After crossing the Mississippi River, we were in the fourth state of this trip--Wisconsin. We were staying in Madison, the capitol of Wisconsin. So of course we took a state capitol building tour. But first we had to get an understanding of our new home-town and the lay of the land. We were staying at the Mendota County Campground, right on the shores of Lake Mendota. This was our view from the campground towards this big lake in the middle of the city.
The city of Madison has five lakes, and Mendota is the largest.
The shoreline of our lake was 22 miles around, and it had lots of interesting things on those shores. On the hottest day of the summer, we left early to go for a hike. It was already getting warm when we started our walk to Picnic Point. It's a one-mile walk on a peninsula that juts into Lake Mendota. We had water on both sides of the trail at times. When we looked on one side, we were looking towards our campground.
When we looked on the other side of the trail, we could see downtown Madison and the dome of the Wisconsin state capitol.
One of the things we really liked about Madison was the wonderful water and green spaces that show up in the middle of the city. While we were hiking in Madison, it felt like we were on a trail in the middle of a forest.
We even had some lovely flowers on the trail this morning.
Just a few miles away was the main campus of the University of Wisconsin. Still on Lake Mendota, we found a Wisconsin Badger on the water front.
We enjoy touring college campuses, and we thought that the students here have one of the coolest student unions. The colorful terrace dining area literally spills onto the lake.
The Memorial Student Union looks like a fine old European building, with vines creeping to the top of the balcony. What a fun place to study and eat an "Angry Badger" sandwich for lunch and look out over the lake!
We came across our second badger of the day on the campus beside Lake Mendota.
We took a drive to the University Arboretum, and again we felt like we were in the middle of a forest instead of a state capitol city.
The capitol building was in the middle of the city. Literally all roads lead to the capitol, with eight roads coming together at capitol square. We got our first view of the building as we drove up one of those streets.
With all the trees and traffic it's hard to take a good picture of the state capitol.
After parking the car and walking, it was good to get inside. As we looked up to the dome, we were glad to have an air-conditioned spot to spend part of this summer afternoon. Our tour guide told us that this is the largest state capitol dome by volume. She also pointed out that you could put a lot of Wisconsin cheese curds inside that dome!
The middle rotunda is surrounded by four idential wings that radiate from the center.
We headed down one of those wings to see the state Supreme Court. We also got educated about the justices--six of the seven Wisconsin supreme court justices were females.
Our guide pointed out that every major door had the same animal over it. From this distance, we both agreed that it looked like a toad.
When we got closer, we were relieved to see that it was actually another Wisconsin badger. It's a badger kind of city!
Our guide unlocked the door to the state senate. It was a big round room filled with natural light coming from an overhead glass dome. Our dramatic tour guide told us the story of the paintings at the front of the room. It's far too long to recount in a single blog, and no badgers were mentioned.
Our last stop was the state assembly room, lighted with another massive stained glass sky light.
This capitol was finished in 1917, with the advent of electricity. This room had the world's first electric voting system. Each desk had a green button to vote "aye" or red button to vote "nay."
As soon as the vote is cast, a red or green dot shows up beside the name of each member of the assembly. It was the latest technology in 1917, and it is still in use today.
After our 50-minute indoor tour, our guide told us how to climb to the observation deck. We climbed the stairs to the top of the capitol to get to the little overlook room high in the dome. When we looked down to the ground floor in the rotunda, we saw that they were setting up chairs for a wedding at the capitol this evening.
We went through the door to the outside viewing deck for a 360-degree walk-around view of Madison. This is one of only two state capitols built on an isthmus. Yes, we had to look up that word because it's not in our day-to-day vocabulary. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land bordered by water on both sides, connecting two larger landmasses. One of those bodies of water was Mendota Lake, and we could see it in the distance.
On the other side of the observation deck we could look down on the second body of water--Lake Monona. While people on the street can't even see these larger-than-life statues, we had a close-up view.
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