The Great American Dollhouse Museum

     I love miniatures. More specifically, I love really nice, well made miniatures. I like miniatures that look just like the real thing they are representing, only smaller. Well done miniatures are amazing!

     Travis and I went to The Great American Dollhouse Museum in Danville, KY. The museum has hundreds (probably hundreds) of miniature displays. 

      They are all like little windows into pieces of a tiny world. In the case of some of the displays (like in the first photo of this post) they really were tiny windows where you could look in and view the tiny scenes. 

     I have always loves dollhouses, especially really well done dollhouses, but I have struggled with dolls. I know, that sounds odd for a dollmaker to say. But especially in dollhouse scale, dolls can potentially ruin a really realistic scene. 

      This particular parlor is very unlikely to ever have a doll realistic enough to not ruin it. But this is just the type of dollhouse I love the most. 

     As a dollmaker, my goal has always been to make dolls look less like dolls. It's not an easy task. If I ever had the space for a nice dollhouse (the nice ones are SO expensive!) I very likely wouldn't put dolls in it. It is so hard, especially in 1:12 scale to have a realistic doll that isn't just a full on sculpture. Sculpted clothes are not actually realistic most of the time. 

     I really enjoyed looking into all of the miniature shops, and then the challenge of trying to get photos of exactly what I was seeing. Catching the angles in the same way was nearly impossible .

     And then, if you have a realistic doll, it kind of feels like spying on these tiny people. 

      This beautiful shop is somewhat ruined by the dolls. The 2 child dolls in the front are not sitting well and they look very fake. 

      I enjoyed the scenes where there weren't dolls. Some of the displays were hyper realistic in their detail. Having made a lot of miniatures in my life, I know how hard it is to keep tiny things perfectly in scale. 

     Sometimes, even if the dolls weren't the most realistic, they still added to the scene instead of taking away from it. I think this is usually our aim, or should be, in model horse showing. Our dolls are still dolls, are unlikely to ever be mistaken for real people, but if we have them positioned properly, they definitely add to our scenes. Even though they are still dolls. 

     This lady's clothing is still slightly bulky, but she is very nicely done. I think the fact that we can't see her face also adds to the realism of the scene.

     This scene was all full of trolls, but still quite realistic. Having just been to multiple caves the two days before going to the dollhouse museum, it was fun to imagine where that ladder went. 

     Maybe the ladder went to the witches. Who knows. 

       I hope you enjoyed looking at these miniature scenes as much as I did. I took many more photos of the dollhouse museum, but there were too many photos to fit in one post. 

Dinosaur World and Big Mike’s Rock Shop

     Remember how I said when we pulled up outside Crystal Onyx Cave it was a bit cheesy and off putting because the statues basically looked like giant toys? Well, we decided to go to Dinosaur world, since the caves are around 2 hours away from Lexington and you really want to make the trip worth it. 

     Dinosaur world is not worth it. I did take a bunch of photos, but they basically are not worth sharing. They were not well done or realistic looking. And I know that we don't really know exactly what the dinosaurs looked like, but I am pretty sure it wasn't like these statues. Travis said he wanted to go and it was a nice hike with weird statues in the woods. I even made a doctor's appointment while we toured because it was quiet enough for me to do it (and they had called). The best part of Dinosaur World was the T-Rex T-shirt that Travis got. The rest was silly bit a nice walk because it wasn't super hot. 

     We also stopped at Big Mike's Rock shop for the second day in a row. We went when we went to Mammoth cave (and we went to the Mammoth Cave Wildlife museum on the way to Mammoth, but I didn't bother to do a post about that either). Big Mike's has some really excellent prices on rocks and minerals. It was definitely worth stopping at. Twice.

      This was the end of the time we spent out near the caves on this trip. The first day, when we had pre-booked tickets to Mammoth, was when I discovered that Cave City is in the Central time zone. So we were already going to be early to Mammoth, but ended up VERY early. On our second day I planned in the time travel, but also planned out the trip that we could do a lot in the area and still get back to Lexington at a reasonable hour. And even with the silly dinosaur tour, it was a fun day doing vacation-type things. 
 

Crystal Onyx Cave

     When Travis and I first drove up to Crystal Onyx Cave I thought it looked kind of cheesy and silly. There were tons of random statues everywhere, including alicorns, animals of all kinds, and aliens. And not well done stuff, but sort of cheesy stuff, kind of like giant toys. This was our second Tuesday cave, which we went to after Diamond Caverns, and I was not sure if I would be disappointed in the cave or not. 

     I was not disappointed in the cave. Even though it was presented in sort of a silly way, at times, it was another beautiful, living cave. Our guide, Heather, was very knowledgeable on both the history of the cave, and caves in general. Travis also made friends with Heather immediately (and I told her that Travis really likes Heathers).

     Most of the rooms at the beginning of the tour were not very large, but they were very beautiful. 

     I have seen similar cave formations on different scales. Some caves that look like this are very large and open. And some are smaller, where you are a lot closer to the cave and you really have to pay attention to make sure you don't touch it. Crystal Onyx Cave is another living cave. 

      There were bridges over some VERY deep places. The fact that you can see through the bridges had me looking at the ceiling quite a lot and guiding myself by sliding my fingers along the railing. I am extremely afraid of heights, though most caves are worth dealing with it so I can see them. We will never go to Hidden River Cave, in Horse Cave, KY, because it has a suspension bridge. That will scare the crap out of me! It's sad that there is a cave I can definitely not go to, but there are lots of caves that don't have swinging things for you to walk on. 

     There were somewhat tighter places to get through, but nothing super small. 

     There was a lot of water. 

    And some higher places where you go down stairs to get to the lower areas. 

     Sometimes when we are on a bridge or set of stairs, I think about what seeing the cave was like before walkways and stairs. Would I even like caves if they were climbing and crawling? I really don't know. Even the wild cave tours (I can take one at Howe Caverns if I want) is not exploring, it's just not a curated bit of cave. 

    Travis likes caves, and really liked Heather. He spent a lot of time with her on the tour. And she was especially nice to him, and the very little boy on our tour (9 people total on the tour). 

     Heather took photos for anyone that wanted them. I don't pass up a chance to get cave photos!

    This bit of the cave reminded me a bit of the pipe organ in Howe Caverns

     Heather told our group that anyone that wanted a really cool photo should bring our phones into a particular area, switch it to selfie mode, pop our heads into the picture and use the ceiling (way up) as the background. My phone decided to get stuck on portrait mode and I haven't yet been able to figure out how to turn it off. But we sort of got a cool photo.

   There were more explored places that we passed that were not on the tour, but might be on the second tour. Crystal Onyx Cave has 2 levels that are used for tours, and you are welcome to take a second tour ( for a slight discount, even) to see the other part of the cave. 

     Every once in a while I will inch close to the edge of a bridge to get a photo of the deep places. Not too close, so these photos usually don't end up being great. 

     I mentioned that Heather was very nice to Travis, and they actually spent a lot of the tour holding hands. She offered, and he accepted. And then she told him to lead the way, often. And he dragged her through the cave! He likes to do most things very quickly. 

     These formations are called cave straws, and they are all hollow, which I tried to get a decent photo of. 

     A whole collection of cave straws!

    I believe this room was called the room of imagination. We were asked to look at the formations and find things that reminded us of other things. This reminded me of a castle on a hill. 

     This reminded a lot of us of a T-Rex!

     This formation, on the way back out of the cave, reminded me of a lizard. Apparently, they have decided it's Bowser, from Super Mario. 

     More scary high places. 

 More secret dark places. 

     Travis had such a good time in this cave, a lot of it likely because he became immediate friends with our guide, Heather. This was a fun experience and I am glad I tried it, even though I was a little put off and unsure when I first pulled up to the place. 

      We liked the cave, and our tour guide, so much that we decided to stick around and take the second tour. Especially after I found out that Heather would again be our guide. No one else was there for that tour, so Travis and I got a private tour of the second cave! There was one part that was very (very) low, that Heather said opened up into a tube where you could stand up. She gave Travis a flashlight and said he could go in and check it out. He chose not to. I tried, but my body didn't want to cooperate with me. Heather said it IS possible to duck-walk in to get to the tube, but my knee and my hip were locking up after 6 feet and I didn't think I would make it. The floor was also gravel, and muddy, and since I had nothing to change into (and a bad knee that hurts to kneel on it) I didn't chance going in. And I am BUMMED I didn't get a chance to go places that usually only guides get to see. But we had a great double tour. What a great day of caving!