This is how everyone spends their tenth wedding anniversary, right? Because my wife and I sure wouldn’t want to look out of place or anything.
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 8: the Rock in the House
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 3: Monday, July 24th (continued)
Eventually, after the dashboard downshifted from Red Alert, and after one missed turnoff along the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River, we skipped back into Wisconsin and reached Highway 35, a.k.a. the Great River Byway, a stretch of road that follows along the Wisconsin side of the Mississippi through several small towns all the way to Minnesota. We were unaware until we reached it that the byway was an attraction unto itself, but it was a beautiful surprise. The river on your left is gorgeous, but the ridges and rock formations on your right are intimidating yet impressive.
Yes, this photo again. But hours away from the Dells, we eventually remembered that we like nature.
Our first intentional stop on the Byway was in Fountain City, home of a roadside attraction called the Rock in the House. From the front, it’s just another home near a cliffside. As you approach from the modest parking area, it appears ordinary, even quaint.
Just a house….or IS IT?
From the rear, it looks like this:
You’re not helping, boy.
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 7: Last Hurrah in Wisconsin Dells
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 3: Monday, July 24th
The morning was spent alternating between packing, indulging in the hotel breakfast buffet — nothing special, but less stale and more choices than what we’d had in Milwaukee — and admiring the hotel’s cable selection, which offered unusual channels that we can’t get here at home like MTV2 and G4. We watched an entire (rerun) episode of Cheat! just because my son and I were fascinated by the idea of a TV show devoted to video game tips and cheat codes, even if the episode featured games we’re unlikely to play anytime soon (among them Batman Begins and God of War).
We checked out and drove straight to Riverview Park & Waterworld, arriving just as they opened the doors at 10 a.m. We originally wanted to be on the road to Minnesota much, much sooner, but the free passes were an unexpected boon. Given how much money we blew the previous days for so much underwhelming enjoyment in return, we were bound and determined to get our money’s worth out of Wisconsin Dells in general, in some bizarre karmic way, even though we don’t believe in capital-K Karma.
I was kinda pooled-out after the previous day’s festivities both at Mt. Olympus and the hotel pool. Since Anne hadn’t had a shot at water rides yet, she and the boy suited up and rode every single water ride on the premises while I played the role of our official bagman.
Water slide races! One of several aqueous pleasures that looked nifty from a distance, if you were in the mood and not BITTER about certain other things that were no fault of this particular water park’s.
Right this way as we bid farewell to this town-sized tourist trap…
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 6: The Worst Pirate-Themed Anything of All Time
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 2: Sunday, July 23rd (continued)
After a long, hard day of amusement and soaking came another long-preplanned stop, dinner at a restaurant named Crabby’s Seafood Buffet. Not just all-you-can-eat seafood: every ad we saw from the Internet to brochures to local posters pictured a pair of clean-cut geeks pretending to be surly pirates in satin, posing beneath a caption vowing “Free Pirate Battle!” This promise was in every single ad we saw, more of a mantra than a motto. To us, this sounded like Medieval Times with a different angle and more food. We expected to improvise our meals on the run all vacation long, but Crabby’s was the only restaurant specified on our itinerary because it just sounded that promising. They even give each patron their own paper pirate hat to wear all through the meal. As with the Jelly Belly Factory, my son protested his hat and refused to don it.
We, on the other hand…
Beyond these doors were sights that would’ve made Spongebob Squarepants shred himself with fury.
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 5: Scaling Down Mount Olympus
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 2: Sunday, July 23rd (continued)
Our next stop after Alligator Alley had been preplanned months in advance. Our only previous water-park encounter was the single time we remembered to bring swimsuits to Kings Island, but didn’t gidet around to putting them on till two hours before closing time. We’d enjoyed what little we could in such a short timespan, but we yearned to enjoy a water park without hurrying. Besides, we’d have to be complete fuddy-duddies not to visit the self-styled Water Park Capital of the World and not visit at least one lousy water park. Our choice was an ancient Greco-Roman theme park called Mt. Olympus. For my son, it seemed a winning combination. He likes pools. He likes amusement parks. He likes Greek mythology. (He and I were among the half-dozen people in America who got a kick out of Disney’s Hercules.) All three combined should’ve been a winning ticket.
Enter, and be one with the gods! Or just pay godlike prices.
You half-expect Hercules to be hanging around and preparing to topple some of these. Or Samson, even.
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 4: Appointment in Alligator Alley
Albino alligator! As not seen in the movie of the same name.
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 2: Sunday, July 23rd
Every hotel on this vacation also included free breakfast. This hotel would prove to offer the weakest of the week, mostly muffins and stale cake donuts. Maybe pilots thrive on those, but we didn’t.
The drive out of Milwaukee brought us further into bona fide Wisconsin heartland, swathed in foliage and crops greener than ours back in Indiana, dotted with businesses sporting names like “Mousehouse Cheesehaus”, and permeated with the sounds of the John Tesh Radio Show, which alternated the usual hoary old EZ-listening standards with self-help bon mots from the Teshmeister himself. Within hours we left Tesh behind and arrived at our next city of choice, Wisconsin Dells.
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 3: Milwaukee for Art’s Sake
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 1: Saturday, July 22nd (continued)
Fairly rejuvenated, we headed north from Pleasant Prairie along Lake Michigan to our next stop, the Milwaukee Art Museum. This stop was literally a last-minute addition to the itinerary. We’d decided months prior which nights would be spent in which cities. Night one would be in Milwaukee, only four hours away. Since we knew the Jelly Belly tour wouldn’t last all day, and since Milwaukee is less than five hours from Indianapolis in good traffic, we knew we had time to kill. Only problem was, we couldn’t find anything up our alley in Milwaukee for the longest time. Other than the same combination found in every major city of zoo, museum, kids’ museum, art museum, and historic sites involving personalities barely known to outsiders, the only tourist attractions of note seemed to be alcohol-based. None of us are drinkers, socially or otherwise, so their appeal to us was minimal.
On that Thursday, a mere thirty hours before we left Indianapolis, I Googled the name of a local advertising museum to clarify something before I added it to the reject pile. Google led me to the Milwaukee Art Museum’s home page, where I stopped short.
Hey, movie fans! Recognize this?
You won’t believe what this comics fan discovered the night before leaving town!…
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 2: This is Our Hill and These Are Our Beans
[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]
Day 1: Saturday, July 22nd
We packed quickly, then hit the open road after a quick stop to air up the tires — all four of which were low — and shut off that dashboard light at last. The first few hours from Indianapolis to Chicago were mostly uneventful, unless you count my hairbreadth near-miss of an interstate exit sign I’d been seeking in Chicago. To steer clear of the wrong turnoff and avoid the line of cars steamrolling past us in the proper lane, I had to drive up onto the raised median between the forks in the road. I could blame the rampant Chicago interstate construction, or I could blame my proclivity for occasional concentrated daydreaming at inopportune moments. Or I could take the easy, responsibility-free way out and blame society. Either way, no way could I have pulled that move in my own car, a ’96 Cavalier, without sailing right off both axles. For once, the day was saved, thanks to…the SUV!
Once we were well past the heavy reconstruction of the Dan Ryan Expressway, we stopped briefly in Lake Forest for gas, then motored out of Illinois, into Wisconsin, and on to the pretty, pretty town of Pleasant Prairie, where the local botanists worked overtime to make a good first impression on travelers. A few miles east of the exit was our first tourist attraction of the trip, the Jelly Belly Factory, proud makers of jellybeans and jellybean accessories.
I hear this car’s engine ran on jellybeans instead of gas, but then GM bought it and dropped it into the Mariana Trench.
Our 2006 Road Trip, Part 1: Our Milkman’s Chariot Awaits
[Welcome to the first installment of a very special miniseries, representing the original travelogue from our family’s 2006 vacation to scenic Wisconsin and Minnesota, home of much forestry, many lakes, and very odd things. Some hindsight editing and modern-day commentary will be included along the way as value-added bonus features for readers old and new alike.
All photos were taken with one of two cameras: one Kodak EasyShare that was obsolete when we bought it, and one 35mm camera whose film had to be dropped off for developing and whose pics were scanned using an equally obsolete, poor-res scanner. Very little about these entries will approach 1080p quality. Back in our day, this is what history looked like. When these travelogues were written, they were as much about the writing as they were about the pics. Consequently, some entries will have one photo, while others will have several.
I’m adding some present-day commentary in spots as value-added epilogues. I’ll also be inserting several photos that we’ve never shared publicly before. Even our internet friends who read the original entries will be seeing previously unreleased material for the first time.
Enjoy!]
Day 0: Friday, July 21st
As with last year’s vacation, rather than submit either of our own cars to hundreds of miles of wear and tear, we rented an SUV for the extra space, comfort, and intimidation factor — what better way to announce to the townsfolk of other locales, “Back off, man! We’re TOURISTS!” Granted, we had to prepare ourselves to spend extra money on gas, but that falls in line with my own little personal plan to help save America: the way I figure it, if every one of us works together to use up all the gas in the world as quickly as possible, down to the very last drop, then we’ll be forced to make the transition to alternative fuel sources that much sooner.
MCC No-Reason Live-Tweeting: “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”
How much of this mid-transformation shot is CG and how much is the real Nicolas Cage? I’m not asking him. YOU ask him.
While my son is off living at college and my wife finds other things to amuse herself, my Wednesday nights have become one-man movie nights at home. I work an earlier shift that day, arrive home mid-afternoon, and watch stuff and things for a while. It’s a pleasure I’ve rarely afforded myself, as evidenced by the towering pile of unwatched DVDs and my slowly lengthening Netflix queue.
On Twitter I’ve not been one for constant live-tweeting, but a few months ago I spent one Wednesday live-tweeting my viewing displeasure of Batman and Robin at a friend’s suggestion. This past Wednesday I repeated the experience at absolutely no one’s suggestion with a fifty-cent Blu-ray rental of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, starring Idris Elba, Ciaran Hinds, exactly one female, and Academy Award Winner Nicolas Cage as the notorious Marvel antihero. Collected below for posterity or whatever are the results of that experience.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 