The "Mountain Experience" at Davenport.

TripAdvisor rated Davenport’s “Mountain Experience” with four stars on its five star scale.  “A bit pricey” was the worst comment posted on the website and, so, we decided to check it out.

I thought I would buy an e-ticket on my cell-phone, family admission for my wife and I as well as our two kids.  But I couldn’t access any links to the attraction.  When I inquired with the concierge at the hotel, she said: “They’re old school out there.  I’m not even sure that they take credit cards.  It may be cash-only.” 

The so-called “mountain” is really a river bluff that rises several hundred feet above dilapidated industrial sites built on a low terrace over the Mississippi.  For a century, the bluff was mined for sandstone building materials and, so, it presents an odd appearance: wooded slopes ascend to heights that have been quarried into a “fairyland” (as described in advertising) of slender spires and pinnacles of pale relict sandstone.  On a molar-shaped pier of sandstone at the bluff’s highest point, a viewing deck and glass café perch.  Access to the “Mountain Experience” is by admission booths occupying an old railroad depot near the bluff’s base.  Commodious parking lots are built on the step-like hillside facing the depot.  To aid visitors in finding their car after visiting the attraction, the individual lots are marked with banners displaying animals.  We parked in the “Walrus” lot.

The concierge was correct about the place being “old school” as far as purchase of admission tickets. Several kiosks were located in the cold, drafty depot and under the metal girders of the train shed.  The kiosks were staffed by elderly women who seemed to be volunteers.  Visitors were told to pay with cash and, if they had none, to visit several ATM machines in an annex to the depot.  There must have been a rash of counterfeiting in the vicinity – our admission cost 60 dollars for a Family Pass and, when I reached the kiosk, after a long wait, the old woman there checked each bill by marking it with a pen and holding the currency under ultra-violet light, all the while nervously smacking her lips.  The old woman was apologetic about the cost of the ticket: “It includes admission to our two museums and the IMAX theater,” she said.  She pointed to a placard.  The two museums, located “on the upper level” were the Beiderbecke Museum of Alcoholism and the Sloan Museum of Bereavement and Mourning.  At the IMAX, on the super-sized screen, two features were alternating: Tarantula and Carpet of Life: an exploration of the creatures living in the guano of bat caves. 

A maze of wire-screened pathways led us up a slight hill to where senior citizens in golf carts picked up visitors and drove them over a field of rusting railroad tracks to the some escalators leading upward to several conical Indian mounds in a hollow on the hillside.  A man wearing a feathered headdress and war paint greeted us at the mounds.  A small Visitor Center contained exhibits introducing the attractions.   People were waiting on a platform outside the Visitor Center.  An old locomotive towing some antique passenger cars approached and we were guided onto the train.  The train’s route ran along the river past abandoned and desolate factories, old breweries, grain elevators, and weaving mills.  I expected the train to turn sharply toward the mountain with its spires of pale sandstone like pointing fingers on the hilltop.  But the train ran for miles beside the dank river, passing ancient railroad trestles, and power plants.  At last, the track curved inward and corkscrewed between the dark hills, diving through several wet tunnels.  When the train stopped, the bluff with the delicate blonde pinnacles still seemed distant, a serrated ridge, perhaps, a mile away.

People-movers, the sort of horizontal conveyors that you encounter in airports, guided us through crumbling warehouses.  Between the conveyors, there were small booths selling souvenirs and foods – menudo soup was $4.50 a cup.  One of the passageways led to an attraction called Nickelodeon Alley.  A number of wooden cubicles built from plywood and spray-painted black advertised “Teleconferencing.”  In one of the closet-like enclosures, you could feed quarters into a slot and watch pornographic movies made in the 1920's.  Apparently, there was a viable wifi connection in Nickelodeon Alley because several business men were sitting at a trestle-table engrossed in their laptop computers. 

Beyond the arcade, we entered the so-called Reenactment Zone.  A sign warned that visitors would encounter notable figures from Davenport’s history and could interact with them.  “Beware and Have Fun!!” the placard told us.  A well-dressed man accosted us and said that he was “Arvin the Butcher”, a famous local gangster.  Another men was standing at Arvin’s elbow.  Arvin suddenly pulled a switchblade from his pocket, lunged at the man beside him and cut his throat.  It was all very colorfully managed with buckets of gore pulsing from the victim’s neck.  Arvin the Butcher, then, carefully searched through the dying man’s coat pockets, even sliding his fingers into his jeans, to extract several business cards, a flyer that said “Welcome to Davenport”, a tin whistle and three pens marked with the name of a local realtor.  “When I’m not Arvin the Butcher,” the man said, “I’m Norm the Realtor.”  He turned, carrying the items taken from the murdered man’s pockets to an upright tank in the corner.  Arvin/Norm twisted a balloon over the valve on the tank, turned a handle and filled up a helium balloon.  He, then, put the pens and whistle as well as the brochure and business cards in a zip-lock bag that he tied to the inflated helium balloon labeled with the name of his real estate agency. The balloon bobbed in the air, buoyancy urging it upwards.  He handed us the balloon and its freight of promotional material, bowed at the waist, and, then, went back to where the corpse was resting on the sidewalk in a widening pool of blood.

Another railroad platform extended into a wilderness of big iron girders, disassembled arches from cast-iron bridges and heavy generators rusting atop derailed flatcars.  The train chugged up to the station, stopped for a moment and someone, then, called “All Aboard.”

The tracks seemed to encircle the foot of the bluff with the quarries cut into its summit.  I must have been distracted when stepping aboard the train, because now my wife and kids were missing – apparently, left behind at the last platform.  An icy feeling of dismay racked me.  I supposed that at the next stop, I would have to cross over to the other platform and return to where I had left them.  But the rail seemed to run in only one direction. 

The train stopped inside a big room where carnival rides were stored.  I saw the white half-shells of Tilt-a-Whirl cars lined up against the wall.  I bought a coke and a Pronto Pup and waited for the next train to pull into the station.  Perhaps, my family would be on the train.  But a long time passed and there was no following train.  It became dark and cold and small women came out of gloom with buckets and mops.  I tried to speak with them but they didn’t know English.

Finally, one of the women, bent over her work, muttered: “The park is closed.  The park is now closed.”