The Wisconsin Dells bills itself as the Indoor Water Park Capital of the World. That is why Josie wanted to visit here, to see how many she could visit in a week. If you know Josie then you know that is false, but thousands of people from all over the Midwest come here for the water parks and I think that most of them came the week we were here. Honestly it's a pretty tacky place.
We chose the Dells because it was located an equal distance from The House on the Rock and Sand Valley Golf Resort.
Our friends Tommy Fisher and Leon Hoots have told us for years that we had to visit the House on the Rock. It is hard to explain exactly what it is but it is definitely a whole lot more than a house. Alex Jordan built his house on the rock outcropping and then over many years collected so much stuff he had to build multiple warehouses to store and display it in. There is not enough time or space for me to list the many collections he procured over the years but I will give a few highlights. Once you enter the grounds you start seeing weird flower pots all along the driveway. Then as you walk to the house you go through a beautiful garden. The Infinity room is an over 200-foot room that extends out over the valley from the house and has over three thousand windows for great views of the surrounding area. There is the worlds largest indoor carousel, a multitude of coin operated music makers some with over 100 musicians. He collected Tiffany Lamps and also has over 200 Doll Houses. This only begins to scratch the surface of his collections. You might want to go on line to see the full extent of what he collected. The whole experience was over whelming to say the least.
We chose the Dells because it was located an equal distance from The House on the Rock and Sand Valley Golf Resort.
Our friends Tommy Fisher and Leon Hoots have told us for years that we had to visit the House on the Rock. It is hard to explain exactly what it is but it is definitely a whole lot more than a house. Alex Jordan built his house on the rock outcropping and then over many years collected so much stuff he had to build multiple warehouses to store and display it in. There is not enough time or space for me to list the many collections he procured over the years but I will give a few highlights. Once you enter the grounds you start seeing weird flower pots all along the driveway. Then as you walk to the house you go through a beautiful garden. The Infinity room is an over 200-foot room that extends out over the valley from the house and has over three thousand windows for great views of the surrounding area. There is the worlds largest indoor carousel, a multitude of coin operated music makers some with over 100 musicians. He collected Tiffany Lamps and also has over 200 Doll Houses. This only begins to scratch the surface of his collections. You might want to go on line to see the full extent of what he collected. The whole experience was over whelming to say the least.
Sand Valley Golf Resort has two of Golf Digest's best courses that the public can play. The Valley Course ranked #18 and Mammoth Dunes ranked #27. I played the Dunes course. Both courses are walking only, so I opted to get a caddy and I was assigned a very personable young lady named Taylor, who has been caddying for 4 years when she was home from school for the summer.
The course basically went up and over a huge sand dune three or four times. Who knew there were t big sand dunes in Wisconsin? The course definitely lived up to its name, Mammoth Dunes, sand waste areas and traps everywhere. Fortunately, you were allowed to ground your club and remove your ball from foot prints in all sand areas. With Taylors help I played very well and was only in the sand twice. My phone fitness App said I walked 6.8 miles during the round.
The course basically went up and over a huge sand dune three or four times. Who knew there were t big sand dunes in Wisconsin? The course definitely lived up to its name, Mammoth Dunes, sand waste areas and traps everywhere. Fortunately, you were allowed to ground your club and remove your ball from foot prints in all sand areas. With Taylors help I played very well and was only in the sand twice. My phone fitness App said I walked 6.8 miles during the round.
As I said the Dells are a very touristy place. We did make reservations for a sunset dinner cruise but it was canceled due to high water on the river. Besides the 20 waterparks there are lots of other attractions, like the Ducks amphibious rides, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, magic shows, go carts rides, indoor skydiving, you name it, they have it and more than one of each.
We only went into the tourist area one evening to eat dinner at an Italian restaurant that had lobster ravioli, one of Josie's favorite meals. That made up for the dinner cruise we missed.
On my drive to the golf course, I saw a sign for the Corn and Tater Festival in Grand Marsh. So we decided to check it out. We purchased food tickets for a full plate of food. Included was a tasty beef sandwich, a red potato and an ear of corn. You could go back for as much corn and potatoes you could eat, till they ran out of food. Looking at the pile of corn next to the cooking pavilion I don't think they would ever run out. The children's tractor pull was very entertaining but we saw a sign for a Chicken Drop and there was a big crowd so we had to find out what the buzz was about. One or two chickens were placed in a round pen with 25 numbered sections marked on it. People paid two dollars each for one of those numbers and when a chicken pooped on that number you won half the money. It is amazing how often a chicken poops, the longest we had to wait for a winner was about 5 minutes. Definitely something we had never seen before and something we will not forget. It was a lot of fun.
We only went into the tourist area one evening to eat dinner at an Italian restaurant that had lobster ravioli, one of Josie's favorite meals. That made up for the dinner cruise we missed.
On my drive to the golf course, I saw a sign for the Corn and Tater Festival in Grand Marsh. So we decided to check it out. We purchased food tickets for a full plate of food. Included was a tasty beef sandwich, a red potato and an ear of corn. You could go back for as much corn and potatoes you could eat, till they ran out of food. Looking at the pile of corn next to the cooking pavilion I don't think they would ever run out. The children's tractor pull was very entertaining but we saw a sign for a Chicken Drop and there was a big crowd so we had to find out what the buzz was about. One or two chickens were placed in a round pen with 25 numbered sections marked on it. People paid two dollars each for one of those numbers and when a chicken pooped on that number you won half the money. It is amazing how often a chicken poops, the longest we had to wait for a winner was about 5 minutes. Definitely something we had never seen before and something we will not forget. It was a lot of fun.
I had not been out birding in a long time. The heat of the summer is not usually a very productive time for seeing birds, but when a cool front came through on Friday, I decided to try my luck the next morning. I drove the 35 miles north to Necedah National Wildlife Refuge and as you can see below it was a crisp 47 degrees at 7:18 AM.
I was surprised to find three Whooping Cranes on the refuge ; an endangered bird that I rarely ever get to see. The picture below is of poor quality since they were very far away and my camera and just maybe my eyesight are not so great anymore, but you can clearly see they are Whooping Cranes. They may have bands on their legs, just can't say for sure. I also saw at least 5 pairs of Sandhill Cranes. I was surprised to see 5 warbler species. In all I tallied 42 species, and lots of butterflies too. It turned out to be a good birding day.
I was surprised to find three Whooping Cranes on the refuge ; an endangered bird that I rarely ever get to see. The picture below is of poor quality since they were very far away and my camera and just maybe my eyesight are not so great anymore, but you can clearly see they are Whooping Cranes. They may have bands on their legs, just can't say for sure. I also saw at least 5 pairs of Sandhill Cranes. I was surprised to see 5 warbler species. In all I tallied 42 species, and lots of butterflies too. It turned out to be a good birding day.
RSS Feed