Finally it was time for the House on the Rock. We’d first heard about this attraction in Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods and we’d always wanted to go. We got there bright and early.

Snookums enjoys the Japanese Gardens, which apparently were a recent addition to the House complex. We wandered through the Alex Jordan museum before finally getting into the House proper.

The highlight of Section 1 was the Infinity Room. Here Snookums looks down and suddenly realizes there is very little holding us up, hundreds of feet above the ground.

Other than that, Section 1 was mostly the actual original house (i.e. the residence). It was really neat, but also rather weird and claustrophobic – and not nearly as bright as the website makes it look – so it was a relief when we finally popped out on the roof.

And here’s me. See that white structure behind me? That’s the roof to the Infinity Room, stretching out over the nothingness.

Section 2 is where you find a lot of weird collection stuff. Check out these guns! The fun – and frustrating – thing about these collections is that very little is labelled or categorised. You’re not meant to really learn anything about what you’re looking at. Instead you’re just meant to go, “Whoa, cool!” I guess. Anyway, there’s a lot of steampunk-ish stuff like this at the House.

Plenty of creepy, macabre stuff too! These were taxidermied rats dressed up in clothes and posed in scenes. *shudder*

There were plenty of machines and novelties throughout the House that required special tokens (which you could purchase). I was excited to find this one: “The Drunkard’s Dream.” Gaiman specifically writes out it in American Gods! We had to play that one.

Here’s Snookums in the Streets of Yesterday section, which actually recreates an entire 19th century street. Each little shop front is filled with yet more collections of stuff!

Snookums checks out some “French postcards” on a movie viewer. Instead of the promised ladies, he got a vision of hell!

We found Madame Esmeralda, the fortune-telling machine mentioned in the novel. I couldn’t resist getting my fortune told. Thankfully it was better than Shadow’s!

The lack of labelling made me question the authenticity of some of the collections, like this one of weird medical stuff. Tapeworms? Really?! EWWW!

You have to keep in mind that I only snapped a few representative photos of things. This is like 1/1000th of the stuff there. It would take you YEARS to take in everything they have. Hundreds of dollhouses! Suits of armour! Crazy old cars! Weaponry! Teddy bears! Dead bugs! Giant music boxes with self-playing instruments! It’s just nuts.

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