Capitolize It

So we used to live near the nation's capitol in Washington, DC and we also lived in the capitol of Utah for a while, and I've been to Phoenix, Denver, Tallahassee, Atlanta, Annapolis, Helena, Santa Fe, Columbus, Oklahoma City, Richmond, and Cheyenne, as well as Oslo and London, but I only stopped at the capitol buildings in a few of those places. We'd been through Austin before, but never stopped too long, because it gets a bit crazy with the traffic. But since school at the University of Texas was out (Hook 'em Horns!), it was a little less congested. We stopped and had lunch in one of the last surviving Quizno's (on more than one occasion I'd followed the map only to find an empty, sad looking building where sandwiches were once made, but this time was a success!), and then we walked around the capitol grounds. We checked out the visitor's center and took the free tour to learn all sorts of interesting facts about the building and Texas! I think of the 20 or so people on the tour, we were probably the only ones to actually live in Texas, as most of the people seem to have been from foreign countries. Either way we learned that the capitol building is the largest of all state capitol buildings by square footage (because... Texas), it's taller than the U.S. Capitol building by 15 feet (yes, Texas, and similar to the world's tallest monument column at San Jacinto which is 12 feet taller than the Washington Monument), and the state paid the contractors who built the capitol by giving them 3 million acres of land which later became the largest cattle ranch in the world (that's a lot of longhorn beef). Yes, everything is bigger in Texas. It was an interest building, and even included a canon on the front lawn! But somehow I missed the opportunity to get a picture of that. We did get these pics though:

These kids are more Texan now than anything else...

In the rotunda hang the official portraits of every governor to serve in Texas. Whenever a new governor takes over, they hang the old governor's portrait up, but they have to rotate everyone else up the column... that's a lot of paintings to move. Here's Paul with W.

The other two hung out with the other guy who ran for president and was going to eliminate three government agencies but couldn't remember which ones. The tour guide was excited because she watched them put this one up after working here for like 14 years. She said it was the first hangin' she got to see in the capitol building.

And Paul searched all over to find Sam Houston, which he finally did. Fun fact we learned: Sam Houston is the only person to ever serve as governor of two different states, and both started with a T. There was also a large painting of the other former Tennessee politician who moved to Texas, Davy Crocket, who famously told the voters in Tennessee when they didn't re-elect him, "You may all go to Hell, and I'll go to Texas." And he did, but he didn't become governor, because he only lasted a few months before the Mexican Army killed him in San Antonio.

Yep. That's a big state with a big capitol.