House on the Rock, Part the Third

After you have soaked up about as much off-key calliope music as you can handle, the tour deposits you in the huge three- or four-story hangar-sized structure that houses the Heritage of the Sea collection. This was, according to the literature, Alex Jordan's last effort on behalf of expanding the attraction, and it is a doozy!

The tour route hugs the inside perimeter of the building, rising to the top on catwalks that pass by displays of model ships. Many are intricate and fascinating to behold--real treasures. Take note of the one above for an example. And most of the ships and nautical paraphernalia on display in this section of the tour fit that description. It's just that there is often something a tad, well, off about the way in which the items are displayed.

Case in point:



Cool battleship model paired with floating sailor torso. Okey-dokey. But then, that's part of the charm of House on the Rock.

Don't get me wrong--plenty of the items on display are stunning. For example, this colorful example of scrimshaw:



Then there is the original poster, advertising the return voyage of the Titanic:



But alas! Then there is this nightmare inducer:



The dive of the living dead.

You may be asking yourself why the nautical displays only take up the periphery of this enormous room. Well, to accommodate the equally enormous sculpture of a whale-like creature locked in mortal combat with an oversized and blood-thirsty octopus, of course!

Here's the octopus (courtesy of House of the Rock):



And here is the whale-like beast:



There really is no way to capture the whole thing in a snapshot. You will just have to go there and see it for yourself!

Once you have left the catwalks of Heritage of the Sea behind, you begin a descent that will take you to the whirling, pulsing heart of House on the Rock... but more of that later. The route spirals downward past yet more collections--of marionettes,



of toy cars and trucks,



and of a jumble of real but quite dusty cars and buggies, including a Model T, an early '60s Lincoln Continental covered in tiny hexagonal tiles, and more. Oh yeah, and the hanging anthology of Burma-Shave signs, one set of which reads "He lit a match/To check gas tank/That's why they call him/Skinless Frank." Oh. My.

It is at this part of the tour that you reach the pizza stand (if you still have an appetite after envisioning poor flayed Frank) and the restrooms you've been aching to find since back in the Streets of Yesteryear section. Refresh, renew, and prepare to carry on in the next post.