It was not a long journey from Amana into Des Moines that morning, and soon we were traipsing around the Des Moines Art Center:
Pretty compact place, but with a lot of great stuff.
Including this like, full 80s living room set:
and this horrifying thing:
it took just over an hour, and in my experience, that's great for an art museum. You start to get worn down after awhile and stop appreciating it after too much longer. At least I do.
Lunch was next, at the Iowa Taproom, and then off just in time to see the State Capitol!
As a Capitols Guy now, I can safely say this was among the most impressive. Iowa of all places! But the five gold leaf domes really seal the deal.
We took the tour of course, seeing the dome:
The frescoes:
The legislative chambers:
The law library:
and the upper dome overlook:
Then it was time to depart the Capitol on foot:
for a quick drop in at the state museum!
We'd gotten there pretty late in the afternoon, so we had just a short time to see what we could. By no means was this a comprehensive tour of the place:
Smatterings of history!
We returned to the car to head to our hotel, passing the majestic Capitol one more time:
For dinner, we looked close to the hotel for an easy place to relax after a relatively full day. We chose The Beerhouse, maybe 2 minutes away. After putting in our orders and receiving our drinks, an announcement came over the speaker system - it was trivia night!
It being free to play, we decided to hop in and give it a shot. And after an especially lucky final round, we finished in second place!
The only downside though, was: the prize was a gift card to The Beerhouse, a place we would almost certainly never visit again. So no real prize to speak of, in any practical sense. But I do still have the card.
With just a little daylight left, we jumped over to Pappajohn Sculpture Park to see a few of the artworks in downtown Des Moines:
By the way, this was Pappajohn, not Papa John. It had nothing to do with Papa John's Pizza. It was some wealthy donor whose last name just happens to be Pappajohn.
The next morning, before our departure for Sioux City, I had yet another waffle at the hotel. I don't know how, but I managed to have a different flavor of waffle almost every day, including: chocolate (as you saw in post #1), vanilla, lemon, banana, pumpkin spice, and birthday cake:
We were in Hiltons every night of this trip, so how we achieved such variety is a mystery. Maybe it's an Iowa thing.
Speaking of food, we were able to find Scotcharoos, apparently an Iowa "local treat", for the first time upon our arrival and stop for lunch at Sweetwater Cafe:
It's some kinda peanut butter rice crispy treat with chocolate on top. Tasty!
The main point of interest on our list was a Lewis & Clark Museum and a nearby boat that you could tour:
That all ended up being a little shorter than we'd expected, so we took a detour to Stone State Park and a very short hike to Dakota Point:
Just there, across a narrow river, was South Dakota, where we'd begun this Mom's-Final-Few-States journey just a few years before. Was hard to believe! We'd first had the spark of the idea to do the Dakotas trip years and years ago, at the time vaguely considering that there would be trips after the Dakotas, but that those were so far away - and now the full trilogy was just about done.
It was late enough in the afternoon now to check into the hotel, so we did, and then we went into town to Palmer's Olde Tyme Candy Shoppe (three out of four words misspelled! See me after class!). We thought that maybe there would be some kind of factory or tour, but it was mainly just the candy:
I did indulge in a few confections.
Then dinner, at - guess what! - a brewery:
Where we had, among other things, one of the most delicious beers I've ever tasted - some kind of dark chocolate cherry stout. Very very rich and dessert-y, but oh so good.
Iowa was done now. And in the morning we would cross a bridge and complete the 50 State Quest at long, long last.
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