Happy Easter
Remember a couple days ago I mentioned while we were in Dubuque we visited St.Luke’s United Methodist Church and rode on the Fenelon Place Elevator, I thought I would follow-up with a bit of information about them.
St. Luke’s United Methodist Church congregation was founded in 1833 and is Iowa’s earliest congregation. The congregation built the first church in Iowa in 1834 for $255. The present church building was finished in 1897. Between 1999 and 2002, St. Luke’s spent $1 million restoring the eight Tiffany windows in the sanctuary, renovating the Tower and making the building more accessible. Each Tiffany window represents a part of the church’s history and their people. The church was gorgeous.
In 1882, Dubuque was an hour and a half town- at noon everything shut down for an hour and a half and everyone went home for lunch. Mr. J.K. Graves, a former mayor, State Senator, promoter of mines and a banker lived on top of the bluffs and worked at the bottom. It took him a half hour by horse and buggy to get home and another half hour to get back to the bank. He liked to take a half hour for lunch and a half hour for a nap but he couldn’t because of the long buggy ride. He hired a local engineer to design and build a one man cable car just like the ones he saw in the Alps, this solved his problem. The neighbors started showing up and asking him for a ride so he decided to open it up to the public. In 1884 it burned down and Mr. Graves rebuilt it and started to charge five cents for a ride. Then in 1893 it burned down again. It was during a recession and Mr. Graves couldn’t afford to rebuild it, ten of his neighbors banded together and formed the Fenelon Place Elevator Company. Mr. Graves gave them the right away for the elevator. They traveled to Chicago to look for new ideas for the elevator. They rebuilt the elevator system where it wouldn’t burn down everytime the elevator house burned. In 1997, the cable cars were completely rebuilt. After 84 years the original gears drive was replaced by a modern gear box with a DC motor. It was a cool elevator.
Today we left Iowa and went to Wisconsin. We decided to go to The House on the Rock. We had visited it before almost thirty years ago. We bought tickets for all three tours. It’s an amazing house. It took us three hours to complete the tours. We walked up and down ramps and stairs. There is so much to see that you certainly miss stuff. There were musical displays throughout the house. They gave you four tokens per person to play the musical displays. If you run out of tokens there are machines where you can buy more. The whole house was full of things that Ale Jordon collected. He designed the house as a tourist attraction. The tours take you through rooms with gun collections, dolls, doll houses, organs, ships, carousels and many more items. You walked through city streets, different circus displays, knights fighting with dragons, items from England and other places around the world. There is a giant carrousel in the middle of the house, it is the largest carousel in the world . Some interesting facts about the carrousel are it has 269 different carousel animals, 182 chandeliers, and is lit with over 20,000 lights. It’s amazing to watch it going around and there so much to see on it. As we were leaving we walked through the gift shop and bought some fudge. We had a great time.
Welcome to Wisconsin Sign
Larry and I at The House on the Rock
The Chinese Garden Musical display
Testing Yourself (Brain Dead) One of the organs
When we got back to the Minnie we had lunch and then we continued on to La Crosse. We parked in the city park by the Mississippi River. We were there for an hour or so. We walked Flo and then we walked around and took pictures of the statues in the park. It was busy with people skate boarding, roller blading, walking the riverwalk, sitting on benches looking at the river and laying on blankets in the grass. It was a beautiful spring day in the park.
Fudge from The House on the Rock
Statues in La Crosse River Park
The last stop was at The Home Depot in La Crosse for the night. We had a spectacular Easter.
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I would love to hear friendly comments on anything at all. Ruth