SO... Sunday was our second day in SW WI and we spent a bit of it sleeping in and almost missed breakfast in the hotel lobby - but we made it in time for me to have a nice belgian waffle and Mark is on a new healthy kick so he had a bagel and a piece of fruit. It's really good to see that he is learning how to eat fruit and manage his diabetes, for the last 12 years that we've been together I rarely saw him eat fruit and he always blamed the 'natural' sugars. So this is good!!!
After breakfast we headed North about 15 miles, drove through the nice little town of Dodgeville and up to The House on the Rock. This is an attraction that you pay to walk through and see all the stuff a man collected in his life. It's kind of a weird story but this son of well to do parents in Madison used to go picnic on this big rock that was in the middle of a farmer's field. One day the farmer caught him out there and instead of throwing him out, took $10 and let him stay. Years go by, the farmer decides to sell, the man buys the farm, and begins building on top of the rock. People come out to picnic, or people see construction going on and they want to go see inside, so he charged them 50 cents. The more he made on admission he realized he could finance himself and his vision so the more he spent, built, bought - including the two neighboring farms so he had space to house his staff of engineers, caretakers etc. He was into animatronics and calliopes and he has whole rooms dedicated to animated music of different themes.
It took a few hours to go through and you just get to a certain point and realize it's kinda freaky weird. Why would a grown man collect dolls and then have a whole multi level carousel built with them on display? and he has mannequins with wooden wings flying overhead in the main carousel room? and rooms and rooms of doll houses? There are some interesting collections and interesting 'made' things but there's a little sign along the way that says the collection was valued at 4.8 million dollars (it's an old sign so mark that amount up for inflation!) and you have to wonder what kind of person does this? Think how many people could be fed, clothed, etc with that money. Oh well, we paid to see it, so what does that mean? LOL.... We mostly went because Mark had gone when he was a kid and it's fun to see how your perspective changes with age (and wisdom!) so we had to do it!!
We headed back to the hotel and hung out in the pool and hot tub (mostly) and met some local people who gave us the info on dining choices in the area. (no cuisine - just good old eatin') but also pointed us towards New Glarus - more on that location on my next post!!
So we ate, and wanted to see fireworks but didn't trust the weather. We drove back to Mineral Point, had some incredible ice cream (double dips in a sugar cone!!) at the Atomic Ice Cream store on the main drag and then headed back to hotel. Sure enough right when the fireworks should have started the heavens opened up and it rained like crazy!!! We decided missing fireworks was fine this year and we lounged until it was time to go to sleep again - rest needed for Day Three of the weekend!
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