Road Trip -- Capitols Tour

Hello from the road! We have been in our minivan, travelling for NINE days now! We've put more than 3000 miles on our little van. Fun times. We've decided to call this our "Capitols Tour," since, it turns out, we've been to LOTS of capitol buildings. We didn't really plan it, but well...

Here's Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capitol building, our first overnight stop. Kinda hard to tell, but the dome on top is green, and Spencer loved it because of that...

Next stop, Charleston, West Virginia. Nice, classic...

Frankfort, Kentucky.First time in Kentucky for Brian and the kids.

We actually had time to go inside the Kentucky capitol. It was gorgeous....

In the rotunda, there's a huge statue of Lincoln. The front desk lady told us to be sure and touch Lincoln's toe, because it's good luck. Even Nattie wanted in on the lucky charm...

Brian was trying to "educate" the kids a little bit, as we walked through the different rooms. When we were looking at Lincoln, Brian asked Spencer, "Do you know who that statue is?" With no hesitation, Spencer said, "Yes. It's Joseph Smith." ;)

On to Nashville. We had planned to go inside this one, too. But it was closed for renovations...

Here's another pic, from the front angle. Nashville's capitol sits up really high on a hill overlooking the city. It was a good, long walk for the kids to stretch their legs...

Not a capitol, but also in Nashville is this beautiful piece of architecture. The Parthenon! Yes, it's an exact replica of the really old, famous one in Greece. Kinda cool, eh?

We had to skip Alabama's and Mississippi's, sadly. Montgomery and Jackson were each a couple hours' travel in the wrong direction. And we had a tight schedule, trying to make it to New Orleans for dinner. So, we'll save those two for some other trip.

On to Louisiana. The very enthusiastic desk man at the museum across the street (where we stopped to use the bathroom) proudly told us Louisiana has the TALLEST capitol in the country, 27 floors. Of course, with that kind of info, we HAD to go inside and ride to the top, right??

 Views of the mighty Mississippi from the top of the Louisiana capitol.

 Views of my cuties, on top...

 City of Baton Rouge, looking down. Nice garden around the capitol, eh?

We also stopped in Austin, Texas. Their capitol is quite large and impressive. But they've planted so many trees up close around it, we really couldn't get a good pic of the outside...

We went inside for a few minutes. The rotunda, looking up...

 Natalie, looking up... hee hee. She's so cute!

Oklahoma City's was closed when we drove by. But it looked nice...

Only, they had these huge replicas of oil derricks put up all around in the front lawn of the capitol -- two or three of them. Kinda weird and tacky looking. Maybe they're not for show, but they're really drilling for oil in the front lawn of the capitol??

And here we are, in Santa Fe, at the last scheduled capitol stop on our trip. (Well, unless you count Salt Lake and Boise, I suppose. But we've been to those, so we don't really count them.) Santa Fe's capitol is the most unassuming building we've seen. We couldn't really even FIND it for ten minutes, WITH a map! But here it is...

Kinda smallish, and plain, huh? Oh well. Maybe they've never SEEN Louisiana's, so they don't know what they're missing??

Anyway, that ends our Capitols Tour. I know it's kinda  weird to put up a whole bunch of pics of all these capitol buildings. I have lots more trip details to share, and I'm working on another post about the trip. But for now, I thought I'd just put all these together here, because I think it's fun! And honestly, I LOVE to see capitol buildings. I've wanted to visit ALL the 50 states' capitols since I was a little girl... ever since I first got to see the capitol building of Idaho, in Boise. Plus, Brian likes capitols, and our kids LOVE capitol buildings. They really do! So... it's been fun to do, gives us something to look forward to, in many of the cities we've passed through. 

Next post, I hope I'll have time to give more of the details of the trip. I'm sure you're all dying to know what it's like to be in the car alllll together, crammed full of stuff, driving, driving, driving along, for weeks on end! Let the good times roll!!