Friday Field Trip--Capitol Dome Tour

Nice Carpool Gal and I have started trying to walk a bit at lunch. It gets us away from our desks, and it's helping me learn a bit of the geography of Topeka. (Like where the yummy chocolate store is!)

Early last week we were on such a walk when Nice Carpool Gal noticed there were people on top of the Capitol building. She said she thought it would be fun to go up there someday, like for a special occasion or something. A few hours later, I was sitting back at my desk working when an email popped up. Nice Carpool Gal had done a little research and discovered that anyone could go to the top of the Capitol Dome. In fact they have several tours a day.

A field trip was clearly in order. So we made a reservation, and, along with two other friends, we traveled the trecherous path to the top.


This is the Capitol dome from the outside as we walked up.*

And here's a shot from the first floor up at the dome. The ceiling that you can see in this picture is the inner dome. It basically ends where the green copper starts on the outside of the building. To get to the top of the building we had to go further up.

This is from the stairway that we took to get above the inner dome. It runs in a huge spiral around the edge of the domes.

This was the last stairway that led to the top. Yes, it was high! I'm not terribly afraid of heights, but my grip on the handrails was pretty tight as we walked up. The stairway felt sturdy, but it still seemed to just be kind of floating in the air. It really wasn't connected to much!

And at last we reached the top. Well, this isn't us on the top, but it's where we were, all 296 steps up.

As much as I'm not a fan of Topeka, there are some cool things to see there. We have a few more field trips in the works, so hopefully I'll have more to post about soon!

(*Sweet Husband needed the camera that day to take pictures of his work, so these pictures are courtesy of Nice Carpool Gal.)