JACKSON STREET ROUNDHOUSE

I think everyone knows that I always have had a passion for trains, so while in Minneapolis I dragged Betty to St. Paul to visit the Jackson Street Roundhouse Museum. The roundhouse has an interesting past. The original roundhouse was built in 1882 but later on was too small and the present structure was built in 1907. Eventually the Great Northern, BNSF was no longer using the roundhouse as they had become obsolete. Eventually the USPS took over the building filling in the inspection pits and the turntable, so they could use it as a bulk mail sorting facility. About twenty years ago the Museum took over the propery. They started acquiring equipment and restored a portion of the building into a working roundhouse so they could restore equipment. The first three pictures below are of a 100 year old steam engine that they are restoring to use on their operating excursion railroad in Wisconsin. As you can see they have a long way to go.

The Roundhouse and Turntable

Various rolling stock

And the new passes close by on the way to Chicago

MALL OF AMERICA

We made a couple day stop at in Minneapolis, Minnisota as we were told we had to visit the Mall of America the largest mall in the country. There is not a good selection of RV parks near the city so we stay at a very nice RV park which was part of the Mystic Lake Casino which is run by the Sioux indian nation. It seems that every reservation has a casino, however this one is very nice and a cut above the rest. Also very interesting any casino we have every been to has had alcoholic beverages, this casino is totally dry, but that did not effect the weekend business. You could hardly find an availble slot machine.

We visited the mall and it is huge we very few empty stores. It has an enclosed amusement park in the middle and the mall goes all around it. It is so big some stores even have two locations. There are a few pictures of the amusement park.

HOUSE ON THE ROCK AND A WINERY

The House On The Rock is an attraction, not like Taliesen which is an operating architectural school and restoration project. The House on the Rock was the dream of Alex Jordan who designed and physically built the original structure. In the first picture you can see the house and the infinity room which projects 218' over the valley floor. With foliage I could not get any good close pictures of the house itself. In addition the interior was so confining pictures inside were not possible. The attraction also includes all kinds of other stuff like the world's largest carousel, all kinds of automated musical instruments, dolls and other unique exhibits or rare and exotic items. The house was very dark inside and since it was built on and around a rock the walls were rock. We found it to be sort of "creepy" inside. The gardens were very nice though.



THE GARDENS

THE INFINITY ROOM OUTSIDE

KIND OF NEAT

THE INTERIOR OF THE ROOM & ROOF

True to tradition, we are always on the lookout for nice wines. We found the WOLLERSHEIM WINERY not too far from Spring Green. They had some very nice wines and a quality tour. They also have this unusual cow that makes you wonder if you drank to much wine.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHTS TALIESEN

Frank Lloyd Wright is a renowned architect who, in the early 1900's, was way ahead of his time. We visited Spring Green, Wisconsin which is where he built Taliesen, his 101 room residence. This house was built to blend with the hills. The way it sounds Wright was an eccentric with his designs. For example he would build a home complete with furniture and a fireplace. The furniture was designed to blend into the home as well as perform a certain function such as to view the fireplace in a certain way; so the furniture was built in and the owner could not move it and ruin Wright's design. Talisen is also the home of The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture which is still in operation today. However, it is a split campus with half the school year spent at Taliesen West in Arizona.

The House from the front


The back of the house. You can get an idea of the view with the house facing the valley

End view of the house with swimming pool in the back.

The School, Note the tree growing into the roof.

Visitor Center

Talison Visitor Center, originally designed by Wright as a restaurant overlooking Wisconsin River

NATIONAL CRANE FOUNDATION

These photos were taken on our visit to the International Crane Foundation which is located in the very small town of Baraboo, WI. If any of you have ever seen the TV special on the use of ultra lights to train whooping cranes to migrate from their summer home in the north to Florida, these are the people who do it. The ICF has at least one pair of each of the 15 species of cranes found throughout the world. Most of the crane species are on the brink of being endangered and the Foundation is working with foreign governments to save habitat, etc. We learned that the Sandhill cranes that we have in our community in Florida are part of a non-migratory sub-species. It was a very interesting visit, especially for me - the bird lover. Besides the area where the birds are on display there is an area called Crane City. It is not open to the public and the people that have go in for any reason have to be dressed like a crane, No Kidding, the place has really gone to the birds.








Mural at entrance

WISCONSIN DELLS

These pictures were taken in the Wisconsin Dells which is on the Wisconsin River. The dells are large rock and cliff formations that date back to 500 million years ago. The name "dells" was taken from the French word "dalles" which means "flat, layered rocks". The river was discovered by the French explorers Marquette and Joliet. It starts in northern Wisconsin near the Michigan border and empties into the Mississippi at the WI/MN border. The river is now divided into the upper and lower "dells" divided by a dam. The river and scenery are beautiful, especially the upper dells. The city of Wisconsin Dells has turned into a typical tourist town complete with roller coasters, water parks and fudge, tee shirt and souvenir shops (The Wildwood NJ of WI, ken). Even some of the smaller hotels and motels have their own indoor water parks which extends the season wel beyond Labor Day. A very pretty area with a tourist history that dates to the mid - 1800's.

THE UP (UPPER PENNINSULA) MICHIGAN

After visiting Mackinac Island we traversed the upper penninsula of Michigan from east to west. We saw some beautiful water falls and the Shipwreck museum at Whitefish Point on Lake Superior. Both of us were amazed to see a lake that was as big as an ocean and we were equally amazed at the number of ships that had been sunk on Lake Superior. One of the most recent was the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. Most of us remember that one because it was made "famous" by Gordon Lightfoot. They recovered the bell and it is housed at the museum along with artifacts from other wrecks from the past 300 years. The lighthouse is from the mid-1800's but is no longer a working aid to navigation.
Another interesting thing to note is that there are sand dunes on the lake shore. I always thought that sand dunes were an ocean thing.
In Munising, we took a cruise along the coast line of Lake Superior and saw some very interesting rock formations and colorings in the cliffs. It was called the cruise to the pictured rocks; the pictures and colors from the different mineral deposits in the lime and sand stone.
We also walked to some waterfalls in the Munising area. In all, it was a very pretty area but way too rural for this "city girl" and when they started talking about snowfall amounts of about 300+ inches/year Ken and I both took it off our list of places to revisit unless it was in July or August.

We saw lots of wildlife in the UP

The light station is amongest the sand dunes ? Yes Sand dunes