The last day of our road trip we stopped at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, where I discovered the best road trip trick I never realized before: botanical gardens are the BEST road trip stops!!! Especially when you're driving some of the straighter, less-varied segments of highway in the Midwest, stopping at a botanical garden is about the most refreshing and revitalizing thing one could possible do. Enjoy these photos while I get on my soap box about it.
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View from the mezzanine in the conservatory
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1. A botanical garden that has a conservatory offers you varied climates. You've been in your low-ceilinged car for hours, breathing recirculating air, heated or cooled. Suddenly you enter an expansive-ceilinged building (and a glass ceiling at that) with humidity or aridity, and all the fresh oxygen being pumped out by a profusion of plants! Invigorating!
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My favorite of their hibiscus collection
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A succulent that looks like a cabbage!
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Cascade of pretty pink flowers
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White-speckled leaves
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Purple and multi-textured
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Peachy irises
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Sunset irises
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Irises with peach on top and purple on bottom!
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2. You get to see all sorts of different shapes and colors! Some are bright, some are subtle, some are familiar and some are surprising and new. The feast for the senses (because of course, there's all different smells as well!) is such great stimulation after you've been driving for hours, looking at the same basic colors of passing landscape, pavement, and automobiles.
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Water feature!
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Dangling flowers from an overhead trellis
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A furled flower, stunningly like a chrysalis!
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Tiny flower inside big leaves!
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3. Your brain is stimulated to look at things in all different depths, spaces, and places! You can walk around an outdoor, landscaped garden that has unique lines and features. You can walk underneath a canopy of vines and look up to see a set of flowers reaching down to you. You can notice a flower that is furled so tightly that it looks like a chrysalis and be in awe. You can even peer inside the water-filled cups of a massive, spiky plant and see that it holds a little tiny flower!
When we left the botanical gardens, I felt incredibly exhilarated for the last leg of our journey. We arrived at Aunt Pam's in Illinois later that day, where the air was thick with the smell of lilacs and I packed and repacked for the next leg of my journey: a train to Michigan, where I surprised my family.
I don't know that I will do a post for that part of the trip, it all having passed a few weeks ago at this point and me wanting to stay in the moment rather than feel beholden to report out on something to a digital platform. If you want to ask me about it yourself, you certainly can! Suffice it to say that it was an enjoyable trip, I got to see all my immediate family and a couple cousins, I got to swim in the Lake, I got to see lots of neat wildlife (including a Scarlet Tanager!), and I got to host an online ranger program from my parents' living room. I took the train home, Jack picked me up, and after our drive home was finished I went to sleep, got up, ran a couple errands, and then went back to sleep for the rest of the next day until evening!
Now it's been busy at work, hot outside, and flowers have really taken off around here! Summer is definitely hitting the ground running!
Happy solstice everybody!
Until next time!
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