House on the Rock

We decided it was high time to take Kyra on a vacation with just the two of us. We have been talking about doing it for a few years here but last summer was a no-go with Dad's Cancer and this summer has been super busy. However Tim made a good point that if we don't go now... when are we going to. With two little ones it is not going to be as easy to do the things that Kyra is interested in. So- we talked my parents into taking Bella for a few nights (we had to twist their arms- right) and we made our way to Southern Wisconsin to see House on the Rock and Cave of the Mounds. Around the time of AJ's wedding we had purchased a GPS (which Kyra has lovingly named Gerty) so we typed in our destination and started out road trip. It was going well, that is until I made the poor choice of waking up my snoring husband and asking if the directions were right- what was I thinking! Our out of the way venture added another 40 mins of drive time and lots of frustration to our journey but has made for a pretty good story. I take the blame of course because i probably should have given him more heads up- typical Trina though :) So we got to House on the Rock right around 2 in the afternoon after we grabbed a quick bite on the way. There was no problem parking the car since there were maybe twelve others in the entire lot. I guess going on a Wednesday was a pretty fine idea as far as crowd control goes. We started by getting a short history on the creator and then viewed the actual house first. Kyra thought it would be pretty neat to live in the house on this rock but her father had other ideas. His main complaint was headaches- imagine the headaches from all those low ceilings! (He had a point). There were some pretty spectacular views from up there on the decks and some amazing creations inside the "house." After seeing the dwelling we moved on to the second exhibit which was all of his collections- which I got confused with the third sections which was all his collections too- very confusing but super cool. We got to see things that none of us even imagined were possible. Like the ginormous sculpture (we are talking stories high) of a sperm whale and an arcatuthus (giant squid). Or my favorite- the worlds largest carousel with not a single "horse" on it. Kyra totally dug all the rooms where they had set up instruments in a concert to play by themselves- it was super creepy but super cool! I have to warn all of you though that if you ever decide to go with Tim or Kyra to anything that resembles a museum- be prepared to spend a long time reading. I cant complain because that's why there are explanations- but do we really have to read every word? I guess I am more of a visual/ imagination type person and they want to know the facts... either way by the end of the day my feet hurt. Luckily we were staying in a hotel that was very close by and had a hot tub and pool to soak our aching feet. Kyra totally loved the giant submarine- almost as much as I loved the jets in the jacuzzi :) Tomorrow we are off to the caves!!!