Making The Most of Overtime Travel

I woke early enough this morning to get over to the Utah State Capitol. The Quality Inn folks were so great, giving me a shuttle driver who drove me there, waited for me while I looked around briefly and even took the money shot you see above.

I had been to SLC before, but not to the capitol. I've visited 28 or 29 capitals but not all the capitols, although in the past couple of years I've gotten to Salem, St. Paul, Juneau and Boise. The goal now is to have pictures at each.

As capitols go, Utah's was somewhat blah. It's pretty from the outside, especially set against the snowy mountains. But inside, the dome does not allow light and has dull, non-ornate murals. Most have to do with Mormon arrivees, of course, like the second one here of Brigham Young.



Zzzz. No razzle dazzle. This being SLC, though, I suspect they saved all their dimes and invested instead on this, the world HQ of the LDS crowd...


I'm at the airport now, waiting for some unforseen calamity to throw another loop in my trip home. I got the intensive security treatment at the gate, right down to being felt up on my crotch and bum. Really. The guy couldn't have been nicer about it, saying at every awkward juncture: "I'm about to feel a sensitive area. Do you want a private screening?" I declined. This, I gather, is what I get for buying a one-way ticket and traveling day-of, even if the start of this journey was Philadelphia lo these many hours ago. In Philly, they also pulled me aside, but they didn't check to see if I was carrying a doody bomb, alas.

It didn't help when I provoked suspicion by walking to the front of the entrance to the airport to shoot this:


A guard popped out and asked me why I was snapping that photo. I explained the sign was misspelled and walked back in from the cold. I've no doubt he stood there wondering what was wrong with the sign.

Do you know?

First Larry Craig, Now THIS?

As many of you know, I've got this thing for state capitals and their capitols. I had been to 23 of them -- capitols, that is, not capitals -- and so I essentially manufacture reasons for work or fun to get out to the ones I'm missing and check them out. That is how, in the past year or so, I've made it to Salem, St. Paul, Juneau and now Boise.

But, Idaho, you disappoint me so. The capitol was closed for massive renovation which involves adding a pair of wings UNDERGROUND. They needed more space, it seems, but they didn't want to attach something modern and unsightly to the classic old structure. So now I must return to Boise again in about three years to see the INSIDE of what looked like a beautiful 208-foot-tall Greco-Roman building based obviously on the U.S. Capitol.

So here's my Boise Trip Money Shot, taken with my cam on auto-click propped on a stick on a picnic bench because a straight couple was too busy mauling one another in public to help me:


But I can't really count it because I didn't get to go inside. I do, however, get to mark off another state I'd never been to, leaving now only Hawaii, Montana and Wyoming untouched by the Friesster.

Another Down, 27 To Go

You might recall from my posts about our visit to Juneau in March during our honeymoon, I have a geek's lust for state capitol buildings and plan in my life to visit all of them. So I finished my business in Minneapolis today with enough time to scoop up my college friend, Melissa,who lives in Chicago and coincidentally is here on business, and go on a field trip to St. Paul. (OK, we sort of coordinated it, but it was a coincidence that we both needed to be up here around now.)

It was an unexpectedly thrilling visit and here above to your right is the money shot. Unlike the lackluster Juneau building, this one was absolutely an amazing piece of art and history and governmental symbolism. It was quite large, has a huge and beautiful rotunda and was designed by the same fellow who designed, among other structures, the U.S. Supreme Court. Every inch of it was carefully thought out, from the moulding to the stonework to the way that visitors are greeted by a fellow in a black tailed tuxedo and top hat. Yes, really.

We got an earful from a lovely volunteer named Margaret who knew a zillion interesting -- and, truth be told a few uninteresting -- anecdotes about the building, the state's history and even about its comparisons to certain other statehouses. They had info sheets with histories of all the famous quotations on the walls and about each of the form of rock. I got Melissa to pose with Jesse Ventura which is good considering that Jesse's too shiny for you to really see.

So you may be thinking, 'What a dork.' And I do plead guilty. But before you condemn me, just look at some of these photos. And then check out this blog I just discovered where a couple somehow hitchhiked to 50 capitals in 50 days. I'm not quite sure how that's possible -- hitching to Hawaii??? -- but I'll take some time when I'm not running low on laptop battery and read further.