It turns out 9am in Des Moines, Iowa in July is HUMID. It was only like 80 degrees (which is honestly pretty gross for 9am), but I was dripping sweat by the time I finished packing the bag onto the roof. We piled everyone into the van and hit the road, air conditioning on full blast. I didn't know it at the time, but today was 99% humidity in Des Moines.
Our first stop was the West Valley Mall for the Des Moines Children's Museum. It's less museum and more big play area. They only charge for kids 10 and under, and they all had a great time. There were things I'd seen at Mobius in Spokane, and things I've never seen before, like a giant Lite Brite. They had some inventive things like a bunch of rugs with a lava print on them and some blocks the kids could put out and use as a bridge to cross the lava floor, and they had a bunch of pool noodles tied up so they could dangle really close together and kids could run through them, and a fireman's pole (and truck and outfits), mail truck, tractor, and so much more. This place was awesome, we let the kids play for like an hour and a half and they all had fun, even the 15-year-old. But shhh, don't tell, or maybe they'll start charging for big kids too!
Up next, we went to the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden. This was a cool place, but WAY too hot to go into
essentially an enormous greenhouse. We wandered around looking at all the fun plants (they have some pretty cool
dangling plants that I can't even tell you what they are, but they were super cool) before heading to their outside
garden. This was a little bit cooler because it was open-air and there was a gentle breeze. They had a few water
features like a waterfall and a fountain which were fun. However, they also had a spot with a sign saying that area was
unmaintained and warning us to watch for poison ivy which was less fun. The most fun was a big pond with a bunch of
frogs in it. "C" was so excited about the frogs, she stuck her foot under the agp in the railing to try to get closer,
and when she pulled her foot back, her shoe fell off her foot and into the pond. She was DEVASTATED and immediately
started wailing. None of us could reach it, so we had to make use of the giant pole you use to fish people out when they
fall in. The pole had "USE ONLY FOR EMERGENCIES" written on it, so I felt a little bit silly using it to fish out a
shoe... But it was an emergency to her! We took that as our cue to head for the exit (and more air conditioning!).
We drove by the Pappajohn Sculpture Park. We would have walked around, but having just done a sculpture park a couple days ago and already being almost miserably hot, we decided a quick drive-by would suffice. After that, we hopped on the interstate and headed to Missouri. This is state #11!
We got to our hotel and found a Waffle House directly across the street. We've never eaten in one, so it felt like today was the day. We walked across the street and piled into 2 booths, because apparently they don't have tables. The menu seemed pretty basic, but everyone seemed pretty happy with their dinner, it came out blazingly fast (like, 5 minutes after we ordered), and the prices were pretty reasonable. It's hard to feed 7 of us without breaking the bank, so I appreciated it. To top it off, the youngest 4 all got paper Waffle House hats, so they were pretty stoked.