State Capitol

One of the things I have had on my to do list with the kids was to visit the State Capital.  When we saw a replica at the museum and they both thought it was the white house I figured a good field trip was in order.  So the first week out of school we took a trip to downtown Carson City.

Although we have driven by it a few times this is the first time I have actually been there as well.  Seems a little ridiculous since we live so close.  The building itself is beautiful, but I really fell in love with the grounds there.  So well manicured and so many trees that although it is right on the main street you feel a million miles away from the city.

It's a little different from most capitals (I think) in the fact that you literally just walk through the front doors, no metal detectors and just wander freely wherever you want.  They encourage you to go into people's offices and talk with everyone.  This huge statue close to the entry way is in honor of all the fallen hero's.  There's is a list of all the names of those from Nevada here as well.

Inside the secretary of state's office they invited us to come in and explore.  We peeked inside this safe (the original from the 1800's).  That is one heavy door let me tell ya, and the artwork and detail on this safe is amazing.  Almost every office we saw had a huge safe like this all with great detail.

Throughout the halls of the capital they have these huge oil paintings of all the past Governors that really look life like. Hard to really get the feel of it from a picture but they are pretty amazing.  This was one of our past Governors Jim Gibbons.

They invited the kids into the Governors office for a chat, although he wasn't in this particular day.

They gave each of the kids one of his "gold" coins which was a pretty cool souvenir.  On the front of the coin is our Governor Brian Sandoval and on the back is the Nevada seal.  They asked them "Who's the best Governor?"  Chase had to look down and actually read the coin kind of butchering his name which was pretty funny I thought.

Once we finished touring the inside we headed outside to explore the grounds and found all kinds of statues.  The kids had fun reading about the different statues,

finding some about things they have been learning about in school (Chase) like this one of the pony express rider Kit Carson,

and having a little fun pretending to recreate some statues. 

I'm glad we finally took the time to check out this gem in beautiful Carson City.