleet of interior designers but all of this was the vision and genius of Alex Jordan!
We hope you get a chance to visit sometime because by reading this Blog, you have NOT seen the House on the Rock. Maybe we will see you there sometime because even though we have been there 5 times, we are sure that we will be going back.
Here is the Mikado and then you are done, (Click on the arrow to play the video and turn on your sound)
Tom & Suzie
