Iceman Celebration Day 2018 - The House on the Rock

 

 

 

The walkway to get to the top of this room and near the mouth of the Sea Monster was a scary journey. As a person of size, I felt that it swayed and buckled underneath my weight and I felt like I was on the high seas moments away from sinking to the depths below. Luckily structural engineering is always one step ahead and this place was built to absorb the weight of numerous people. But fearing the worst, I walked as fast as my tree trunk legs could move to get to the end, zooming past artifacts behind glass displays that probably should have garnered my attention. But it is hard to pay attention to real or replicated items behind glass walls when there is a snarling beast of a whale suspended above you. I'd like to see you try to keep it together in this scenario. Told ya.
 

Next up was the World's Largest Indoor Carousel, which was really hard to capture a photo of with my camera. I don't know if it was the spinning or the lights, but I wasn't able to do it justice or even get the whole thing into frame. Apparently there are 269 animals on it and none of them are true horses (for example - there are some unicorns or other mythical horse-like beings). There was a real circus vibe going on and Jenny Reck didn't stick around to experience the headache that I felt from the overstimulation of this intense monstrosity. Must be nice.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next room was the Heritage of the Sea, which contained all sorts of Ocean related displays, creatures, models and artifacts. If I didn't say this before then this would be a good time for me to point this out - I could have taken a thousand pictures here and still not captured everything. I just took pictures of things that captured my fascination and what I thought would be a good representation of this collection. For every Old Sailor Man and boat model, there were thousands of other interesting things to gaze upon.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a giant model of the Titanic in here. That pretty much sums it up as Alex Jordan Jr. collected all sorts of things. Some of them made sense. Who wouldn't want a model of the most infamous ship? Would look great in any.... would this even fit in a living room?
 
There wasn't much that I remember from my first visit here, but one of them would be The Octopus's Garden music machine. The others would be the Infinity Room and the 200 foot long Sea Monster battling a Giant Squid (which you will see below). This was another automated music machine that played The Beatles song of the same name, with all of the sea creatures joining in. It was definitely one of the most normal thing in here. I suppose that is because you've seen something like this at Disney World or a similar theme park. But we still loved it.

There's no telling how big this room was. It had to be massive to fit this giant whale and giant squid. But it also felt small because there were so many things there and the walkway circled around the room and brought you up many floors to see everything on display.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Home
 

 

 

 

It doesn't look like I took any pictures in the final exhibits of Section 2 of the tour - Tribute to Nostalgia and Spirit of Aviation. I'm sure there was cool stuff to look at and things that caught my eye, but you can't expect me to take a picture of everything. I want to save some treasures for you to experience on your own if/when you go. But this next part was the beginning of Section 3 called the Organ Room. I think the intention of it was to make you feel like you were inside of some mechanical machine as there were twists and turns, bridges and stairs, gears and levers and pipes and lights of all shapes and sizes. Everything in the house was like a giant maze but here is where I felt the most lost. I'm sure that it had to do with the darkness and the layout, but a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was high as balls. That will do something to you. Don't take drugs kids.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The automatic music making machines were pretty cool despite most of them being out of tune or only partway functional. They definitely showed their age of lack of upkeep over the years. That really didn't bother me though because it really fit the theme of this place in that everything was a classic relic of its' time. We only used our tokens on the ones that looked like they were worth sitting around for, but I have no regrets in the ones that we missed out on. I'm pretty sure this was also the halfway point where we got a quick bite to eat at the cafe (maybe a slice of pizza) and a cold beer to wash it down. With everything we have seen and done so far, a good sit was definitely in order. Especially with all the nonsense that would soon come our way in the rest of the tour...