House on the Rock

As we traveled and mentioned we would be going to Lake Delton, Wisconsin, we were often told we needed to visit “House on the Rock” while in the area. Yet those making the recommendation had difficulty describing the place. Now I share the same problem.

It is a rambling tour through multiple connected buildings that display the extensive collections of a somewhat eccentric man – Alex Jordan. It started with a house he built in the 1940’s around a 60’ chimney rock. The rooms of the multi-story house circle the rock so that at least one wall is formed by the rock. The ceilings are very low and the house is rather dark, so you get the feeling of being in a house built within a cave. I assume this is the desired effect. Mr. Jordan had a vision or an atmosphere he was trying to convey in the house and all the subsequent displays he constructed through the years. He did not start out to create a tourist attraction, but so many people stopped by for a tour of the house he finally decided to turn it into one. It opened to the public in 1960. He used the proceeds to expand his collections and add more rooms and buildings.

So what did he collect? Just about everything it seems. A few of the things I can recall: antique toys, guns and all types of weapons, merry-go-round horses,
doll houses,

From 9-08 House on the Rock

miniature circus tents and circus toy sets,

From 9-08 House on the Rock

model airplanes and ships,

From 9-08 House on the Rock

huge automatic player organs and fully automated bands,

From 9-08 House on the Rock

and antique automobiles. Most of these collections are extensive – often hundreds of items.

Being a fan of the antiques road show on PBS, we cannot imagine how much all of this is worth. We will see some rare item on the TV show estimated at say $10,000. We will turn to one another and say “Good grief – there must have been 30 or 40 of those at “House on the Rock”.

Yet we have a complaint about the way all these items were displayed. While almost all the items are museum quality, the workers are quick to point out that Mr. Arnold did not want this to be a museum. He wanted his collections displayed as an “attraction” following the vision or atmosphere he was trying to create. For example one area is titled “Streets of Yesterday”.

From 9-08 House on the Rock

This displays items seen in shop windows in the late 1800’s. It is designed to appear in an evening setting with simulated gas lighting. Thus is all quite dim and some things are difficult to see and fully appreciate. This problem with dim lighting happens in other places throughout the tour such as this antique steam tractor somewhat hidden away in a dim corner.

From 9-08 House on the Rock

Plus there are places that are dusty or where there does not appear to be adequate climate control to prevent deterioration of things like antique doll clothing. We can see lots of money being spent on new buildings and future displays. It is sad that more is not being done to protect existing collections.

Still it is a fascinating place to visit. Do go if you are ever in southern Wisconsin.

(Note you can click on the link below the pictures to see other pictures. If you click slide show, all pictures will load and then the slide show will start. This may take a couple of minutes. Once you finish viewing, keep clicking the back arrow until you return to the blog)

Door Peninsula Wisconsin #3 & Eagle River Wisconsin

This is our 3rd update from our stay in Door County, Wisconsin on the Door Peninsula (do you get the idea we really liked this place) and our move to Eagle River, Wisconsin.

In late July our son Ward came for a brief visit. It was great to see him and he enjoyed getting out of Chicago for a few days.

While Ward was with us, we returned to Peninsula State Park and climbed again to the top of the tall wooden tower overlooking Green Bay. It is a great view but, knowing the tower was built in the 1930's, I was not too thrilled with the swaying of the tower in wind.

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

We also took a ferry ride over to Washington Island off the North End of the Peninsula. The ride over was beautiful, and we enjoyed talking to one of the residents on his way back home. It was especially interesting to hear about travels across the waterway in the winter when the water freezes over. At one time, people drove across the ice, but this stopped the year the local high school basketball team was lost when their vehicle broke through the ice. They had apparently drifted off the designated safe route. What a sad story. Now, the ferry company has an ice breaking ferry that makes the trip. You just have to be sure to schedule a place since it is a smaller boat than the two that run in the summer.

The island looked much like the Door Peninsula - very lovely. We made two or three stops as we drove around the island. The most interesting was to the STAVKIRKE. This is a copy of the type churches built in Scandinavian countries in medieval times. While thousands were built, only a few remain in Norway and one in Sweden. The local Lutheran Church built the STAVKIRKE as a tribute to their Norwegian and Icelandic heritage. STAVKIRKE means "stave church". The word "stave" comes from the old Norse word "stafv" which is the word for load bearing posts. So this is a wooden church with a post and beam construction. It has a pagoda style roof made with wooden shingles. Among the unusual features are the carved dragons at the end of the gables. These dragons are much more visible than the ones in the Borklunden chapel we referenced in a previous post about Door County. Another interesting aspect is a model of a ship hanging in the middle of the church. This is again a feature of the ancient Norse churches. It was a symbol of their close ties to the sea, or in this case to the Great Lakes. Also hanging in the ceiling of the foyer of the church is a carpenter's pouch. One of the key carpenters on the project left it hanging there the day they finished the church. He died unexpectedly that night, and the church has left it as a fitting tribute to him.

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

We also climbed another tower while on the Island. We had another great view looking across the island to Lake Michigan. Our final stop was a small fishing harbor and village at the north end of the island.

We all left Door County a few days later. Ward of course headed back to Chicago. We traveled further north in Wisconsin. We stopped along the way to have slide out trays installed in two of our underneath storage bays. We had ordered them at the Newmar Rally. Instead of having them shipped to us for self install, we elected to stop by the factory since it was right on our way to our next destination in Eagle River, Wisconsin. This was less expensive than the shipping charges and saved me a lot of work. The trays are very nice making it a lot easier to access some of our items stored underneath.

We stayed in Eagle River for a week. This is called the North Woods region and that is an apt name. On our drive up, the landscape changed from rolling pastures and farmland to dense woods. The Eagle River area is mainly woods with many many lakes. You can take a boat and connect through a chain of 28 lakes by way of the river. So the main recreation is boating and hunting and of course all the winter sports of cross country skiing and snowmobile riding and racing. You know you are in the far north when instead of a dirt track for car racing they have a similar track for snowmobile racing. They claim the world championships are held here each year. We do not plan to come back to see them. That will be way to cold for us!

We did not do much touring while in Eagle River, but did enjoy our time at the Hi Pines Campground. One thing we did enjoy was a couple of visits to "Soda Pops". This diner is in an old restored soda parlor. They had a hundred or more varieties of sodas. They seem to have available just about every soft drink made in America. All the drink bottles are on display around the walls. It reminded me of my bottle collection. They even had Blenheim Ginger Ale from South Carolina. They also had Hank's Root Beer. I almost bought one just to have the bottle to send to my friend Hank Fisher from BellSouth.

We left Eagle River heading further north to Houghton, Michigan on the Keweenaw Peninsula of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan - the UP.

Door Peninsula Wisconsin #2

The Door Peninsula is a beautiful and peaceful area. In the middle of the Peninsula are farms, orchards, and several wineries. The farms are typical of what we saw driving up from Illinois. They usually have a pretty white or perhaps stone house with a large red barn and one or more silos. You see large orchards, dairy cattle, corn, soybeans, wheat or rolled hay in the fields. The land is gently rolling, and the fields are surrounded by stretches of green woods. Various wild flowers grow along side the roads and most homes have pretty perennial flower gardens. The growing season here is shorter than in the South, but the days are much longer. The birds start chirping around 4 am and there is faint light around 3:30 am. It gets dark around 9 to 9:30 pm. So I guess the long daylight hours even things out. Everything looks lush and green, except where the golden colored wheat and hay fields make a pretty contrast.

Around the shore of the Peninsula are beautiful small villages and numerous state and county parks. The villages are full of summer tourists, but the villages do not have any of the gaudy “touristy” places with bright neon lights, etc. like you find in some parts of Myrtle Beach or Gatlinburg. Instead they remind me more of Hendersonville or Ashville, NC. I’m told this is considered to be the Midwest version of quaint New England villages. Having never been to New England I can’t compare them, but all the villages here are lovely.

Wisconsin and Door County have done an excellent job setting aside parks to protect and make available some of the most beautiful areas along the shore. The largest park is Peninsula State Park. I think it is considered the crown jewel of the Wisconsin park system. It has beaches, many hiking and biking trails, a huge campground, and a beautiful golf course. We visited the park several times. Twice we took Clay along on hikes. One of those was somewhat of a misadventure. We picked up a trail map upon arrival, but did not read any of the details. We were wearing sandals and just had some water bottles with us. We found a trail near the point we entered the park. We got out and started toward the trail. However the sign said “difficult”. Just as we were reading the sign, two men came by who had just finished the hike. I asked if it was in fact “difficult”. One answered, no it was not that bad, and it is really a beautiful trail. So we proceeded forward. Turns out he was right about the latter, but way wrong about the former. We quickly descended down a steep bluff on a very rocky trail with many roots and rocks just waiting to trip us up. We ultimately went down about 4 or 5 stories in height which would not have been that bad except for all the rocks and roots. Plus as we walked, the sky got much darker, and before the hike was finished a thunderstorm came along and dropped rain on us. The sights along the trail were beautiful, but we did not get to look at them very much because we were always looking down to watch our step. I did take a few pictures of the rock formations. The rocks look almost man made. There were places where the formations looked like something you see in National Geographics where some ancient temple has been discovered with trees going over the temple ruins. We were fortunate not to twist an ankle or otherwise hurt ourselves. That would have been a hard place for park rangers to find us and then carry us out. We were very happy when we made it back to the parking lot at the end of the trail loop. From now on I will believe the sign when it says “Difficult”. For the next hike we wore better shoes and took a few more emergency supplies in our fanny packs. This time the trail was labeled “Moderate” and was much more enjoyable.

I hope you enjoy some of the pictures from the Peninsula State Park and some of the other parks we have visited

Door Peninsula Wisconsin

After the Newmar Rally, we traveled from Du Quoin to Effingham, Illinois for one night, then to Rockford, Illinois for a night and finally to Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin on the Door Peninsula. The trip was pretty uneventful except for the odd cargo we saw on several tractor trailers. They were carrying what looked like airplane wings, but they were too long and thin. Finally near Rockford we saw several fields full of wind turbines and realized we had been seeing the fan blades for new turbines. We subsequently came across a magazine article about similar looking wind turbines and were surprised to learn these things are about 23 stores tall and those blades are about 70 feet long or about the length of 2 motor homes.

The Door Peninsula is about half way up the eastern side of Wisconsin. On one side is Lake Michigan and the other side is Green Bay - the body of water. The city of Green Bay is near the bottom of the Peninsula. The “Door” name comes from early French explorers who adopted the name used by the local Indians. It relates to the treacherous waters at the tip of the Peninsula where the Bay and the Lake meet. That passage was called “Deaths Door”. Over the centuries it has lived up to its name with many ship wrecks in the area.

We came hoping to find cool weather for the summer, and we have been blessed. The majority of the days have been in the mid 70s with night time lows in the mid 50’s to low 60’s. The surface of Lake Michigan is currently about 62 degrees which is 10 degrees or so cooler than Green Bay. That seems to moderate the temperature and to cause regular winds to blow across the Peninsula from the cooler Lake surface.

We are in a nice campground with very friendly owners and workers. Many folks from Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota come here year after year for several weeks or months in the summer. The area is very popular for fishermen. I kept seeing folks with huge fish down in the harbor using the city provided cleaning station. They had fish that looked 3 or 4 feet long. I finally got into a conversation with a man at the campground who has been coming here for 29 years from Minnesota to fish each summer. He explained the big fish are King Salmon. The states around the Lake started stocking the Lake with the King Salmon back in the 60’s or 70’s. Formerly the big fish were Lake Trout. But apparently these were decimated by non-native lamprey eels that were inadvertently brought into the Lake by ships that had crossed the oceans from other places. Likewise there was another 5 or 6 inch sized non-native fish introduced into the Lake in the same manner. These fish exploded in population when the Lake Trout declined. Apparently at times thousands of the small fish would die and wash up on shore. So the states introduced the King Salmon as a new predator. This has worked wonderfully but with some ups and downs. A few years after the introduction, people were catching gigantic King Salmon well in excess of 25 pounds. Then the salmon ate all or the majority of the smaller problem fish. That caused the Salmon population to drop way off, and their size decreased significantly. So all the states reached agreements to reduce the amount of Salmon introduced into the Lakes. Now the King Salmon are back to a larger size and more stable population, although not as larger as those first years. Still what I have been seeing look plenty large. Every time I have been down to the harbor, I have seen a number of folks with what appear to be the max limit of 5 fish. The man I talked with says the Salmon he is catching average 15 to 20 pounds. Plus I have seen others with a somewhat smaller fish that looks more comparable to a large bass. I’ve been told these are rainbow trout. So if you like to fish, this is a great place place to come.

While here I have worked on a few RV projects. One was to install a mud flap on the rear of the RV that goes all the way across the width of the coach. As is typical for me, that turned out to be more difficult than expected. I got to be very well know in the local hardware store going back 4 or 5 times for different nuts, bolts, chain, etc. That is why I was at the harbor seeing the fishermen so much. The hardware store sits next to the harbor dock. It was a fun place to visit being an ole time hardware/general store that has been in business in the same building since 1945. It is one of those "if they don’t have it , you don’t need it" type of places.

There are many great places to visit here. So far we have toured a light house, a Marine Museum, a small chapel build in an ancient Norse style, several beautiful state and county parks and have ridden or walked through several of the small harbor villages. Each week we go down to Sturgeon Bay, which is the largest city and is about half way up the Peninsula. We go down so I can take my weekly allergy shot, wash clothes and go to the grocery store. Sturgeon Bay is also a very nice city. We especially enjoyed lunch at an Applebeees restaurtant that sits right on the canal that connects Strugeon Bay and Green Bay with Lake Michigan. This canal was built I believe in the late 1800's or early 1900's. It cut off 3 days from the trip around the tip of the Peninsula for ships carrying iorn ore from the Michigan Upper Peninsula to Chicago, and other points on the southern end of Lake Michigan.

Sturgeon Bay:

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

We also attended a portion of the Wisconsin Kountry Klub Chapter Rally in a nearby campground. Once again we had a great time with the Wisconsin folks. They made us feel very welcome. One night we joined them for a fish boil, a local tradition.

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

I was not so sure how much I would enjoy this, but the food turned out to be very good. They boil locally caught whitefish, potatoes, and onions in a large pot under a wood fire. At the end they throw kerosene or something similar on the fire to make it flame way up and boil over. This boils off the excess grease, I assume from the fish. It makes for a good show.

From 7-08 Door Peninsula, WI

Oh, and the tradition requires that the meal be finished off with a piece of cherry pie. Naturally I especially enjoyed that part. One of the reasons for the cherry pie is that this area is known for its excellent cherries. We had been looking forward to buying some fresh ones at harvest time in late July. However about 98% of the crop was destroyed by a late freeze in the spring. What a shame for the local farmers.

Perhaps the most interesting place so far has been the small "Norse" chapel. It was built from 1939 to 1947 by a couple from Chicago who owned a large tract of land with a summer home on the Peninsula which they named Bjorklunden.

From 7-08 Baileys Harbor, WI - Bjorklunden

During the early part of World War II, they felt called to build a chapel of peace. They had especially liked churches they had seen in Norway. While Christian, these still have some old Norse features like dragons carved into various points around the church. We are told there are 53 dragons or dragon heads in this small chapel.

From 7-08 Baileys Harbor, WI - Bjorklunden

The couple took carving lessons during the winters in Chicago and carved all the features themselves. It was interesting to see how their skill improved over the years.

One of the first carvings:

From 7-08 Baileys Harbor, WI - Bjorklunden

One of the final carvings:

From 7-08 Baileys Harbor, WI - Bjorklunden

Then the wife who was already a painter, learned to do fresco and painted frescoes on all the interior walls.

From 7-08 Baileys Harbor, WI - Bjorklunden

It really is an amazing structure to visit. The couple donated the property to Lawrence University, a small school in Wisconsin. In addition to the chapel Bjorklunden now has a beautiful building for summer retreats and unique week long adult education courses.

I will follow this with at least one more update from here before we leave. We will stay here for the whole month of July. Then we will move further north to Eagle River, Wisconsin for a week and then head into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for about 4 weeks