Pilgrimage.

Way back before she was cool, my mother recommended I read a book called "American Gods."  I was sixteen at the time, which meant anything she suggested was a stupid idea.

Two years later, I found the book for myself.  It immediately became my favourite novel.  I tried (I still try) to get everyone I knew or met to read it.  It pushed Neil Gaiman into my top author spot, and it planted the kernel of an idea in my mind.

A year after that, I was planning my first ever overseas trip.  I floated the idea of doing an America road trip.  A couple of my mates expressed interest, but they all wanted to drive through the south.  None of us were over 21, so we couldn't go out.  And none of us were over 25, so we couldn't rent a car.

I went to Europe, and fell in love with Germany and Scotland.  America slipped somewhere towards the back of my mind.

Last year was not my best year on record.  I was in a job which was going nowhere, I hadn't written a single thing of worth, my love life was a shambles.  I decided that 2010 would be a worthwhile year, because I would make it so.  I enrolled in a Masters course, I signed up for a couple of half-marathons, and my brother and I walked into a travel agent and began booking this trip.

When you're a 24 year old Australian male and you start spreading the word that you're ging on a road-trip across America, interest starts to build quickly.  My landlord and flatmate started looking at the dates and figuring out how he could swing his leave to come with us.  One of my old university friends started negotiating time off work.

With so many parties now involved, we had to work towards consensus regarding the destinations of the trip, but on one point I would not be moved.  I had to go to a spot in Wisconsin, about an hour out of Madison, and see the House on the Rock.

You see a lot of this driving through Wisconsin.

One morning we drove out of Chicago and into Wisconsin.  All four of us had read American Gods, so we had some idea of what we were walking into.  But there was a sense, as we pulled into the driveway past enormous terracotta pots decorated with dragons and wyrms, that we could never have been fully ready.

As soon as you pull into the driveway, things get weird.

We walked past the gift shop and bought our full-experience tickets.  This gave us three tickets (one for the house itself, and one for each of the sections of the museum attached) and four tokens to be used in any of the amusements found inside.  The lady at the counter then directed us to the Oriental Garden, which led to the house.

The Oriental Gardens.

The house itself was surprisingly low-ceilinged.  Alex Jordan Jr, who built the house in secret in the 1950s, was a huge man.  The Skeptic and I were forced to duck almost constantly.  Inside the house was a mess of red shagpile carpet, faux-Japanese designs and cordoned-off living spaces.  The most interesting part of the house was the Infinity Room.

The view from the Infinity Room.

The Infinity Room stretches out from the house and uses some simple optical tricks to appear to go on forever.  More worthwhile is the view across the Wisconsin countryside offered through the sloping glass panes on either side of the walkway.

The Infinity Room.

The house also contained a number of automatic orchestras, which we thought a bit odd, but they were just an appetiser for what was to come.

Inside the House itself.

As we left the house we walked back down the hill, the way we had come, where a man punched our second ticket and sent us towards the Streets of Yesterday.

The view from the top of the House.

The Streets of Yesterday were an eclectic mix of collected odds and ends, mostly from 19th century America.  At one stage the Talk commented; "if this were a curated museum, it'd be a goddamn shambles.  As a collection of stuff, it's pretty cool."

The Streets of Yesterday.

None of this really grabbed us until we made it to the end of the Streets.

A wanted poster for the Wild Bunch.

Just as described in the novel, Esmerelda the fortune teller stood at the end of the streets.  The passage in American Gods goes like this:

"At the end of the street was a large glass box with a female mannequin inside it, dressed as a gypsy fortune-teller.
  'Now,' boomed Wednesday, over the mechanical music, 'at the start of any enterprise it behooves us to consult the Norns.  So let us designate this Sybil our Urd, eh?'  He dropped a brass coloured House on the Rock coin into the slot.  With jagged, mechanical motions the gypsy lifted her arm and lowered it once more.  A slip of paper chunked out of the slot.
  Wednesday took it, read it, grunted, folded it up and put it in his pocket.
  'Aren't you going to show it to me? I'll show you mine,' said Shadow.
  'A man's fortune is his own affair,' said Wednesday stiffly.  'I would not ask to see yours.'
  Shadow put his own coin in the slot.  He took his slip of paper.  He read it.

EVERY ENDING IS A NEW BEGINNING.

YOUR LUCKY NUMBER IS NONE.

YOUR LUCKY COLOUR IS DEAD.

Motto:

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON. 

  Shadow made a face.  He folded the fortune up and put it in his inside pocket."

Esmerelda, the fortune teller made famous by the book.

We each got a fortune.  While ours were less cryptic, they were no less vague.

The Gladiator, the colossal calliope.

Next to Esmerelda was the item which most excited the Talk; the colossal calliope.  This beast played a variety of marching tunes, and seemed to play most of its instruments live, if slightly out of tune.

I cannot post a photo which does justice to the scale of this whale.

That's where the rooms lost coherency.  The next chamber was the "Nautical room," which featured hundreds of model replicas of famous boats, and a four-story statue of a whale fighting a giant squid.

"The Mikado" which performs the Dance Macabre.

We passed a number of self-playing orchestras.  It was while in the Mikado room that I noticed none of the stringed instruments had strings, and I felt a little disillusioned.  The Danube room was also worthwhile.

The world's largest carousel.  No horses.

Around the corner from that was the world's largest carousel.  2,400 lights, no horses, but every fantasy creature you can imagine and many more you cannot.  This is the carousel which Shadow and Wednesday ride to Asgard.  It seemed plausible when we were watching it, the eerie self-playing band providing the carousel's music.

The ceiling of the carousel room.

From here we saw a number of other 'wonders' in the house, but our energy was gone.  There was so much House on the Rock; the Organ Room, the world's largest self-playing orchestra (not that great), the doll carousel (creepy) the collection of doll-houses, the replicas of the British Crown Jewels...

The Organ Room.

We left knowing that we had seen and experienced something special, but would be hard-pressed to tell anybody what it was.  I recommend you see it for yourself.