Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - The House on the Rock - November 2021

Back in 2018 or '19, a woman from a book club I once belonged to suggested that I read American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which I read & enjoyed but don't remember too much about it. One of the only scenes I remember from the book was when Shadow and Mr. Wednesday go to the giant carousel in The House on the Rock. Since every place the characters went to is a real place in the United States, I decided that I needed to visit this giant carousel and curious house. 🏠 Fast forward a few years to when Audrey invited me to her wedding. The House on the Rock is in Spring Green, Wisconsin... only two and a half hours away from where we'd be attending the wedding. Of course we're going to take a trip to the house!!

I think I (or Mr. Gaiman's imaginatively fantastical writing) overly hyped up the house because it wasn't as great as I pictured it would be. 😞 The house is divided into three sections. Section 1 is the original house and completely worth seeing. I would visit it again and again if I could. Parts of Section 2 are interesting and Section 3 is a waste of time. 

A bit of history (from what I remember from The Alex Jordan Center exhibit) - Alex Jordan was a super rich kid who went on a picnic to "the rock" with his family. He loved the area so much that he decided that he would buy it and build a house on it. He started with the Original House and gardens (Section 1). The house is fully functioning and he mostly used it to host parties. He designed the rooms to be small and intimate so his guests could enjoy good conversation. There are dangerous winding steps and low ceilings throughout the house so I'm not sure how his party guests survived their soirees. When we visited, the low ceilings had patches of carpet so it wouldn't be as painful when you inevitably bumped your head. LOL The house literally is on a rock and is built with rocks so the temperature inside matches the temperature outside. It was freezing! ❆ One of the museum employees told us that the rocks also retain heat so it is uncomfortably hot in the summertime. Glad we visited in the fall!

The Original House is decorated with antique furniture and collectibles. Mr. Jordan loved Japanese lanterns, a particular narrow necked vase and a wooden panel carved with an intricate floral motif, and these were seen throughout the house. He was also obsessed with musical instruments, especially self playing ones (like in a music box). 🎵🎺Since he had a bunch of money, he hired staff to turn his musical invention sketches & ideas into reality. There were about 20 or 30 (I don't remember what the tour guide said) self playing orchestras throughout the entire house. ♯🎻🎹Each cost a token to operate. I think we listened/watched them all and they were one of the highlights of the house. 🎼♭🎶

The other highlight of the house was the Infinity Room. It is built on the edge of the house and extends well over the mountains. 😲 The entire room is a huge window that overlooks the mountains and it looks like an optical illusion. The Original House and Infinity Room are both in Section 1 of the house.

Mr. Jordan hired a huge staff to build his house, assemble his self playing orchestras and to collect random junk for him. (Okay, maybe "junk" is a bit harsh but it was a bunch of weird and random stuff.) He was very creative and had a "go big or go home" attitude. He quickly amassed soooooo much stuff that he had to build Section 2 and then Section 3 to display it all. Section 2 has The Hall of Music, which is exactly as it sounds. Most of the musical instruments are there. Wes's favorite part was The Red Room. A huge self playing orchestra with all sorts of invented instruments played music from The Nutcracker. The floor, walls and ceiling were covered in red velvet and had dim lighting. A majority of Sections 2 and 3 were red and had dim lighting. It took my eyes a while to adjust and I did not like it (I have HORRIBLE night vision).

The Carousel Room is also in Section 2. The carousel is the world's largest. 🎠 Mr. Jordan collected animals from decommissioned carousels. Then he got bored of them and started fusing the different animals together. The gigantic carousel was pretty awesome. In the book, the characters get on a special animal and it takes them to a different realm. I knew that wasn't real (obviously) but I was hoping the carousel was open to the public but it wasn't for riding... just for show and for selfies. 

Section 3 was a mess. Per the house's website, the house takes at least 3 hours to walk through (it took us about 4). The house is one way and there is no way to skip a section or return to a previous section. After marveling at Section 1 and mostly enjoying Section 2, both Wes & I were ready to go back to the hotel. But, no, we had to walk through Section 3. Section 3 was mostly dolls and miniatures. The first couple of miniatures were neat -- look a circus scene! 🎪oh look at this menagerie! these ones move! -- but it got very tedious very quickly. Toward the end of it, we were just walking through to get done with it and we barely looked at anything on display. Several of the dolls were creepy and it was dark, so that entire part was pretty eerie (which was probably the mood they were trying to accomplish). Section 3 reminded me of a cluttered antique store or a messy garage sale, neither of which I like. 😒

Once we finally got out of the house, we walked along the Japanese-inspired landscaped gardens before exiting. The gardens were very serene. Wes commented on how clean the ponds were. The water was crystal clear and there was lots of algae and plant life. I LOVED that the house was in the mountains. The trees were just starting to change colors and everything looked like a perfect autumn scene. I've never really seen mountains so I can't really judge, but I think Spring Green, WI has the most gorgeous ones. 🍂 It took a while for my eyes to acclimate to light again. I think they purposefully saved the exterior grounds for last so you could readjust to sunlight after spending 4+ hours in a black and red house.  

I'm glad we went to The House on the Rock (not sure if Wes feels the same way, he was over it way before I was) but I'm not sure if I would recommend it or go back again. If there were just tickets for Section 1, I 100% recommend visiting but the full tour is too much to do in a day. I lost my sense of wonder after seeing the 5th carousel and 100th miniature set. 😬It would probably be better to see a section per day so you can remain surprised by all the different things . Going through the entire house in one long tour ended up being more of a chore than a fun day at the museum. 

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - Iowa City, Riverside and Dubuque, IA - October/November 2021

Part 2 of our road trip was to drive to Iowa City for my coworker, Audrey's wedding. The drive from Kansas City to Iowa City was only about 4.5 hours but it felt like forever. There was some pretty fall foliage but the majority of the landscape was boring and flat. There was a terrifying amount of splattered & dismembered roadkill - mostly deer - along our way, and part of the highway into Iowa was painted red, which looked alarming at first. 

I normally don't note the hotels we stay at because they're all standard, nice and accommodating. But... the hotel we stayed at in Iowa City (The Hartland Inn in Coralville) was kind of awful. 👎 First off, it was OLD and the owners seemed to show no interest in renovating it. Our room's window a/c unit was from the previous century and it could not regulate the temperature at all ... it was either freezing cold or 90 degrees with no in between. The bed was very used and the shower sucked. The only good part was that management put a nice welcome sign on the marquee for Audrey's wedding. You can't really see in the picture but it reads, Welcome Strike/Brady Wedding.

Before heading out, I asked Audrey for restaurant suggestions. She suggested Big Grove Brewery for dinner and I am so glad we went. 🍺 Besides her wedding, Big Grove Brewery was the best part of Iowa... seriously, it's the highlight of the entire state. LOL It is a large taproom and restaurant. It was crowded the night we went but since it was so large, we could still get a table away from the crowds and hear ourselves talk. The music was loud but not too loud. It felt intimate even though it was very busy. Extremely good atmosphere!

The brewery is famous for their Easy Eddy IPA. It won a "Best IPA in Iowa" award. They were also releasing a new beer, the Royal Eddy. It is similar to the Easy Eddy but with more citrus and a much higher alcohol content. We both sampled some and surprisingly, Wes liked it more than I did (he normally hates IPAs). I also got a pumpkin stout --very good, my favorite of the night. Wes got an oatmeal coffee stout. 

I got a banh mi for my meal and Wes got a pretzel. He said the pretzel and mustard was good but the cheese sauce was oddly runny. After a few more meals in Iowa, we discovered that most of their dipping sauces are runny. My banh mi was served open faced, which was unusual but it was still very tasty. My favorite part was the pâté. They used a fried slice (think upscale SPAM) instead of the spread.

For breakfast the next morning, we went to The Dandy Lion. This was Wes's favorite breakfast place throughout our entire trip. The Dandy Lion is a popular and local spot downtown. There was a wait since we went on a Sunday morning. No worries, I thought, we're downtown... there will be something to do while we wait. There was not. Since it was a Sunday morning, everything was closed 😖 not like there was much to do anyway, just a few shops and boutiques. I soon discovered that there is pretty much nothing touristy to do in Iowa. Regardless, breakfast was well worth the wait because it was delicious. I got the salmon toast and Wes got the standard two egg breakfast. The menu described the salmon toast as being topped with two "cuddly poached" eggs. That along with the chai tea latte did make me feel warm and cuddly. 😊 

Long before our trip, I randomly told my hairdresser that we'd be driving to Iowa for a wedding in the autumn. She asked if I liked Star Trek and then suggested that we go see the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. I am not a Star Trek fan but my mom's husband, Mike, is. I filed it away as something to do if we had extra time. Since Iowa boasts of absolutely ZERO tourist attractions, we had plenty of time to drive to Riverside to see the Star Trek attraction. 

The future birthplace is the tiny town of Riverside's claim to fame. The mayor decided to designate his town as the birthplace after he noticed that the show stated Iowa as Captain Kirk's hometown. No one questioned it and now it is all over Riverside. You can see signs highlighting and pointing travelers to the birthplace as soon as you pull in to the town. 

The tombstone (birthstone??) is tucked away on a residential street by the post office, a dance studio and barber shop. The area it is in is nicely landscaped and it was a fun stop to make, even if I haven't seen a single episode of the show. LOL I hope you're reading this, Mike, because these pictures are for you! 

The next thing we did was celebrate Audrey & Ryan's wedding. I'll do a separate post on that since I took a million pictures. The next day, we had breakfast at the Blue Bird Diner, another of Audrey's suggestions. It was good but not as good as the breakfast we had at The Dandy Lion. Wes go the standard two egg breakfast (again) and he said the pecan smoked bacon stood out to him. I got a jambalaya inspired omelet that had the best herbed whipped cream cheese. The hashbrowns were also really good. 

After breakfast, we drove to The House on the Rock, which will have to be another blog post because I took literally over 100 pictures. That evening for dinner, we had dinner in Dubuque, Iowa. Marco's Italian & American Foods is a tiny local establishment that has been in Dubuque since the beginning of time (or so it seemed). I'm not sure if it was because we hadn't eaten anything since our early breakfast or if the food at Marco's really is that good but that meal was the best Italian food I've had in a long time, if ever. Wes passed on his salad since he saw from another table that it looked like grocery store salad out of a bag, but he missed out because the house Cesar dressing was so good! We both thoroughly enjoyed our meals. 

I had a hard time finding a good breakfast place in Dubque for the following morning. I settled on Dottie's Cafè but at the last minute, I discovered Habits Donuts & Coffee -- a trendy hipster donut shop with a "build your own donut" option. 🍩 I was so excited and craving donuts as we drove. When we got there, there was a sign on the door stating they were temporarily closed for the week. SAD FACE!!! I still wanted donuts so we went to the second best donut shop, per Google's reviews, Donut Boy. It was barf. 😩🤮 Since we were still hungry, we went to Dottie's after all. It was also suboptimal. I got the loose meat sandwich. It was their lunch special for the day and I wanted to try a loose meat sandwich while in the Midwest (one of the signature dishes). It was a bland and dry sloppy joe. Not good. Oh, I almost forgot... there was one good thing at Dottie's - her potato and ham soup (and it wasn't just me being a picky eater, Wes hated his meal, too).

After that disappointing meal, we left Iowa and headed to our next destination. We needed to stop for gas, snacks and drinks, and our halfway point was Peoria, IL. Boba always cheers me up so I looked for a boba café. Dang Banh Mi was the only place in town so we went. I got a strawberry milk tea with their house boba pearls. They're made with caramelized brown sugar and are softer & chewier than regular boba. I did not like them. Tuesday November 2, 2021 will be recorded as the worst travel day for food. But, our next stop is St. Louis and we had plenty of delicious food there!! 

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - Catoosa, OK & Kansas City, MO - October 2021

Wes and I just went on a week-long road trip!! 🚙 We left Oklahoma for Iowa via Missouri/Kansas and came home via Wisconsin and Missouri (and sort of Illinois but we only stopped for gas and boba). It was the first actual vacation (not counting the mini-trip to Tulsa in September) we've taken since my birthday trip to Tampa & St. Petersburg, FL in 2019. Since this was a mega trip with tons of pictures, I'll post in sections.  

Last year on the British quiz show, QI, they had a short segment about the whale. I knew there was a gigantic cartoonish blue whale somewhere in Oklahoma along Route 66, but I didn't know much more about it or even what it looked like. I decided that we needed to pay it a visit after it was featured internationally. 

I expected the whale to be on a lake or on the outskirts of town...I was wrong. It is literally on the side of the highway in the middle of town. LOL It was made as an anniversary gift. It looks like it was originally a play area for children. You can slide down the whale's fins and climb up to its tail to use as a diving board. You can also climb up into the whale's head and look out some portholes. We didn't do any of that since it was chilly and the pond that the whale sits in was grungy & dirty. 

The Blue Whale of Catoosa is cute and worth the visit if you're driving thru. We stopped in Oklahoma Joe's barbeque for lunch. We went to the Joe's (another barbeque restaurant in Kansas City a few years ago) and I thought this was the same place, like a franchise, but it wasn't. The one in Catoosa wasn't  near as good as the one in Kansas City. I got their award winning "best baked beans on the planet." It was, I think black, kidney and pinto beans, with bits of pulled pork swimming in a soup of tangy barbeque sauce. It was too much for me; I'm used to simple baked beans out of a can.

After lunch, we headed on to Kansas City. We had some time to kill so we walked around The Plaza before dinner. We've visited before but it was at nighttime so we didn't really get to see much of the architecture. This time we went when the sun was still up so I got to admire the Spanish-style buildings. And, I got my Unicorno figurine -- my must-have travelling companion. LOL 

We had dinner at Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken. Normally, we try to go to restaurants we haven't been to before but Wes loved the chicken the last time so we decided to go a second time. It was just as good! The chicken is dredged in a slurry of buttermilk, cornstarch and spices instead of the traditional egg and flour breading. Then it's fried in peanut oil. So yummy!! Wes got greens & fries for his sides and he said they were good. I got coleslaw & fried okra and both were just so-so. It doesn't matter because no one cares about the sides. 😂 The chicken is the star of the meal!! Kansas City is so neat and I wanted to do more but I had a long drive ahead of me the next day so we turned in to the hotel after dinner for an early night. 

We had breakfast at the Opera House Food & Coffee Emporium on our way out. It was such a cool place. It is a large restaurant with a coffee bar, bakery, bar and restaurant. I had the best matcha tea latte! 🍵 I ordered the biscuits and gravy for breakfast. The biscuits were ... different. They were dense and made from either corn meal or some sort of grains. Luckily, they were smothered in delicious spicy sausage gravy.

The restaurant is in City Market... so naturally I needed to take a stroll around, since we were already there. City Market is a ginormous open air market. It was mostly produce vendors but there were a few artisans. There were also shops and a steamboat museum. We walked around for about an hour but I could have stayed and explored all morning! I wish we had access to a kitchen and another day in Kansas City because I wanted to buy so much of the fresh produce and local foods. I am adding it on the travel list for us to return to! But enough of Kansas City... we had to drive to our next stop - Iowa City!! More on that later!

Wes & Erica's vacation photo album - Audrey and Ryan's wedding - October 31, 2021

If you like wedding pictures, this is the blog post for you! 👰💗🤵 Our whole reason for vacationing in Iowa was to attend my coworker, Audrey's, wedding. She got engaged in 2019 (on my birthday, actually) and we've been talking wedding planning & details ever since. Audrey is an extremely meticulous and dedicated wedding planner. It was nice to finally see the fruits of her labor!

Neither Audrey (Iowa) nor her fiancé (Illinois) are from Oklahoma so I assumed that none of their wedding guests would be either. Luckily, a coworker of mine was able to attend and Audrey sat us together. Always good to see a familiar face! We were also sat with the parents of the matron of honor and the husband of one of the bridesmaids. 

Audrey and Ryan were married at The Celebration Farm. It didn't much resemble a farm but it was still a very pretty event space. The wedding and reception was in a large round, contemporary-style barn that was set on a large plot of land with wooded landscaping. She warned me about the cooler temperatures (and sometimes even snow!) in Iowa this time of year but it turned out to be a lovely day.

Audrey and Ryan had a beautiful traditional Christian wedding. They built a unity cross at the end of the ceremony. I've never seen one before. It's a three part cross. The outside frame was placed on the stand by Ryan (I guess he is the foundation of their marriage). Then Audrey put the center part in (to fill their marriage with her love) and then they placed the pegs into the cross together to hold it all in place. We weren't seated too close to the alter so I couldn't really hear their minister. I thought she asked them to use eggs (instead of pegs) to hold the cross together. I was thinking they were really going to make a plaster and cement that cross together... ugh, what a messy chore to do in a gorgeous wedding dress! Wes politely informed me that I had misheard. LOL

We had a happy hour between the ceremony and reception while the wedding party took their pictures. The night before the wedding, Wes and I had dinner at Big Grove Brewery and I loved their beer. Guess what was served at the open bar??? Big Grove Brewery's Boomtown beer! Since it was a Halloween wedding, they had a candy bar and a treat/toy bar for children. I really wanted to raid the toys (glow sticks, stickers, masks) but they put up a sign proclaiming, "No Grown-ups!!"

Much like the ceremony, Audrey and Ryan had a traditional reception with a delicious buffet dinner, speeches & toasts, first dances, cake, phot booth (the most fun part!) and more dancing -- Wes actually danced!!! *Gasp!* I made him do the anniversary dance - the one where all married couples get on the dance floor and the pair married the longest wins. We got kicked out pretty early since we were only married 6 years. LOL The winning couple have been married 69 years! 😮 Wow!! My coworker, Reba, wanted me to do the Cupid Shuffle with her so I did... and failed. I completely forgot how to! Which is pretty hard since the instructions are in the song. 😂 The theme of the reception was The Nightmare Before Christmas. Audrey and Ryan changed into costume! A lot of the guests did, which was pretty fun! A quick note regarding Ryan's shirt - Audrey wanted to be Jack Skellington (in her elegant black dress) so he had to be Sally. She bought a white dress shirt and some patch fabric that looked like Sally's dress. She wanted to remove the original sleeves and back panel of the shirt and replace it with the fabric she bought. She thought of this idea last minute (like a week or two before the wedding) and wondered if it was doable. I told her it was doable... for a professional tailor...not an amateur hobbyist like me. LOL You can't really tell in the picture below but his shirt turned out so good!! And now I have an idea of what I want to do to upcycle an old button-down shirt and fun fabric!

Since I travel primarily for food, I will now detail our meal. Hors d'oeuvres were a charcuterie platter, pigs in a blanket and flatbread pizzas. For dinner, we had either brisket (what Wes got) or chicken breast (what I got), green beans with crème fraiche (the best part of the meal), au gratin potatoes, macaroni & cheese, farm slaw (a weird coleslaw with red cabbage & blue berries) or house salad, and smoked cornbread. A very yummy meal!! 😋 The three layer cake consisted of yellow cake, red velvet cake and carrot cake. I think wedding cakes are meant to be pretty and not tasty. It wasn't bad but I've definitely had better red velvet cake. 

All in all it was a beautiful and fun wedding; you could tell everyone was having a good time. Audrey's mom came to our table to thank us for coming all the way from Oklahoma! I was shocked she recognized mine and Reba's names and/or faces. I'm pretty sure Audrey must have mentioned us to her mom while they were arranging the seating chart but I didn't think she would remember that tiny detail in the midst of everything else that was going on. She was so nice and exactly like Audrey (or I guess Audrey is exactly like her! LOL) Congrats again to the bride and groom. We wish you a long and happy life together!!