Sometimes “Yes” can be the hardest word in the English language.  Despite other words, being longer and more difficult to pronounce, the two words “Yes” and “No”, can still be the most difficult words in the English Language. (Or translated into any other language really).  The key here is that these words usually imply an opinion, or a conveyance of commitment to do something which is really more of an action than just words in a language.  When you say Yes or No, generally you are committing yourself to an opinion, an action, telling someone they are correct or incorrect in basis with something said in a conversation or ect.  Sometimes either Yes, or No, can be make or break words in life even.

Those guns are a great example of the word “YES”.  Seriously, why on earth would you even attempt something like that?  Someone wants an Engraved Rotating Gatling Black Powder machine gun pistol launcher doppelflinger.  Someone said, “yes; I can do that”.  Alex Jordan was a man who liked the word “yes” (although not the same man that said yes to the Gatling Powder pistol deal above, although he was the owner of it).  He never really took something as impossible, so “no” was not in his vocabulary of sorts.  Granted, he did say “no” quite a few times in his life; either to friends giving him ideas for his house, or just in general.  He believed that anything was possible tough, which is why he started building a great American Landmark known as “The House on the Rock“.  Reports are that he started building this house on his own, carrying stones up to the top on his back and laying them by hand.  Eventually his father stepped in, and started to finance his adventure on this house; which he wanted to build merely to give him and his friends a place to party.

The partying didn’t stop there though as Alex had quite a few dreams for this beloved House on the Rock he was creating.  Like I said, he was creating the house just to party in, but he had other grand ideas, like the image above.  It’s an artists rendering of what is called “The Infinity Room”.  The room extends about 300 feet out over a cliff, and gets smaller as you go; working exactly opposite as the vanishing point principal.  The vanishing point principal being that when you look at a set of train tracks they appear to meet in the center.  This room appears to go on forever like that, but actually does end at a point.  All I could think of is watching fireworks of UFO landings from the more than 3,000 windows that make up the room.  How sweet would that be?  Either way, I digress.  People started wanting tours of Alex’s house, and he charged some people he didn’t know 50 cents a piece to take the tour.  Everybody said “yes” in a heartbeat, and then after they toured the house even thanked Alex for the opportunity!  Eventually his father, who again was bankrolling the operation, told Alex he needed to open this place up to the public; and in not so many words he said, “yes”.

That’s the inside of the infinity room.  See how it appears to go on forever?  One of Alex Jordan’s dreams.  He asked a contractor to work with him, and the guy said “yes” when working out the logistics of the project.  The nameless girl in this photo must have taken 4,000 photos with her cell phone in the infinity room.  Shannon and I wandered around the infinity room for what seemed like an hour (but was really only about 15 minutes), as this girl snapped a photo from what seemed like was from every window up there.  It was cool, but it wasn’t cool enough to take a photo from each of the windows; at least not yet.  The space shall forever remain in history to me and Shannon, but more on that in a minute.

Alex Jordan’s house was a complete collection of ridiculous.  Shannon had always wanted to visit the “House On The Rock”, and I made that a reality last weekend as a surprise.  When I asked if she thought she’d like it she most definitely said “yes!”.  She packed her D7000 which she affectionately named lensy, and off we went to go on to see some of the wild sights.  On vacation Shannon is kind enough to allow me a camera, but generally I get a camera and one lens, which in this case was my D3s, and a 50mm lens.  The house has hallway after hallway of display cases.  Dollhouses, Guns as seen far above, and even replicas of the crown jewels or Faberge Eggs.  Alex learned how to fabricate things, and quite a few of the things on display are replicas that he produced himself.  Other elements of it are completely authentic.  One of the coolest parts was the Carousel, which was partially made famous by Neil Gaiman in the book “American Gods“.  In the book, the gods met at the Carousel in the House on the Rock.  Since Neil is one of Shannon’s favorite authors, she always wanted to see the carousel; which we did last weekend.  In the photo above Shannon is about to enter the Carousel room, but paused to take a photo of some trinket in a display case along the way.

The beautiful part of this whole thing is that I booked the reservation at the hotel and with House on the Rock on opening weekend.  Calling a hotel and asking for a reservation is simple.  It’s their jobs to say “yes”, and to get you the room or reservation you’re looking for.  The big part was that nobody was around.  The whole place was empty.  There must have been two dozen cars at the House on the Rock the entire time we were there.  Shannon and I kept walking around saying, “YOU WANNA ROCK?!  HOUSE ON THE ROCK!!”; then laughing like children.  If there had been more families around I’m sure they would have told their kids “yes”, those two are from the nuthouse!

It was an amazing weekend all the way.  Shannon and I saw lots of crazy things, like in the photo above where Shannon is being all creepy with her camera to a naked statue with a unicorn head.  It’s reasons like that why I love her, because she gets excited about the little things.  All the times we’ve had fun on trips, all the times she’s dealt with my ridiculousness, the photos, the videos, the late nights on assignment and time on the computer editing, working on things like this blog and many others.  Yes, she puts up with me.  Yes, I love her more than anything.  Yes, she challenges me to be better at everything I do.  She said this trip was a dream come true when we were walking in the door to get our tickets.  I figured it would be a tough act to follow; but I had an ace in the hole.  I asked her to Marry me while at the tip of the Infinity room, thus sending it into our history, and making it worthy of a photo out of each window.  She said YES without hesitation.  You can see more of the photos that I took from the trip at my Flickr Account.   When Shannon gets done looking at and playing with the photos in her camera I’ll add a link to them too.   More Soon.