Sister Churchill lives near the site, and for residents there are a few free days they can come for a tour. I'm grateful she let Louis and I come along. Louis was awake for a good part of the walk, and had a good nap also. He barely made a peep. There were so many things to keep his attention.
I'm curious to know how far we walked. We were walking for about 2 hours. When the day was finished I was so tired-definitely got my exercise for the week ha ha! While we toured there was an older couple behind us parts of the way and at one point the lady mentioned she had been to House on the Rock but back when you had to climb a rope to enter. WHAT??
I can't even describe what this house was like. It is not logical or practical at all. I don't think the man had a job, building and collecting became his work. I think that the tourists he attracted paid for the obsession to continue. The pictures I took don't really do it justice and don't show the layout... but I noticed that you can't hardly see the layout when you are there in person either.
I do know that I wouldn't like to live there. Too dark and way too creepy. The whole experience felt like you were in some kind of underground 'Wonderland' but Alice wasn't anywhere to be seen. There were some cool things to see but a little too weird for me overall. It was fun to see the collection of Santa's there. Sister Churchill said she read that there were near 6,000 Santa's in the whole collection. Crazy!!!
I watched a video on the man who built this place and how he did it and how he traveled all over the world to collect things but I still don't really have a grasp on his story. Just viewing the collections and house (there are multiple parts to this place) kind of left me reeling and I didn't absorb as many details of the history as I would have liked to.
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| Not really sure what this monstrous statue is supposed to be, but I thought it fit into the perplexing-ness of the whole collection. |
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| A small view of the landscape and part of the house. The tour has you walking in and out of different sections of building and pathways. Very confusing! I don't know how someone could have lived there and not gotten lost. |
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| This was the beginning of the numerous Santa collection. Tiny figurines and a whole wall full... |
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| This is one hallway that we walked through. I think it was carpet on the ceiling. and rock walls on both sides of us. A little claustrophobic feeling... I couldn't help but think about the damage an earthquake would do to this place! |
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| This is called the Infinity Room. It is long and pointy-and seems to go forever. It hangs out over a ledge with no support under it. You can only walk as far as the last poinsettia you see, and then you can look down through a window at the ground below. |
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| View from the Infinity Room-you could see for miles and miles. The snow was so beautiful, fresh from the previous day. |
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| This is one of many giant music boxes taller than I am. It was so beautiful! The hymn it played was Nearer My God to Thee |
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| This is not very clear-but most of the spaces in this house aren't lit any brighter than this so it was hard to get a good pic. Also there were many nooks just like this one that were filled with STUFF. The Christmas lights and ornaments were lovely. |
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| This was in the bathroom-it was a really huge wall. Very cool glass! |
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| This was a mock street and store fronts inside this place. Crazy! You can see the people standing near the middle of the picture to see how big it really was. |
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| This guy was really into "music machines" and this was a big one. Not really sure what it is exactly but it was loud and played music. The people statues are lifesize. |
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| This picture is of a giant whale with fangs being trapped by a giant octopus in huge wave-it is a HUGE sculpture and I couldn't get a good picture of it at all. It was so weird!!!! I wanted to know if they built it inside or if they brought it in and assembled. |
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| Cool hot air balloons hanging inside |
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| One of my favorite exhibits-kites and hot air balloons |
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| Another really cool exhibit-Butterflies! There were Three walls of these things top to bottom. |
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| Another "music machine" built to look like a small orchestra. The instruments seem to play themselves. They were all moving bows and keys and all and so was I... sorry for the blur. |
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| I liked this too-just cool! And weird. Tusks I think. |
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| Ceiling full of model planes. |
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| Huge Carousel! There are so many lights on this thing-I can't remember the number. The guy pieced the animals together to create this exhibit and there isn't one horse head on it. The animals are really creepy. |
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| Louis, Me, and Sister Churchill. We're ready to be done with our tour :) |
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| The ground were very beautiful covered in snow. |
I found the website for house on the rock and it had a few pics on there that looked nice.
Here you go!
http://www.thehouseontherock.com/HOTR_AttractionMain.htm
