Iowa

Up until this week, I'd never been to Iowa.  And unless pressed, I don't know that I'll be back.  It wasn't that Iowa was bad.  On the contrary, the people were nice, the neighborhoods charming, the food good...

It is just so hard to get to.  After two flights and a four hour drive, I finally reached the lovely town of Des Moines.  On the way down we searched up interesting tidbits about our destination.  We learned that the state capital has five domes and is the only one in America to have that many.  We also learned that the city was named after the Des Moines river, which translates to River of Monks.

The next morning after a few meetings we hunted down a Caribou Coffee (fast becoming my favorite Midwest coffee destination).  It was just in the nick of time, since the two hour time difference always hits me about 10:30am on the first full day of Central Time Zone.  It's like clockwork.  One minute I'm fine, and the next I'm craving a blankey and some tea.  Once I have the tea, I'm back on the straight and narrow and pretty good until lunch.  Most who travel with me know this and plan accordingly.

After lunch and a couple more appointments we were back on the road toward home.  But not before heading past the capital building for some good photos.  It is a very beautiful building.  We saw a wonderful monument on the Eastern side of the building and marveled at it.

As we pulled away, we took another look and were horrified by the sight of a bronze that seemed wildly out of place in a public arena.  By wildly, I mean, um, wildly.  We looked back, looked back again to verify that what we'd just seen was what the other person was seeing, and then we sped away - me screaming that I was blinded for life.

My mom looked it up on the internet and learned that Bill Bryson (one of my all time favorite authors) wrote about it in the Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.  He grew up in Des Moines and he and his little friends were all very familiar with the statue.  If I could pick anyone to write about what it looks like, it would be him.

Then on the long drive back to Minneapolis, we stopped for gas at an independent station.  There was a hotel nearby with the same name.

What "Couple" means, we had no idea.

There was a lot of corn.