It’s time for another spring break recap, kind of like the one I did last year.

This time, it’s my mom and me. We didn’t go that far this time, as we’re only in Wisconsin, but this is still interesting. Let’s talk about when I went to the House on the Rock and the Cave of the Mounds during spring break. Yes, it’s a two-in-one! 

For the first few days of spring break, I just hung out at my mom’s house. I did go to the mall and Goodwill, but that wasn’t too eventful. Thursday morning would eventually come, and after packing up some clothes and a swimsuit (since apparently there’s a pool at the hotel), we would finally leave. Unfortunately, it’s gonna be quite a bit of sitting in the car and waiting until we eventually get to our next destination.

Day 1 Part 1: Cave Of The Mounds

After about two and a half hours of driving, we’ve arrived at destination #1: Cave of the Mounds.

If you couldn’t tell by the name, the Cave of the Mounds is… a cave.

When you go in, you’re met with many rock formations and stalagmites. It’s cool to walk through all of these things. There can be some spots where you can feel claustrophobic, especially in “the narrows”, where you’re so close to the rocks that you’re forced to touch them. This cave used to be an ocean, so you can see fossils of old sea creatures. One of them was a cephalopod fossil that was like a squid that got up to 20 feet long.  Another one was a crinoid, an echinoderm that was like a sea urchin. 

An interesting fact is that the temperature is always 50 degrees inside the cave. This didn’t change much as the temperature was 53 degrees outside, but whatever. 

Overall, this cave is pretty cool. The interpretative trails were also a nice thing to walk around to kill some time before we got to where we’re staying tonight.

Day 1 Part 2: Deer Valley Lodge

After 5 more minutes of driving, we arrive at the hotel we’re staying at. The Deer Valley Lodge is a hotel that’s themed after a log cabin and has a waterpark in it, kinda like Great Wolf Lodge. There’s also a restaurant that serves pizza and sandwiches and a game room on the second floor. It even has a golf course (which we didn’t go to). I didn’t expect this to be the kind of place we were staying at. I thought it would be a normal run of the mill hotel, but I’ll take this.

The waterpark was pretty cool. It had a slide that went outside the building and back in again, like Great Wolf Lodge. There were also some basketball hoops over the pool, which I don’t know why more pools do that.

My mom and I shared a pizza. One side pepperoni, one side mushroom. It was fine. Not really the best pizza, but not the worst either.

After that we hung out in the hotel room, then we went to sleep. Eventually.

Day 2: The House on the Rock

It’s Friday now. After some breakfast and 26 minutes of driving, we’re now at destination #2: The House on the Rock.

Alex Jordan built this house in the 1950s. The original house is a house on the rock, but also built into the rock. It’s pretty cool inside the house, which has an interesting design due to it being built into a rock. The house also has an infinity room, which – spoiler alert – isn’t actually infinite. But you probably already knew that.

The rest of the house is just a giant maze of a whole BUNCH of stuff, such as…

• The Streets of Yesterday, a recreation of a 19th century street
• Lots of themed memorabilia
• A 200-foot long whale statue
• Old automobiles and carriages
• 1950s-themed restaurant and ice cream parlor (the parlor was closed)
• The largest indoor carousel in the world
• An organ room with 5 organs and a giant chandelier
• Dollhouses and a carousel of dolls (some were kinda creepy)
• Circus memorabilia
• Galleries of things like swords and guns, knight armor and weapons, replicas of British crowns and jewelry, and a mini recreation of Buckingham Palace
• Lots of mechanical shows with automatically playing instruments

This isn’t even all that Alex Jordan had. He had a warehouse full of stuff that isn’t even in the museum! Holy cow.

Outside the museum, you can find the Japanese Gardens with some pretty plants and cool fish. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to go in because of the weather in the past weeks. 

This one is a must-see, especially if you get the ultimate experience as I did. It’s very long, so you’ll do a lot of walking, but that’s okay. It’s worth it.

That’s my spring break experience! Although we didn’t go too far, the House on the Rock and the Cave of the Mounds were pretty fun. Maybe I would go there again some other time, but for now, I’m back in school and want summer break to start already. 

Yeah, I know, it’s only been a few weeks, but whatever.