Tallahassee, Florida

From Baton Rouge we headed east, just skimming the southern most sections of Mississippi and Alabama to find our way to Florida, where we plan to spend the next 6 weeks. Our first stop was Tallahassee for the Capitol Tour. Much to our surprise, this, too, was a towering capitol building, although not quite as tall as the one in Baton Rouge. The 23rd floor housed an enclosed lookout tower, and again, it provided fantastic views of the surrounding capitol grounds and the city at large. The inside of the capitol was functional, with a few highlights, such as the engraved State Seal on the floor of the first level, and a mural depicting scenes representative of the Florida environment. There was also an interesting photography exhibition on the 22nd level depicting the many faces of hard working Floridians.

Sitting directly in front of this very tall capitol building was the Old Capitol, which much to our delight, was open to the public. We found the architecture and design much more pleasing, and the displays spanned the history of Florida using posters and video clips. Another treat was the capitol dome, a beautiful kaleidoscope of colors, made bright by the sun shinning through.

We capped off the day with a visit to the Tallahassee Museum of Natural Science, where we walked around outside for a couple of hours among rescued wildlife indigenous to the area, rare historic buildings including a small plantation, and beautiful natural scenery.

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

We finally got the green light from Dan's doctor to travel again, so it didn’t take us long to pack everything up and start moving towards Florida. Since Baton Rouge was along our route, we took advantage of the opportunity to stop for a couple of days for the Capitol tour. This capitol building is like none other we've visited before, and indeed, is quite unique, being the tallest state capitol in the United States. The building is 450 feet high with 34 floors, with an observation deck on the 27th floor. The day we were there was clear and bright, so the view of Baton Rouge from this vantage point was spectacular.

The entrance to the capitol has a grand staircase with one step for each of the 48 states, listed in order of their admittance to the Union. Alaska and Hawaii were added to the top step when they were made states, well after the March 1932 completion date of the capitol. We explored the first floor, really the only area that was open to tourists, as both the Senate Chambers and House of Representatives were being remodeled. Huey P. Long, former governor of Louisiana, was assassinated in the Capitol Building, and his body is enshrined on the Capitol grounds. There is a showcase near the sight he was shot displaying newspaper articles depicting this historical and tragic event.

We were sorry to find out that the Old Capitol wasn't open to the public, as it looked like it might have been more interesting than the current more modern capitol building, but we did manage to walk the square block around it, and take some pictures of the very beautiful structure. The rest of our tour day consisted of walking along the Mississippi River on part of a designated river walkway and enjoying the beautiful weather.