Four Letter "F" Word

Well, we had a four letter "F" word day.........which is "Free"!  What word were you thinking about?  After all, this is a PG rated blog site!  No swear words at all.  I guarantee that!  Everything we did during the day was free of cost, except our lunch.   The day was cool, cloudy and a little windy, not very nice for walking around outside but perfect for our agenda.

First stop was the State Capitol.  We waited for the 10:30 AM tour rather than doing our own.  It was well worth the wait.  We found out that the gold on the dome is covered with 23 karat gold leaf.  It is replaced about every 20 years.  The gold leaf is thinner than an ash from a piece of paper that has been burned.  If gathered and rolled up, it would be the size of a baseball.

 I spent a lot of time looking up at the ceilings, which were amazing.  Here is what the dome looks like from the inside.

Another tidbit of information:  Iowa's first capitol was in the state of Wisconsin since it was part of the Louisiana Purchase.  The second one was in Iowa City, but the people of Iowa wanted their capitol in the middle of the state.  It took them 10 years to decide on exactly where to put the building.  Guess that isn't very long when politics are involved!

There is a huge, beautiful painting hanging at one end of the 2nd floor.  It depicts people of Iowa moving from the Eastern part of Iowa to the Western Plains.  

It doesn't look so large until you see the picture below and see one of the tour group on the landing below it.

Another impressive room was the State Library of Law.  The spiral staircases at each end are a work of art.  When this was first built, people would use a dumb waiter to haul the books up and down from one floor the the other.  Nowadays, most lawyers avail themselves to the huge database online.  No sense in climbing up and down those stairs if you don't need to!

 This is a view of the main part of the library.

After the tour, we walked down the steps in front of the capitol and about a half a block to the State of Iowa Historical Building.  That was also on our "to-do" list for the day.  One of the security men at the Capitol told us there was a very good restaurant on the 3rd floor there.  Perfect timing for us!  It was lunchtime.  We walked inside the museum (also free) and went directly up the the Baratta Cafe.  No waiting in line for a seat and an excellent lunch as well.  While waiting for our lunch, I went out on the deck to get another picture of the Capitol Building.

The museum also was very interesting  and we timed it perfectly:  a large group of extremely noisy school children raced into one of the exhibits just as we were coming out.  I almost got run over by a boy who barreled around the blind corner!  Yep, it was time to move on.

 We had done research on the Internet and I wanted to take pictures at the Papajohn Sculpture Park.  Thought we had it all figured out....well the information gave us an address that led us to the Mills Rose Garden.  Roses are nice, but not what I had in mind.  Of course, the sculpture park wasn't listed in our Garmin, so that wasn't any help either.  We back tracked and ultimately found the park in the downtown area, where we had just come from!  Persistence does pay off.

 The sculpture that I wanted to photograph is called "Nomade" and created in 2007 of stainless steel letters.  I was intrigued when I saw pictures of it on an Internet website.

 Here is a view from the front.  Although it's hard to tell by just looking at the photos, it's quite large.

There are quite a few sculptures in this 2 block park, situated in the heart of downtown Des Moines, but the little girl was my second favorite.  She is named "White Ghost".  Maybe she could be Casper the Ghost's girlfriend in a future animated movie.

So, that is a synopsis of our 4 letter word "F" day!  We got exercise, learned some interesting facts about Iowa,  inhaled some fresh air, paid no admission fees and I came back with quite a few good pictures.  There wasn't even a charge to park our truck by the capitol.  Kudos for the state of Iowa for providing so many free venues.