Visiting the House on the Rock and Watching its Room Size Music Boxes Play (Wisconsin) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
There
were 3 places that I routinely took 6-year-old Florence to visit in Wisconsin
when we lived outside Madison.
University towns like Madison tend to have very nice living conditions
for families, especially if you are a faculty member or administrator:
-House
on the Rock
-Vilas
Park Zoo
-MacKenzie
Environmental Center
The House on the Rock
One
of my family’s favorite places to go for an outing in Wisconsin was the House
on the Rock.
According
to Wikipedia (which I trust in this case, because I know who owns the House on
the Rock), it was opened in 1959 and was designed by Alex Jordan, Jr. (Jordon was a relative by marriage to my
Wisconsin family.)
I
liked visiting the site for its rooms full of music boxes that actually filled
sides of walls. Florence, my husband,
and I all liked the Mikado music box with full-sized figures that stealthily
moved around the room.
My
favorite music box was the Franz Josef that played Viennese waltzes. We all liked the huge carousel at the end of
the exhibit hall with its ponies and red glittering lights.
Vilas Park Zoo
Florence
liked playgrounds and the zoo almost as much as seeing the eagles dive for fish
in Sauk City (Wisconsin). The Vilas Park
Zoo has been a free entertainment spot in Madison since its inception. Florence liked the slides and teeter-totters
the most in the playground.
Whenever
we went to the zoo, I thought of how some people criticize zoos. However, in many cases, most people would
never have the chance to see animals like giraffes. (I often wonder if people who promote African
safaris as the best way to see the animals have stocks in tourism companies.)
Safaris
to Africa are very expensive. I always
liked zoos like the one in San Diego as a child. The San Diego Zoo does try to recreate
habitats and promotes reproduction of endangered species. I think this is a very good policy and kids
get to see animals, too.
If
it were not for the care that some animals receive in zoos, many species of
animals would be extinct like panda bears.
On
one of our zoo visits, we learned that there would be a new primate house with
real trees for monkeys to play around in with their children.
We
had a great time at the Discovery Center.
Florence looked through microscopes and tried to get the attention of fish
swimming around the aquarium.
We
saw two iguanas that were sleeping. Florence
hid behind me and looked out at them from behind my back. Fear of the unknown is real.
We
stopped to look at penguins on the way out.
I thought the frolicking penguins were Arctic monkeys.
To
make our zoo visits more interesting, we would get nonfiction animal books
before and after our visit, so we would know about the animals.
I
would ask Florence questions like “What do you think they eat?” and “Where do
you think they sleep?”
I
rarely used grade-level books for zoo visits.
Instead, I used ones for adults.
These had answers to the questions I asked Florence and informative
photographs as well.
MacKenzie Environmental
Education Center
On
one of our visits to the MacKenzie Environmental Center, I made a picnic lunch,
which other families might like to make.
None of these items is too hard to make at home and do not cost very
much either:
-marinated
mushrooms à la grecque
-grilled
chicken pasta salad with basil, tomato, and lemon and oil dressing
-four
kinds of cheese with bread and butter
-a
selection of chopped fruit
-plain
yogurt with vanilla bean sugar
-sodas
We
passed Sandhill Cranes on our way to the Center. There is Sandhill Crane Foundation in
Wisconsin, but we did not go to it, because there were so many of them to see
on the way toward the north in Wisconsin.
We
ate in the picnic lunch area at the Center.
They have large picnic areas with clean restrooms, clean barbecue pits,
and covered picnic areas in case it rains or is very sunny.
Then,
we went down two of the nature trails.
The first one we did was about wildlife and the second one was about
ecology.
They
had very informative booklets that talked about the plant life and animals.
Florence wanted to play hide-and-seek.
That was fun, too. I would close
my eyes, and she would run behind trees as Laurent read the information books.
On
another day, when we drove to the MacKenzie Wildlife Center, there were four
buffalo lounging by the entryway.
Florence
loved the great horned owls we saw. When
we went up to the exhibit, one of the owls hissed at us a few times. The other owl turned its head around, so that
we could see its face attached to its backside.
The
owls kept blinking their eyes and moving, which kept Florence interested. She was so intrigued by these owls that she
did not want to spend time looking at the bear cubs there even though she said
they were cute.
The
animal that Florence really liked was called a fisher. I had never seen one before taking a look at
this one. It looks like an otter, but it
has luxurious chestnut-colored fur.
The
one we looked at seemed to want to play with Florence. Florence said some nice things about the
Wildlife Center:
“Let’s
just sit and watch.”
“I’m
just looking at this pretty animal.”
“Let’s
open our own zoo.”
I
liked those comments.
On
the way out, I read a few facts about fishers:
-They
are porcupine predators.
-They
are rare or absent in Sothern Wisconsin.
They
were reintroduced to Wisconsin after habitat loss and loss due to trapping.
As
we walked on the trail out, we saw two baby deer nursing next to us. They were speckled deer and very precious.
By
Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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