Meow Wolf

That same afternoon Alexandra and I decided to check this out (on recommendation from Gary).  

The building had once been a bowling alley but upon entering the doors I saw no sign of the previous sport.

It is impossible to explain Meow Wolf ....

...except to say that this sign was just inside the door.  It may explain it all.

 Me and Meow Wolf

The refreshment area was psychedelic, but still it was normal enough,  

 

Now I am sure, I have entered a 1970's time warp.

Going through a second set of doors revealed an old Victorian Style house that, we were told,  held a mystery...

....that can be discovered only by finding the clues that are hidden throughout the house.

Deciphering just what is a clue is a bit difficult.

Almost nothing is as it seems....

For example, this refrigerator in the kitchen seemed perfectly normal, until....

...people kept disappearing inside it.

...and then reappearing from the dryer!

There were secret doors, secret passageways, cryptic notes lying around, eerie music, flashing lights and lots

of  psychedelic colors....

...or not.  In one room things seemed almost normal...

...then the next room would make my head spin. (There are two people in the picture above--I was looking down from an upper floor)

I just glanced into the bathroom and moved on, only to learn later that the toilet provided a secret window to the floor below.

An enormous amount of time and money was put into this amusement (?) and I admit I was mesmerized by it all.  

After two hours neither Alexandra nor I had a clue as to the solution to the mystery.

And when we walked back out into the sunshine the ground seemed to be moving.

Our next stop was the pub across the parking lot, hoping a glass of wine would settle the whirling in our heads. 

We had spent over two hours in that structure (I don't know what to call it) and I am sure we missed a whole lot.  To find and decipher all the clues would take hours--there were diaries, newspapers, letters, cryptic notes, even labels on soup cans that gave information and told a story about a family that disappeared from the house.  One young girl we met told us she had spent a total of five hours over two trips before she figured out the mystery.  She wouldn't tell us anything else--maybe she would take a bribe.