Road Trip to Des Moines - Wednesday

[dreamshark]

If you can have fun on a trip to Des Moines, you can have fun anywhere, right?  Well, we had fun. Briefly, we drove to Des Moines to use up a free hotel night that was worth more in Iowa than in Minnesota. The centerpiece of the trip was actually a bike ride on the High Trestle Trail north of Des Moines, which did not disappoint. But for bonus fun we stopped on the way down to bike at a MN state park, visited the Science Center of Iowa, and enjoyed an excellent tour of the spectacular Iowa capitol building. Oh, and had a lovely evening in Owatonna on the way home.

Driving down we marvelled at the fighter jet sculpture at the Owatonna airport and an enormous wind farm just south of the Iowa border. The weather was picture-book perfect the whole way.


We stopped at Myre Big Island State Park just outside Albert Lea for a little biking. It was very scenic, but hillier than anticipated, so our 5-6 mile ride pretty much wore us out.


After our biking stop it was only another 2 hours to Des Moines. Checked into our hotel (Residence Inn Des Moines) and wandered over to the nearby Iowa Science Center. The museum was definitely kid stuff, but amusing enough for a quiet evening. We really enjoyed the Imax Show: Mysteries of the Unseen World.


A lively restaurant/bar district was just a short walk from the hotel on Court St. We had a delicious dinner at Dos Rios Cantina. The empanadas were a work of art. Finished up Wednesday evening in the hotel hot tub, which we had all to ourselves.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a fun trip.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Oh, god. That looks like the "Blazing Star" trail at Myer Big Island! We started on that one on foot and there's just no shade, so we went back and took another trail. If you made it, I'm impressed.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Well, we were on bikes so at least there was a breeze. And the weather was gorgeous - 73 degrees or something like that. The mosquitoes were FIERCE however, so we gave up on the idea of stopping somewhere for a picnic and ate our sandwiches in the van once we were on the road again.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

There were no mosquitoes there when we were there in May, but there were SO MANY mayflies. Just bumping into everything, not biting... clumsy little monsters. But at least it wasn't mosquitoes.

That is supposed to be a great park to see ducks in. We saw a few, but it wasn't really the right season. Did you see lots of ducks?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

No, I don't think we saw any ducks at all. But we never got close to the water - just a glimpse or two from way up on the bike path.