Saturday, September 26, 2015

Altoona, IA - The Perfect Place?

Isn’t nature wonderful? What a show it put on the other evening. It gave us a 5 star eclipse of the moon with color, no less. Interesting how few people were out watching it. Gary and I checked it out about 98 times over the 2 hours the earth’s shadow was crossing the moon. We saw several neighbors doing the same thing but we have lots more neighbors than that. My sister and brother-in-law said the same thing about their neighborhood. Several out but not as many as they expected. What a magnificent show they missed.
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We used to find ourselves walking through Des Moines quite often when we lived here. We’d drive downtown to the Farmer’s Market (one of the best and biggest in the nation) and, after we had strolled through checking out the veggies and cinnamon rolls, we’d put all our produce in the car and walk along the river, down to the Botanical Center, around the I Cubs (farm team for the Cubs) stadium, and down to Gray’s Lake. Beautiful walk and we saw many others out enjoying it too.

Beautiful day, sunny with white puffy clouds, 80’s with low humidity. Just perfect. We started at the new pedestrian bridge over the Des Moines River. Pretty cool, from every angle. With the beautiful gold dome of the state capitol in the background.
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Of course, the kids playground was playfully designed. By the river, a fishing line with a bobber is appropro.
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The river was rushing over the small dam.
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Then we saw this little guy on a brick wall. He’s just posing beautifully here.
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Looks like a festival on the bridges. Here is one of them lined with food tents. The band was playing lively music around the corner.
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This mural expresses our thoughts exactly. Maybe we’ve found the ‘perfect’ place that we’ve been looking for. Oh, what about the word ‘winter’ and ‘snow’ and ‘sleet’ do I not understand? I’ve always said the Iowa is in the middle of nowhere and in the center of everything. Easy to get to the whole continent from here.
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Maybe this little girl is thinking about those things.
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Here’s the Wells Fargo Financial Center, where I worked for 10 years. 40-stories tall. I don’t know if they still do it, but several years after I retired, they had a charity use this building. For a $200 donation, you could rappel down the front of the building. I would have loved to have done that, I could wave at all my friends and co-workers as I dangled in front of their windows.
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When we lived in Des Moines, we used to walk around Gray’s Lake every day, on weekdays in the evening after work and dinner and during the day on weekends. Sometimes, on cold winter evenings, we’d be the only ones walking around the lake. The trail was plowed and it was very well lit, enticing for us but not for others - of course, it was 5 degrees above zero sometimes. Our goal was to walk through 100 degrees and we did. We walked at 0 degrees and we walked at 100 degrees and humid. We should have our heads examined. We even bought a plaque for the bridge they built over the lake.
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Here’s our view as we walked. At night, with all the lights on the buildings, it was a magical sight.
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We then walked through the city where the sculpture garden is. John and Mary Pappajohn donated their own personal collection of garden and lawn sculptures to Des Moines and they are on display in this park for all to see.
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Finally back to the Botannical Center to drive home. But we walked by this on our way. So colorful.
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We lived in Des Moines for 28 years and saw many changes in the downtown area. The Farmer’s Market has grown exponentially and is certainly one of the largest in the nation. The annual Art Festival is ranked in the top ten. The sculpture garden is a real jewel in the center of Des Moines. The Wells Fargo Arena (Omaha has nothing on us.) Trails along both sides of the river, new pedestrian bridges over the river linking these trails, lots of new plantings lining these trails, a new library, new buildings, lots and lots of old warehouses turned into new trendy condos. They’ve even got a large grocery store abuilding downtown. New restaurants, new art museums, a new science center. Can you tell that I like Des Moines?

Absolutely.

Maybe it’s the perfect place
.
Even Jack Kerouac liked Des Moines
‘I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.’


                                                        Jack Kerouac

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