Iowa Girl on the Go

Do you remember when you were a kid and the Sears Wishbook arrived in the mail? It had that plain brown paper wrapped around it, right? You couldn’t wait to rip it open and see all the new toys…it was almost better than Christmas!

I sort of feel the same way about the new 2011 Iowa Travel Guide. Does this make me a total geek, or what? I sent away for the book a couple of weeks ago, and it came to my house over the weekend. I was so excited! I spent many hours going through the book, writing down all the things I want to do this year once the weather warms up.

I guess it’s possible that THE WEATHER WARMING UP is the key phrase here, but I really am excited to start exploring more Iowa towns, historical sites, state parks, and festivals. I think my list is long enough to get me through about five years of weekly Iowa Girl posts! I thought when I started this project that I had seen a lot of the state, but it turns out that there are towns and attractions I never even heard of that I now really want to visit. Here are some examples:

• The Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum in Okoboji (I can go there after Arnold’s Park)
• Art Deco architecture in Spencer (and visit the library where Dewey, the world’s most famous library cat, used to live)
• Onawa, home of the Eskimo Pie (and then drive through Loess Hills)
• Iowa Falls nature center
• Whiterock Resort
• Latin Heritage Festival in nearby Marshalltown
• Laura Ingles Wilder Museum in Burr Oak
• Pearl Button Museum in Muscatine (a whole museum devoted to pearl buttons – can you imagine?)
• The Mines of Spain Recreation Center in Dubuque (I don’t know exactly what this is, but it sounds so exotic!)
• A swinging bridge in Columbus Junction
• The Vedic Observatory in Fairfield
• A Prairie Christmas at Living History Farms

Seriously, I’ve got my whole year planned! Let me know if you have ideas for me, because I am telling you, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I could do this for a living!

Another weekend, another trip to Des Moines for a mid-winter event. My husband is starting to get bored with these things, but the event last night, dubbed “Indulge: A Wine, Cheese, and Chocolate Affair,” definitely hit the spot with me.

Held in the wondrous West End Architectural Salvage building at the corner of 9^th and Cherry downtown, Indulge was more than a wine-and-cheese tasting party, although it was certainly that. Event-goers were offered limitless samples of wine (both local and international), local cheeses, chocolates, bread, granola, and other goodies. But, to me, it was the environment that made this party special.

I’ve been to the West End shop many times, and I love prowling the floors and floors and floors of stuff – they have everything from vintage light fixtures (gazillions of them, none of which I can afford), doors, tin ceilings, tables, mirrors, doorknobs, all sorts of fixtures, wine racks, and an assortment of other architectural bits and vintage finds. Each time I’ve gone there, I’ve taken note that they have event space (mostly on the first two floors), and it’s occurred to me that I should try to get myself invited to one of these events someday.

This Indulge party wasn’t by invitation – the second-annual event was advertised in the paper and on various Des Moines websites. The cost was $20 per person, including a cute wine glass, and the cost didn’t seem high at all to me, especially considering how many tiny glasses of wine a person can potentially consume in four hours.

I didn’t stay that long, but long enough to thoroughly get my fill of Maytag blue cheese on crackers (why does Maytag blue cheese always taste better when it’s scraped off the giant wheel than it does from the little foil-covered triangle in my refrigerator?), blue cheese drizzled with honey (a new taste sensation), and Maytag’s other cheeses (cheddar, aged white cheddar, and baby swiss). I started worrying that the Maytag ladies would recognize me, I went back so many times.

Other favorite treats were chocolates from Chocolaterie Stam and Bochner Chocolates (everything I tried was melt-in-your-mouth delicious), more cheeses from Frisian Farms (a superb Iowa cheesemaker), hummus and olive tapenade spread on crackers from Sbrocco, bread and granola from Big Sky Bread Co., and, of course, wine, wine, wine. I drank many glasses of an excellent cab blend from Madison County Winery, plus Italian reds from Sbrocco and The Grapevine…all the while coveting the tin ceiling panels and funky furniture and listening to live music by Brian Congdon. Not a bad way to spend a frigid Saturday night.

What could be better on a cold, snowy January day than listening to live blues in a tropical rainforest?

For two hours each Sunday this winter, it’s possible to forget you’re in central Iowa at the Des Moines Botanical and Environmental Center’s “Botanical Blues” series. The series is held every Sunday through the end of February, from 1-3 p.m. Ticket price is the same as the Botanical Center entrance fee: $5 for adults.

The Botanical Center is a tropical paradise inside a dome made up of 665 triangular plexiglass panels within an aluminum frame. The dome, built in 1979, houses all manner of tropical plant life including palms, banana plants, rubber trees, orchids, and hibiscus. It’s warm and lush enough to make you forget about winter for awhile.

Yesterday’s blues concert featured Brad “bebad” McCloud and “The Bear,” a duo who entertained the crowd with a nice mix of original songs and classics from the likes of Muddy Waters.

Adding to the idyllic environment is the opportunity to purchase beer and wine in the adjacent Riverwalk Café and bring it to your seat. Paradise!

The Botanical and Environmental Center is located at 909 Robert D. Ray Drive, just east of the Des Moines River in downtown Des Moines.

I waited until the last minute to order tickets to see one of the last performances of Triple Espresso (at least for now) at the Temple for the Performing Arts in downtown Des Moines. I’ve been wanting to see the show…but I was afraid to commit to buying tickets too far in advance in case Mother Nature decided to drop a foot of snow on the ground.

I almost waited too long. I got two of the last tickets in the next-to-last row at the third-to-last performance. Whew!

The show is legendary in Des Moines, running for 16 months in 2002-03 and returning for multiple repeat engagements. Two of the show’s three performers, John Bush and Patrick Albanese, spent so much time in Des Moines that they decided to move here.

Triple Espresso is a light comedy set in a coffee house in 2002. The storyline begins with performer Hugh Butternut (Robert O. Berdahl) celebrating the anniversary of his coffee house performances – apparently half his life has been spent there. To celebrate, he invites his old partners, Bobby Bean (Bush) and Buzz Maxwell (Albanese) to join him. The show alternates between the present-day 2002 and flashbacks to the trio’s earlier performances as far back as the 1970s.

As I was watching the show, I was thinking, “This is a show about a goofball, a sadsack, and a lounge lizard.” The three diverse personalities play well off each other and the plot (if you can call it that) is just plain fun – no more, no less. It may be the last show directed at adults that isn’t a bit R-rated. (So bring the kids if you want, but I guarantee they’ll be bored.)

Highlights for me were Albanese (as Buzz) performing a sad, pathetic – and therefore hilarious – magic act. He was so nervous that he had to keep stopping his act to breathe into a paper bag. At one point, as his trick was clearly going into the toilet, he asked the audience if we could close our eyes for just a minute. It was a truly inspired bit of bumbling.

Another funny bit involved the Bobby Bean character performing shadow puppets like I’ve never seen shadow puppets before. And the dance the trio performs with six pieces of construction paper is indescribably funny.

Triple Espresso involves some audience participation – we sang and did hand gestures and called out our favorite songs of the 1970s (“Did I hear Muskrat Love?”) – and I was glad that I was on the next-to-last row to preserve my anonymity…those folks in the front got picked on a lot.

The current run closes today (Sunday, Jan. 9), but I’m sure it will be back soon in all its caffeinated glory.

Happy 2011!  This is my first blog of the new year, and it’s my first blog on the snazzy new MacBook Pro that I got for Christmas.

This weekend I finally made it down to the Science Center of Iowa to see the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. My main interest in da Vinci, and my previous knowledge, is mostly about his art. This being a Science Center exhibit, it didn’t surprise me that many of the galleries focused on his many inventions. He truly was a Renaissance man – possibly the definition of Renaissance man – and his interests and talents ranged from flight to war to the human body to travel to music to, of course, art.

I watched the 50-minute BBC documentary first, showing in the Science Center’s comfortable John Deere Adventure Theater, and although the film ended right about the time I thought da Vinci’s life was getting really interesting (he was just beginning his rivalry with Michelangelo and had not yet painted the Mona Lisa), it did show his early years (as an illegitimate child who was not allowed to have a formal education), his life in Florence and then Milan, his fascination with seemingly everything in the natural world, and his probable homosexuality. The film was the perfect set-up for the exhibit, and I recommend watching it first (it starts on the hour).

The gallery exhibits include scale models of da Vinci’s inventions, as they appeared in his sketches: flight, physics, hydraulics, you name it. More interesting to me were the enlarged sketches of the human form in great detail, Vitruvian Man, The Last Supper and other artistic reproductions. Best of all: a whole room of the Mona Lisa, dissected by French engineer Pascal Cotte, whose highly detailed infrared photographs answer the “secrets” of the artist’s most famous painting. It’s an absolute delight.

Probably the most amazing part of the exhibit is just thinking that all of this happened more than 500 years ago. The exhibit is on display through March 20.

There’s nothing like a trip to Pella, Iowa, to put me in the mood for Christmas.

It’s become a tradition for me to travel to Pella, a Dutch community 45 miles southeast of Des Moines, just before Christmas to pick up baked goods and cheeses for the holidays. I’ve also been known to do some of my Christmas shopping there.

I spent yesterday afternoon in Pella, inhaling all the goodness of the downtown bakeries and warming up with an eggnog latte at Smokey Row coffee shop. The bakeries (Jaarsma is my go-to shop, but Vander Ploeg Bakery is also very good) are the BEST at Christmas because in addition to the usual Dutch letters and other goodies, they have gingerbread houses, spicy St. Nick cookies in many sizes, and other holiday treats. I always buy coffee cakes and macaroons (coconut and date), frosted sugar cookies, caramel tarts (which never make it all the way home), and at least a dozen St. Nicks.

After the bakery, I like to go to Ulrich Meat Market – not to buy meat (although I am told it is very good), but to buy imported cheeses. Ulrich (and In’t Veld Meat Market on the next block) have Dutch cheeses that are hard to find in central Iowa, plus Ulrich has a good selection of other European and Iowa cheeses, including Maytag’s delicious blue cheese and white cheddar.

On this trip to Pella, for the first time, I visited the Scholte House Museum to see how it was decorated for Christmas. In my spring visits, I have always gone to the Scholte Gardens, because they are bursting with tulips of every color, shape, and size. But I had never taken a tour of the Scholte home. It was well worth the $5 admission charge. Beverly Graves, the home’s director (and live-in caretaker) gave me a thorough tour that covered not just the history of the house, but a history of its early owners and how they settled the city of Pella. I especially enjoyed the 15 Christmas trees, historic artwork, and cozy furnishings.

There’s more to do in Pella during the holidays, including a Pella Historical Village Christmas Walk (“a walk through  20+ buildings ‘dressed-up’ for the holidays,” now through Dec. 31) and Pella Christmas in the Country (an annual country light display, each evening through Dec. 31).

Shopping and dining in Pella have changed over the years. Some of my favorite shops and restaurants have come and gone, but they always seem to be replaced with something new to explore. One shop, De Pelikaan, has been there for years and features unique imported Dutch gifts. Just stroll around the downtown area, wander through the shops, enjoy the windmill, and you’ll be sure to find something that catches your eye.

Not far from Pella is Lake Red Rock. I am not big on water sports, but I like to go to Red Rock for the walking trails, though not so much this time of year.

Pella is actually a wonderful place any time of year – although most people mainly think of Pella during Tulip Time (held May 5-7 in 2011). Tulip Time is a festival that features parades, costumes, flowers, street scrubbing, Dutch dancing, crafts, food (lots of food), and music. If you’re not into the festival itself, go the week before like I do, and just enjoy the tulips and bakeries without the crowds.

Don’t go to the Jolly Holiday Lights display in Des Moines thinking you’re going to be wowed by the spectacle, because you won’t be. The 15^th annual event, which benefits the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Iowa, is a nice cause, but it’s hardly impressive. The drive through Water Works Park offers a series of lighted holiday scenes with no apparent theme, and for the most part the scenes are of similar quality as those you see in residential neighborhoods these days. Have they updated it at ALL in 15 years? For $10 a car, I expected more. Jolly Holiday Lights continues through Jan. 1.

The problem with this time of the year is that there are all these holiday activities and events but NO TIME TO ENJOY THEM. I have a long list of things I’d like to do and see – holiday home tours, tree lightings, perhaps a dozen performances of The Nutcracker – but I am missing them as I instead opt to decorate my house, shop for gifts, send holiday cards, bake cookies, and all the rest of my seasonal duties.

I’ve been advocating lately to move all the holiday activities to January when people have more time to take advantage of them, but so far no one has listened. It’s kind of like my earlier push to get Thanksgiving and Christmas moved farther apart – a similarly unsuccessful campaign.

Anyway, I was planning for sure to go to the Holiday Promenade in Des Moines’ East Village (Nov. 19) and the Amana Colonies’ Prelude to Christmas (Dec. 3-5). I didn’t make it to either one. I am still hoping to see Des Moines’ Jolly Holiday Lights and go to Pella sometime before Christmas. I’d also like to go to performances of A Christmas Story, Utopia, and Triple Espresso – but I doubt I’ll find the time.

I did make it down to Des Moines twice this weekend, first to Nada Silent Night (on Friday, Dec. 3) and then to the touring production of Mary Poppins on Saturday. These performances could not have been more different, but I enjoyed them equally well.

First, the Nadas. This is a band that was born in Ames (by two Iowa State students, Jason Walsmith and Mike Butterworth) and grown in Des Moines. The group has been together more than 15 years and is popular throughout the Midwest (wildly so in Ames)…and yet I had only heard them in concert once before and own only one of their CDs. So call me a fan-come-lately, but I really do like this band a lot, now that I am paying attention and not just dismissing them as The Band that Played at People’s.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Nada Silent Night – although I’d been aware of the event for many years. Would they be singing Christmas music? (Happily, the answer was no.) The show was held at Hoyt Sherman Place, not exactly known as a rock’n’roll venue.

But rocking it was. The place was filled with happy Nadas fans. I had the strange feeling that everyone in the audience knew each other.

The theme for the concert was A Nadas Christmas Carol. The band did three sets – music from the group’s past, then songs from the present, and, of course, the future.

The “past” set was made to look like People’s bar and grill in Ames, with the band (complete with their old drummer Tony Bohnenkamp) dressed in college-era grubbies and drinking from Mug Night mugs. In the “present,” the band returned in snappy suits; the stage sparked with holiday lights; and the music sounded like I remember – more sophisticated. The group’s third set, the “future,” began with children on the stage and the band dressed in white jumpsuits and sunglasses, the stage filled with white sparkling lights and fog machines.

By the end of the night, the audience was dancing in the aisles, and the security guys were letting them. It was a fantastic concert. I got to hear all my favorite songs from Almanac, and the experience made me want to go out and buy more of their music. Maybe next year I will dance in the aisles.

The next day I went to the Broadway touring performance of Mary Poppins at the Des Moines Civic Center. This is material I grew up with (I remember seeing the movie when it was released in 1964, and I sang along with the soundtrack LP as a child), and it’s a story my oldest daughter, Katie, always loved. I’d heard great things about the show, from its debut in London to the production in New York. Still, for some reason, I wasn’t terribly excited about going to the show on Saturday.

Well, I totally should have been. Because this is one amazing production. It has everything you’d ever want in musical theatre: great music, strong storyline, well-written characters – plus a fabulous set, good choreography, and flawless performances. And did I mention magic? The special effects were absolutely magical.

The show follows the plot of the Disney movie that showcased Julie Andrews as everyone’s favorite flying nanny and features all of the movie’s best songs. The stage show adds several new songs and mixes the others up a bit for a fresh, new sound. The Julie Andrews role is played in the touring production by Welsh actress Caroline Sheen. This woman was born to play Mary Poppins. She was spit-spot, for sure. Not only can she sing and act, she can also dance…and fly. (Who needs Spider-man when you have Mary Poppins?)

The whole thing was delightful, from the un-precocious but incredibly talented children to the chorus line of chimney sweeps. There was dancing on the ceiling, shooting stars, a big nanny smack-down scene, and fabulous stand-up-and-cheer choreography for the Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious number. The set itself practically knocked my eyes out. I tend to be very critical when I go to a show like this, but I can’t think of one thing I’d change about this production. It was, as Mary herself might say, practically perfect in every way.

For the fifth year, the Des Moines Downtown Farmers’ Winter Market was held this weekend in Capital Square and Nollen Plaza. It’s an opportunity for shoppers like me to buy our favorite local foods as we settle in for the winter, and it’s an opportunity for vendors to sell their wares in a guaranteed high-traffic venue.

Vendors sell a wide variety of products: cookies and cinnamon rolls, soaps and jams, carved wooden Christmas decorations, late-season produce, bread and cheese, flowers and wreaths, nuts, wine, pasta – you name it. I discovered a couple of vendors last year who sold packaged herbs that you add to sour cream or cream cheese to make simple dips and cheese balls. I think these vendors probably sell at the regular farmers’ market, too, but these products really only interest me at the holidays when I have to come up with something simple and portable to take to our family gatherings in Kansas City. Last year’s cheese balls got rave reviews, so I stocked up on more for this year.

Capital Square (400 Locust Street) is really too small and not exactly set up for this kind of event. Vendors are located around the perimeter of the facility’s two floors, and it’s not unusual to encounter impenetrable traffic jams, not to mention scarily overcrowded escalators. But it’s become a tradition for me, like the regular farmers’ market, so I make the trek downtown in November and December and fight my way to the Maytag Dairy and Frisian Farms cheese booths, the South Union Bakery booth, the Beaverdale Confections booth (for gourmet marshmallows and hot cocoa), and, of course, the Strudl Haus booth for yummy Dutch letters.

If you missed this one, there’s one more Winter Market Dec. 17-18.

I was working in Seattle for three days this week, so I tried to explore the city a little bit since I had never been there before. The two things I really wanted to do were to go to the famous Pike Place Market (where they throw the fish) and find a really funky Seattle coffee shop.

The first thing I learned, at lunch on Tuesday, was that just because you’re in Seattle, it doesn’t mean the coffee is going to be good. In fact, the coffee they served in the diner where we ate lunch was pretty nasty.

Not surprisingly, the weather was nasty, too. The temperatures were in the low 40s the whole time we were there, with strong winds and rain to make it feel completely miserable. Umbrellas didn’t help, because they turned inside out, so I spent three days with very attractive Hood Hair from wearing my raincoat the whole time.

We went to Pike Place Market early one morning. The market is pretty cool, although I’m not sure who really shops there. I enjoyed the neon signs and the mix of vendors. The fish throwers are famous, but that part just felt so touristy…I was not a huge fan.

In the market area, I ducked in to a Seattle’s Best Coffee shop and ordered a latte to warm myself up. The shop was cute in a trying-to-be-cute sort of way, and the baristas were friendly (and also cute, as if cuteness is a prerequisite). It definitely was not the grungy, Kurt Cobain-worthy coffee shop I was looking for.

A few more blocks past the market is Pioneer Square, a historic district with art galleries, antiques, bookstores, restaurants, and bars. One of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, it’s really not a square, and it’s home to a lot of homeless people and odd sorts. The streets were fairly quiet when we were there in the morning, so it wasn’t threatening, but I’d be wary about going there at night. I liked the architecture and I’m sure the shops would have been fun, but I was with my photographer/friend Jim Heemstra and he is not one for shopping.

As we traveled the city to our photo-shoot locations, I kept an eye out for the city’s most sincere and authentic coffee shop. Downtown, everything seemed too upscale. In the areas around the universities, I didn’t see anyplace that oozed the ambience I was looking for. I actually drank one cup of coffee at the University of Washington bookstore café, but it was in a paper cup and nothing to get very excited about.

At one point during our visit, the rain stopped long enough for us to take a walk in Discovery Park. The walking paths took us through rainforest, along a driftwood-stewn beach, and down to a lighthouse. We also got to see some breathtaking views of Puget Sound.

On the way to the airport Thursday morning, we attempted to find a neighborhood called Georgetown that Where magazine described as “beautifully gritty.” It’s not an area that’s easy to find, we learned, since it’s wedged in a triangular-shaped area with a rail yard on one side, an airport on another side, and the freeway on the third side. Trains, planes, and automobiles, indeed. I was ready to give up twice and go on to Sea-Tac, but Jim did a lot of his famous U-turns and persisted until we came upon a scroungy, industrial couple of blocks filled with the most wonderful little shops. There was a coffeehouse called Ground Control, presumably a nod to the nearby airport, and around the corner another one called All City Coffee. That’s the one we chose, and it was utterly delightful in a minimalist, grungy, real-Seattleites-with-lots-of-piercings-hang-out-here kind of way. I had the most awesome latte, served in a brown mug, with one of those little foam designs on top. A coffee-lover’s mecca! And the perfect ending to my trip to Seattle.