Des Moines, Iowa (The S's Are Silent)

Of all the places I’ve thought about and considered might be a cool place to live, Des Moines was never even on the list. Until spending some time there, that is.

The outskirts of downtown are filled with all kinds of very nice restaurants, fast food places, and we assume bottoms out at a place called “John’s Tacos.” It looks like it might be a slight step above Taco Bell, but only because I can’t imagine a place actually being worse than Taco Bell…

On Friday night, we went to a sushi place called Wasabi Johnson. Sushi in Des Moines? Yeah. That’s what we thought too. Surprise! Some of the best sushi we’ve had in a very long time. We ordered our normal amount. It was so good, we then ordered one more roll to share I guess so we could be a little more stuffed and miserable.

I didn’t take any time off that week, so Saturday was a busy day of exploring! First up was the Downtown Farmer’s Market. The closer we got to downtown, there were signs solemnly informing us that “The S’s are silent.” LOL. Cracked us up. We’ve been to a few farmer’s markets and this was by far the best. It’s been named the #2 Farmer’s Market in the nation by a couple of different publications. They block off all the streets going into the city center from 7am to noon every Saturday from May through October. I think it’s 8am to noon starting in October. We thought we could leisurely see it all in an hour and a half. We were wrong. Lol! We did end up seeing everything, but some parts we had to hurry through. All the fresh fruit and veggies you could ever want. Some things that they grow locally that I had never seen before. They also had other vendors selling art, wood carvings, hand made signs, etc. We bought some of the best tasting sweet corn you’ll ever want to taste. As you can see, it was super busy. Seemed like everybody in Des Moines was there.

Once the Farmer’s Market wound down, we took a short walk along the Riverwalk. Lots of people biking, walking, rollerblading, etc, along there. Close to where we turned around was a large skate park that was packed. The weather was beautiful that day, so who could blame them? The Women of Achievement bridge was really cool to walk across and provided really nice views up and down the river.

We left the riverwalk and drove over to tour the State Capitol Building. Walking back to our truck, we saw some of the coolest condos downtown you’ll ever want to see. They all had big furnished rooftop decks and back behind there was a huge courtyard like a giant shared lawn. Didn’t get any decent pictures of them because it felt weird trying to take a picture of someone’s house.

Anyway, the Capitol Building. They give you the option of taking a tour with a group or just kind of wander around and discover things for yourself. We don’t really know how to behave in a group setting, so we “self guided” our tour. Well worth the time.

After we got done with the tour of the capitol building, we caught a shuttle over to the Iowa State Fair! We saw that it was going on and realized that neither one of us had ever been to a State Fair besides Texas so we decided why not!? We’re leaving tomorrow, it’s only a 15 minute shuttle ride over, so let’s go! Man was it hot! Lol! We picked the hottest day of the whole week to wander around the concrete jungle of the fair. Don’t laugh! It was 95˚ and we hadn’t seen anything over about 89˚ since we left Nevada last August! Haha! The fair itself was very cool! “Fry Everything” didn’t seem to be as big a thing as at the Texas State Fair, but that’s not really my thing anyway. (Except fried Oreos. Those are awesome!) They had all other manner of food, ice cream, and drinks you could possibly think of. We really enjoyed the 4H exhibits as well.

After the fair, we stopped back in downtown and went to a burger place called Zombie Burger. It was recommended by a couple of our friends and we were not disappointed. Burgers and drinks all with the “Zombie” theme. Really cool atmosphere and decor. The burgers were really good too.