But it wasn't a rock, it was a rock...house? 07/07

I woke up around 10 am and headed to the truck stop across the street from the Holiday Inn parking lot I slept in. I asked how much for a shower. The cashier’s words were like a hefty punch in the shoulder. “Ten dollars.”

TEN DOLLARS! For a shower?! Ridiculous. I let the cashier know my sentiments on the situation, and was told to “Hold on a sec.” I obliged and waited for her to come back from wherever it was she went. Whenever she returned, she said her boss said she could give me a shower for free, since I looked like I needed one and I wasn’t a trucker. I happily accepted and showered for the first time in 5 days.

You would think truck stop showers are nasty and gross. Now, I can’t speak for the rest of them, but this was a mighty nice showering area. It had a sink, a toilet, a mirror, and then a separate shower area. It was very hotel-like in its setup and cleanliness.

I left my sleeping place in Janesville, ws, fully refreshed and newly showered, and headed to the Rock house. It was one of the kitsch attractions in my book the Great American road trip. It was supposed to be this architecturally significant house built into the cliff, meaning the rocky cliff of the mountain it was on formed various parts of the house. This was by far one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been too. Most of the ceiling were really low (in the neighborhood of 5’5” to 5’11”, so I had to duck through a lot of it. It had narrow hallways and really bizarre Chinese artwork everywhere. It wasn’t a busy day for them either, because I was walking around a lot of it by myself. It’s the quintessential “DON’T GO AROUND THAT CORNER BECAUSE SOMEONE IS GOING TO JUMP OUT AND KILL YOU” house.

On the upside, it did have a mildly cool room called the infinity room, which made use of perspective to make it seem like it went on forever. Then there were tons of various types of collections. Collections included dollhouses, knight armour, civil war weapons, odd pistols and rifles, model ships, and a replica of a 19^th century market street. The house on the rock is also home to the largest carousal in the world. A lot of it was weird and creepy, but a lot of it was also very cool.

The book describes it perfectly as “at once wacky, tacky, innovative, and elegant.”

I also tried to go see Forevertron, the biggest sculpture in the word. It’s made out of 400 tons of scrap and is made to look like a Victorian depiction of the far future. However, it is apparently closed on Tuesdays and wedesdays, so the best I could do was get a far away picture from the gate of its main part.

Now I’m on my way to see the jolly green giant in blue earth, Minnesota before going to Minneapolis. Goodnight.