House on the Rock, Spring Green, Wisconsin

On Monday we packed up and left Oshkosh.  It was only a little over 100 miles to our next destination: Spring Green, Wisconsin which is near the House on the Rock.  This is a huge, strange house which was built on a rock outcropping near the Wisconsin River.  The building began in 1945, and the builder, Alex Jordan, continued adding onto it for decades.

We walked on paths through the buildings which totaled over two miles!  There are huge collections of doll houses, ship models, all kinds of machines with gears, Asian artifacts, coin-operated machines, and lots of calliope-type music machines, some of which fill a huge room.  There are Tiffany-style lamps, stained glass windows and carved wood Asian screens everywhere.

The "Infinity room" is glass-walled and extends to a point 218 feet from the main building, 15 stories above ground.

From Wikipedia: "The "house" itself is atop Deer Shelter Rock, a column of rock which stands in a forest nearby. Additions were made to the original structure and other buildings added over the course of several decades. The complex now features "The Streets of Yesterday", a re-creation of an early twentieth century American town; "The Heritage of the Sea", featuring nautical exhibits and a 200-foot model of a fanciful whale-like sea creature; "The Music of Yesterday", a huge collection of automatic music machines; and what the management bills as "the world's largest indoor carousel", among other attractions. The carousel at the House on the Rock features 269 carousel animals, 182 chandeliers, over 20,000 lights, and hundreds of mannequin angels hanging from the ceiling. The carousel has no horses. Many of the bathrooms are decorated with strange objects, including mannequins, flowers, and preserved animals."

Japanese garden on the grounds

There were lots of these flower-filled vases.

Entrance to the Infinity room

This is a wall in one of the ladies' rooms.

Faberge eggs.

"Streets of Yesterday"

For weight-loss...read the label!!! Yikes!

Giant octopus fighting the whale

The whale.  Compare it to the walkway beside it for size.
There was no way to get a picture of the whole thing!

Tile-covered Rolls Royce

Giant carousel
It's too big to get in one picture!

Huge organ

There were rooms of circus models.

Full-sized circus band wagon

Orchestra to play with the circus wagon

That's the Infinity room from a distance

Zoe taking it easy