tuesdays with cheese curds

Tuesday we had a breakfast of fresh apricots, coffee, and fresh Wisconsin cheese curds (from a gas station). Somehow, it managed to satisfy us until our late lunch, with a supplement of Junior Mints around 10am. We drove straight to The House on the Rock, a wild structure built by Alex Jordan to house collections of everything from dollhouses to suits of armor, giant organs to carousel horses, there was an enormous octopus attacking a whale in the Heritage of the Sea room, the world's largest carousel (which had all sorts of animals, but no horses, all the horses were on the walls). There was so much to see there, and the myriad collections were broken up by huge music machines - violins, pianos, cellos, bassoons, harps, drums... all played mechanically when you put tokens in the slot. Words and photos do not do this place justice, you absolutely must visit. Take all three tours, the $26 was worth it! make sure to buy lots of tokens to play the music machines.
We spent almost 4 hours in the House on the Rock, someone told us it was a 3.5 mile tour. We then drove to Taliesin, ate a late lunch at the cafe in the visitor's center, and spent a boatload on the tour there. This tour was two hours, led by John, who knew his stuff and was fun in a college professor kind of way. Taliesin was the home of Frank Lloyd Wright, and for all of his personal glory, this building was not holding up well. He used the cheapest materials he could find because he wasn't into planning for the future, especially when it came to his own home. It was a really spectacular looking place, the outside as complicated as within. the ceilings were incredibly low in a lot of places (~6ft) and some of the guys on our tour had to duck. Not me though. After Taliesin we drove to Madison, stopping at the Shoe Box (the midwest's largest shoe store) which we had to investigate. In Madison, we strolled State Street and ended up in State Street Brats - a crazy college bar that happens to serve food. we ate outside and wrote on all the postcards we had bought in the last few days. After dinner we went back to the campsite at Lake Kegonsa, hung out lakeside till the bugs chased us away, and went to bed after another short fire and Potter session.