(OT) Praise/rant/etc #10 (Hell's Dells edition)

[Eye of Hoffs]

*snarls*

We had one more stop to make before leaving Duluth and that was a visit to Glensheen, a mansion built on the Superior shore at the turn of the last century. It was constructed by Chester and Clara Congdon who had struck it rich in the mining industry and subsequently commissioned a renowned local architect to produce this thirty-nine room pad in the English Tudor style. It had been pointed out to us during Sunday's ride on the Duluth Crawler and even the young man we were sitting with had recommended it (in the standard eloquent manner of all American youth: it's cool). The Congdons occupied the house for about half a century before Elisabeth, Chester and Clara's last surviving child, donated it to the University of Minnesota on the condition that she could remain living there until her death. That death came in a violent manner in 1977 when she and her nurse were murdered by the husband of her adopted daughter. The house was then opened to the public in 1979 and been cared for by the university ever since.

The ninety minute tour around all four levels of the house was most enjoyable with the rooms set up in as near original condition as possible (based on old photographs) and most of the objects authentic (although I'm not sure if that was Chester's genuine PC monitor in the library). Some of the works of art and decoration are amazing and were brought back from the Congdon's extensive world travels. The house itself also featured many innovations for the time such as an intercom system which connected various rooms and even outbuildings. Staff working there were very well treated as they also got free room and board in the house and ate the same food as the Congdons themselves. I asked the student giving the tour whether she also got free steak and lobster but she said that was regrettably not the case any more.

After a tour of the grounds it was time to finally say adiós to The Land of 10,000 Road Construction Projects and head to pastures new. Overall our visit to the state had been okay but with nothing except possibly the Lake Superior shoreline to really make it stand out. The interior scenery was by no means the most interesting we have seen and in many ways not much different than what you can see in parts of the UK, although we had not been up to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness as I was considering at one point. But with so much more of the US we still need to visit and a number of places we would very much like to return to, it seems unlikely that I will ever visit the state again, which is something of a morbid thought really.

We crossed the bridge out of Duluth and entered the neighbouring city and state of Superior, Wisconsin. We were somewhat alarmed by all the road construction we were immediately confronted with (the bridge was actually closed to traffic going the other way) but once we were out of Superior we saw little more of it. The journey to our next destination was fairly unremarkable except to note that away from Mayor Emily's influence the trees were clearly showing their familiar autumnal shades.

It was around six o'clock when we arrived in Wisconsin Dells. The Dells is basically a cheesy entertainment city, the Disney World of the Upper Midwest and self-proclaimed water park capital of the world. Its various resorts all compete Vegas style to have the biggest and best water rides and attractions. I'm no water baby myself but one thing I do enjoy are wave pools and we'd selected the Wilderness Lodge for our three night stay because it had The Great Wave, America's largest.

Things immediately got off to a bad start at the Wilderness when I noticed that The Weather Channel was not available. They had Direct TV but that just had this crappy thing called Weather Nation which featured some anaemic beanpole of a woman who looked like she had just been reanimated from the grave as cheap zombie labour. But worse was to come. Caroline's first priority was to go and find the laundry as our supplies of clean t-shirts and pants (that's underpants to you, your pants are what we call trousers) had been exhausted and while she was doing that I decided to have a mosey round and check out the various parts of the hotel complex. The resort had numerous indoor and outdoor water parks, restaurants and amusement places and it took me some time to locate the one that I was interested in, the Wild Water Dome. When I finally got there I noted that it was shut. Hmm, must be early closing today. But then I looked at a notice which had this week's water park hours of operation listed and next to the Dome it just said “closed”. Closed? Closed!? CLOSED?!?!?!

Yep, the miserable bar stewards had closed the place. As fate would have it it's inoperative for just four days in the second half of the year and three of them coincided with our visit. To say I was pissed would be something of a huge understatement. This was an Incredible Hulk moment and the owners should think themselves lucky that I hadn't received an overdose of gamma radiation lately. I returned to the room with dark thoughts running through my head and then went straight to bed to sulk. It was then that I noticed the hateful hard pillows they had and after despatching them to the other side of the room I muttered myself to sleep.

We both woke several times in the night to the sound of thunder. One clap was so loud that the lodge itself shook like it was in an earthquake. I had happy thoughts of all the resort's water parks crumbling into rubble and the owners being swept away in a tsunami of escaping water. When we finally got up later it was fairly dark outside and the storm was still going on. Clearly my anger was being channelled and manifesting itself in the atmosphere.

Not wanting to give the hotel's establishments any more of our dollars we went to Denny's, our favourite eating haunt, for breakfast. Besides, the Lodge's idea of breakfast is probably strapping you down to a seat and then force-feeding you sugar syrup washed down with cold Earl Grey. I usually let Caroline do the talking where possible because US people seem to have a particularly hard time understanding me. I should have let her order my drink:

“And for you sir?”

“Can I have a glass of 2% milk please?”

“I'm sorry?”

“A glass of 2% milk”

“What's was that?”

“MILK.”

“Oh milk, yes we have skimmed or 2%”

“2% please”.

“You want 2%?”

“YES!!!”

Even Caroline is not immune to the communication problems. Upon arriving back to Woederness Lodge she telephoned their spa department to order the massage that she had been looking forward to all trip. What should have been a simple operation seemed to take about ten minutes. I mean, JHC, we were staying in their ****ing sister business, all they surely needed was our room number and name. But noooo, it was name (more than once), home address, which is a different format to yours of course so caused all sorts of problems, then telephone number, which is a different format to yours and so caused all sorts of problems, then email, then credit card details, etc. What the hell did half that matter? This was to book a bloody massage not some flaming Swiss assisted suicide. And all the time there was the difficulty in understanding what she was saying.

“So it's caroline at gilfane dot com, that's GOLF-INDIA-LIMA...”

“I'm sorry, you want to play a round of golf?”

Ahhhhhhh. At least we have yet to have a “are you guys from Ireland/Scotland/Australia” thrown at us which has been pretty common in the past.

With that finally out of the way we decided we should at least try and get our money's worth and investigate the other parks. Klondike Kavern was the first and like most such places it was noisy and full of bored attendants & lifeguards who keep looking at you suspiciously. I tried one thing, the Lazy River or something, then went back to sit down and glare at anyone resembling a resort employee. Wave pools there weren't. Next we went to the Wild West, their biggest place, spent about two minutes looking around and then returned to the room and just Skyped our daughters instead.

A little later Caroline went off for her massage whilst outside the storm continued unabated. I noticed online that we were under a severe storm warning and in a nearby county there was a flash flood one. If only the Weather Channel's Kelly Cass or Jen Carfagno had been available for some penetrating input.

We finished the day with another visit to Denny's then returned to watch the storm which were showing no sign of stopping and actually seemed to be getting worse. It was still bucketing it down outside and more counties were under flash flood watches or warnings. We'd never experienced anything quite like this before; far more violent storms in the US before yes, but not one that had been going on for three quarters of the day. But of course this scubby lodge would not want you to be doing anything which might be constituted as being enjoyable. Nope, they had to put a light on the balcony outside which couldn't be turned off thus making it pretty impossible to see anything outside the window. Did I mention that I was really pissed with them?

So we are checking out of the hotel a day early and will be giving two fingers to Wilderness Lodge and the Dells this morning. My daughter tells me that is usually a sign of peace in this country. Well I can assure you that back home it generally means something quite different.

*growls*

Pictures of the day
Scenes from Glensheen including an authentic display of Minnesota road construction methods in the early 1900s.

[Ian James]

I think I would have been mad as well...

Oh well, Happy Birthday to Caroline, and take her somewhere nice for dinner.  (not Denny's)

[Sara Dale]

Happy Birthday Caroline.

Hoffs,  I surely hope things do get better over here.

[Dr Alzheimer]

Happy Birthday Mrs. Hoffs!

[CharGar]

Happy Birthday Caroline!

[Razz]

Happy Birthday Caroline!


You guys should take some time and check out North Carolina. I hear it's a riot over there....



Too soon?

[Becca]

Happy Birthday Caroline.  Are you going to empty the Gilfane treasury to buy her that house for her birthday?

[Natalia]

Happy Birthday, Caroline!

[Zardoz of Crete aka Kimi aka Victoria Secret]

Happy Birthday Caroline!

[Eye of Hoffs]

She says thank you, but is wondering where you left all the presents.

[Razz]

I didn't see any presents *whistles innocently*