The House on the Rock & Cheesey Days

On to a new place in Wisconsin. We are going to Spring Green, WI to see The House on the Rock. This house, this very unusual house was the wild creation of Alex Jordon. He would go and picnic on this tower of a rock and gave the owner of the land $20 to lease the right to picnic on it. Later, he purchased the land and started to build and build and build and collect. I mean collect. He collected everything and lots and lots of the things he collected. He didn’t just have a gun collection for example, he had a collection a museum would want. He had the largest carousel in the world. In fact he took all of the horses off and had unusual animals put on. There are 269 hand crafted animals and 20,000 lights on this carousel. All of the horses were put up on several walls. The carousel is now valued at $4.8 million!   In one “section” of the house there was a whole 1800’s village complete with a doctors office,                a barber shop, and a photographer. And the music boxes! Not just boxes but automated music machines - orchestras and pipe organs. Hundreds of them. There was a sea section, doll section, circus section, airplane section, train section, puppet section, oriental section, British Royalty section, ivory carving section, suits of armor section…get the picture. There was so much that after 4 hours we were walking fast just to get through it all. We were overwhelmed. But the one thing that stands out is the magnificent Infinity Room that extends 218 feet into space and is 156 feet above ground and the views! Wow! He incorporated the rock into his building. So at times you would have walls and then jutting in from the walls were boulders.  He also had many waterfalls inside and gardens outside. This house is a work of art and truly amazing to see. And the weirdest thing is, other than a few covered walkways, you cannot even see the house. The way it is designed and built, you would never know it’s there. How can that be?

We left the House on the Rock and were going to a town called Monroe (camp Walmart is there). Since it was only 6 pm we unhooked Hooptie to go check out the town. We saw a sign saying “Welcome to Cheesey  Days”. Of course we needed to find out what “Cheesey Days” were. Wow! We are so lucky!  This is a really big deal here and it occurs every other year to celebrate the Swiss and cheese making heritage. The town closes off several city blocks to traffic and it is an all out party! Bands are playing, crafters are selling their creations, foodies are buying all types of food from Brats, to what else would they have at Cheesey Days, but grilled cheese sandwiches. You know you have to have desserts. I had the best Italian water ice ever. It was not icey or slushy, it was creamy, almost like ice cream. Mango. Yum!     Now we are at Cheesey Days in Wisconsin so of course they had cheese and lots of it to taste and buy. Award winning  cheeses too! The Havarti from Edelweiss Creamery won the World Championship. They are also the only maker of traditional Swiss swiss cheese. There were several cheese makers here and the Baby Swiss, the Cheddars – some aged 12 years, and the Butterkase were to die for. Here is a new one for me, frying cheese. Yes frying cheese. This cheese is designed to be served warm and it doesn’t melt all over the place but it kept disappearing in my mouth! I had to keep trying it. Sooo good!