Upper Midwest Tour, Day 29, Aug 7th

We left our camp and drove all the way to Des Moines, Iowa, arriving in time to join the last tour of the Capital Building for the day.  The Capital felt familiar since it was designed by the same architect who designed the Illinois Capital and they were both constructed in the 1880s.  But Iowa decided their building needed to be grander, so the main dome is bigger and they added four smaller domes on the four corners of the legislative wings.  It has the usual statuary and symbolic artwork, including a great mural of Venetian mosaic tiles.  The Law Library is splendid with multiple level bookcases -- 5 levels connected with two circular staircases.  The Supreme Court room is now a hearing room, with a fine hand-carved mahogany panel still in place in front of the Justices' chairs/bench.

Inside, looking up in the main dome.

The entrance and grand central staircase.

One of two light fixtures/statues that Illinois didn't want originally (because they were "too racy,")  then asked for them back, and Iowa declined.

Mosaic mural of figures in classical Roman dress

An apt quote....

The Senate Chamber, from ground level.

Ditto.

Law Library.

Ditto.

The House Chamber from the upper gallery.  This portion of the capital suffered from a fire (started by a workman's candle) in 1904.  The roof fell in and was later completely rebuilt. 

The Senate Chamber from the upper gallery.  The Senate has 50 members; the House has 100 members.  The majority in both houses is Republican (65%-35%).

High up in the "whisper gallery" looking down.

Again, looking up from the whisper gallery.

On of the four smaller domes.

Former Supreme Court room, now a hearing room.  Nobody ever sits in the nine raised chairs. 

One of the many panels spanning the raised bench.

Another panel.

View of downtown from the Capital steps.

Outside, two of the smaller domes 'encased' with scaffolding.

Civil War Memorial.

 An unknown memorial but neat looking.

The main dome.

We left the Capital area and went in search of our "1 Br, 1Ba" VRBO, booked through Booking.com.  The address we put into Google maps led us to a downtown location which had no such apartment (or even appropriate building).    Booking.com showed that this was the correct location; they even had the correct GPS coordinates.  The city was "Des Moines;"  I tried retyping the address and Google suggested a "West Des Moines" city.  This was 11 miles away from downtown and was the correct location.  Booking.com obviously has the wrong data in their database.  It greatly changed the tone of our Des Moines trip, since we had planned to visit more of the downtown area and the apartment was too far away.

We had dinner across the street from the apartment complex, strolled a little after dinner in the neighborhood, which had a typical East Coast feel - brick homes with large, old trees, and broad lawns.  But, other than rabbits, there was little activity from the occupants -- no dog walkers, no kids playing outside, nor any people just sitting outside.

Other observations from our Upper Midwest trip:

• The cities and even the small towns are planned on a grid structure with very wide streets and not much imagination in the naming conventions: Numbered Avenues go one direction and Numbered Streets go across them.  
• Red brick is the common construction material;  buildings more than 100 years old have nice ornamental details.  The residential areas are similar to old New England or Northeastern factory towns.  
• Big churches, often with elaborate architecture, are typical.
• We saw some very attractive small cities/large towns with 4 to 6 block main commercial zones of attached brick or stone buildings often with local merchants.  On the outskirts we found the usual million-dollar mile strip malls of standard American brands.  Every town and village seemed to have a Dollar Store or a Dollar General store (or both).
• The countryside is not absolutely flat, there are rolling hills, but the roads can be very straight.  Watertowers are a key element on the horizon.  
• The farmhouses are often very handsome and prosperous-looking; if there are corporate farms in this area we aren't seeing them.  
• Michigan has orchards and berry farms.  Indiana, Illinois and Iowa have miles of corn and soybean fields fringed by oak, beech and maple woods.  There is little sign of anything other than these monocultures, not much in the way of produce gardens. When we got into western Illinois, we began to see some cattle and Iowa has many enclosed pig/pork operations (like how chickens are raised).  
• The people seem to be friendly and the wait staff have been warm and cheerful.
• American cars are the majority although there are some Toyotas and Hondas; Subarus are almost unknown.  The Ford and General Motors dealerships are huge.
• In this Year of the Rabbit - we have seen rabbits.  Almost every time we walked through a neighborhood, we would encounter at least one cottontail bunny.  Surprisingly, they seem to be solitary critters.