Jefferson City

The long awaited post has finally made it's appearance!!

Several weeks ago, I went to Jefferson City for a stupid wonderfully informative meeting related to my job. When we had arrived the night before, we were out and about looking for where this super informative meeting was supposed to be.  We also had to find a place to eat supper.  We had a GPS to guide us to where we were supposed to go, but sometimes they aren't all that clear.  And even when they are that clear, the streets themselves do not lend themselves to be driver friendly!

That is how we stumbled upon this:

Now, something that big you would think that it would be kind of difficult to stumble upon.  But that is exactly what happened!  We found an empty parking spot that had a sign saying that it was for a reporter.  The governor was giving a speech at that moment in the building, so we figured that since we would only be there for a few minutes and if the reporter wasn't already there, then evidently he wasn't coming.  As we were putting our cameras away and climbing back into the car, this guy comes driving by and starts yelling at us out his window about us being in his parking spot.  He wasn't very nice, so we took our time leaving. We nearly got ourselves into a fight on the stairs over a parking spot, but at least we got the picture!  

I had visited there before, but I was young enough that I don't remember a whole lot about it.  Other than the fact that my parents took me.  And that we went into either the house or senate portion to watch and that I was nearly in tears from being afraid of heights.

This time, I was still afraid of heights, but was able to get some cool pictures.  My friend took some neat ones too of places that I would never be able to take them. But, just watching her lean over the railing and taking pictures made me break into a sweat!

There were some really interesting combinations of paintings and architecture. These were taken from the main floor looking up:

 

 

 This one was taken from me sitting on the floor at the bottom of the stairs:

While sitting on the floor for this picture, we looked up and found the most wonderful stained glass on the ceiling.  How in the world could we get a great shot like this if we didn't lay down on floor?!

 

 

There was more stained glass in the Senate and House of Representatives:

We couldn't go inside because they were gone for the day and the doors were locked, so I took pictures through the windows of the doors.

Everyone thinks that the state decisions are made by the person who works in this office:

But we figured out that the real one always watching over to make sure that the right decisions are made is:

They have what I call bodyless heads, but what others call 'busts' of folks that were born or raised in Missouri that have become famous, like:

I was teasing one of my fellow travelers about giving Walter Cronkite a kiss when we happened across his bodyless head.  She was a bit too short though. But, when we found Harry S Truman, there happened to be several chairs stacked up next to him which made for the perfect height for this:

 

We had several people gawking with open mouths and shaking of heads watching and laughing at us.  We even laughed and said that we should have t-shirts made that read "Don't laugh.  I'm from the sticks" in big bold letters on them!

Overall, even though I had to attend a boring non informative meeting, we had a really good time touring the capital building.