I’m flying to Ames (well, technically I’m flying to Des Moines, and they’re meeting me and driving me to Ames) next week to visit my dear friend and Maid of Honour, and she has assured me that there is nothing interesting to do except talk and read. I’m checking with the all-knowing Teeming Millions to see if she is right. Tell me about Iowa, people. Any regional cuisine I should try? Stores to visit? Silly landmarks to laugh at? 
Well, it’s between semesters at Iowa State, so Ames will be a bit on the dead side (not that it’s ever as lively as, say, Toronto). I haven’t been in Ames for 15 years, since I graduated from ISU, so I’m not too familiar with the current scene.
However, the grounds of the Iowa State campus are quite nice, and there are quite a few bars/restaurants nearby. There are also various events (concerts, plays, etc.) at the Iowa State Center – your friend should know about those.
If you get terribly bored in Ames, Des Moines is only a half-hour drive away; however, Des Moines isn’t that much more interesting than Ames, just bigger. If you’re willing to go a bit farther afield, there are gambling riverboats on the Mississippi (about 2.5 hours east), and probably on the Missouri (2.5 hours west).
Lets see, its not too far from the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum, if you in for that sort of thing.
In the town of Amana there is a very interesting museum town devoted to the history of the Amana colony – one of the more sucessful experiments in reigious communal living of the late 1800s. They have a very moving presentation that they call a “slide show” on the history of the town. Also, you can get a mean strudel in the bakery. 
Strudel I can dig. My friend just told me that pink is the state colour, and that I am required to wear pink at all times. (Explanation: I HATE pink. I’m semi-goth and wear a LOT of black. She’s being mean.)
Hhm. We’re going bridesmaid-dress-shopping, so I asked her if there were any vintage stores. She laughed for five minutes. Boy, I’m spoiled, living in Toronto…
I’ll ask her about concerts, too. She’s an insanely good classical pianist, and plugged into the music scene, I think. I’d rather be shot than visit a presidential, museum, though.
Oh dear me! Hello Again has fallen into the trap. Ames is nowhere near the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum (West Branch, IA) or the various Iowa Amana Colonies. Those are near Iowa City, in eastern Iowa near the Mississippi, which is the site of the State University of Iowa. Ames, on the other hand, is in the middle of the state and is the site of Iowa State University.
Confusion about those two has always been the norm for non-Hawkeyes, and even some of them aren’t sure about the difference.
Despair not. There’s always cow tipping.
::winces from a deservedly aimed cow pat::
The Amana colonies are great, and much less stuffy than one might assume. They were–are–several communities built w/in a day’s (horse) ride away from one another, that still thrive. (Very German; think Amish w/ a rollicking–and mercantile–appreciation for beer.) They’re folks who’ve made community work in a modern world. Y’know, like, Amana appliances?
Also some good hand-crafted furniture shops and a killer working mill w/ fine woven goods, smokehouses, acceptable okay cheeses, very dubious wines, kinda fun touristy shops running high to actually pretty usable stuff. And bring your appetite, if you like family-style German food served by, well, family run restaurants. Good munches, especially washed down with a few schooners after tromping around the working prarie.
Veb
The steam tunnels are nice, but have too many motion sensors. I can send you a map if you need one.
The Amanas are a good distance away and pretty dull, so I don’t reccomend them.
I’m trying to think of fun things to do in Ames outside the realm of urban exploration and getting drunk, but I’m drawing a blank. There’s an ice skating place on the south side of town. The architecture on campus is nice. I didn’t have any spare money when I was there, so I don’t really know what there is for real culture…
Let me clarify: Amana Colony is about 100 miles from Ames. I have driven, my own self, From Des Moines to Amana (I was on my way to Grinnell College at the time).
“Near,” in the Midwest, is a relative thing. I was assuming that the OP had a large chunk of empty time on her hands.
I lived in Ames for a little over a year, 14 years ago, so I don’t remember everything, but I do know there were a few bars…a couple of movie theaters, and lots of fast food. There are probably some music stores and book stores, I seem to remember wandering into them from time to time. Hmmm. That year wasn’t the best.
I hope you didn’t take my post as nasty because it wasn’t intended that way. But the combination of the Hoover Museum and the various Amanas clearly identified Iowa City to me, and not Ames.
I suppose with the Interstates, the Amanas are a lot closer in time to Ames than they were when I went to Iowa in the late 1940’s.
And yes, the conception of distance is quite elastic. In Iowa, before the Interstates, there was a little town that you had to drive through about every 10 miles along the road. We used to pack a lunch to drive to Sioux City, about 60 miles away. Out in the desert where towns are 50 miles apart, a 100 mile trip is nothing, and that holds true now on the Interstates too.
Yeah, its a pretty straight shot on I-80 now (plus, if you keep going, you’ll end up in NYC harhar). Hell of a boring drive, though.
You have no conception of real boredom on the road until you take I-5 in the San Joaquin Valley from just west of Bakersfield, CA to the turnoff that goes over Pacheco pass to Gilroy.
I thought cow tipping was an urban myth?
Besides, when Beavis and Butthead went cow tipping, they got in a LOT of trouble…shudder
Is it anywhere near Clarinda? That’s where Glenn Miller was from. If it is, and you go there-please take pictures.
Wooo hoooo! I knew I came into IMHO for a reason!
Well, Ames isn’t all THAT happening of a town, even for Iowa. Fortunately, we’re just a hop, skip, ‘n’ a jump to Des Moines (30 miles).
Regional cuisine? Well, Ames does have a famous restaurant: Hickory Park. People come from miles around to eat their ribs and all kinds of dead animals. Being a vegetarian, I don’t have much use for the place, but it’s quite good, and their ice cream menu is extraordinary. Corn is of course the local specialty, but not yet in season. There’s a farmer’s market twice a week (Weds and Sats) in the mall parking lot, if you’d like to eat some local produce.
3waygeek is right: the semester has ended so it is pretty quiet. On the bright side, that means little traffic and less crowded bars, but you’re not likely to see any big concerts. (Ames actually gets most of the big concert tours, believe it or not! My sisters just saw … shudder N Sync.) Hilton Coliseum might have other stuff going on. Check the ISU web site calendar, they usually have a good handle on things like that.
We also have a pretty good selection of movies. The theatre on Campustown plays indy and artsy flicks (2 at a time); we also have a budget theatre (only $1! Matinees $0.50!). Cinemark owns all of our theatres, so check their website for times.
If you’re into shopping, we have North Grand Mall, as well as a small downtown (antique and curiousity shops, as well as some good used bookstores). Of course, we also have the requisite big chain stores, too.
We have a few coffee shops. On campus there’s Stomping Grounds (parking’s poor, coffee is good). There’s a place by the bagel store on Lincoln Way (parking ample, coffee okay) – Terrachino’s? – and another a few blocks away on S. Duff (I forget the name, it’s been awhile since I’ve been there). There’s too many restaurants to name – big, small, and in-between.
There’s the Octagon, a small art gallery, also downtown. It’s a neat place – a former Masonic temple. (I’ve been back in the twisty, dark staircases! Really!)
Local landmarks, hmmm… well on campus, there’s a few things. There’s the Campanile, the belltower. I think the Molecular Science building is something to see – it has really weird art (“The Wizards”). We’re not a super-small town, so we don’t have anything really hokey. We’re not the corn relish capital of the world, or anything.
Ames has a bunch of websites with attractions, so I’d check the web, too. I’m not a native, so I can’t remember everything.
Lissla, please feel free to e-mail me if you’d like further info. I’m local so I can get you any information that you need. It won’t be so bad visiting us! Really!
Ok, and cow-tipping jokes aside: yes, this is Iowa, but Ames was just declared officially a metropolis. We’re not really all that small.
Let us know if you’ll have access to a car for side trips, Lissla, and I can recommend some things that lie outside Ames. Otherwise, our local bus transit (CyRide) is really quite good for a town of our size, and you can get to most places of note that way. You can pick up maps at a variety of places in town (like most grocery stores); heck, I could even mail or drop off one to your friend’s house, if you need.
OUCH! Oh-kay, so that was overkill after the cow tipping joke.
(FTR, born, bred, widely travelled and happy midwesterner with a typical, regional appreciation for deadpan self-deprecation. And excellent insight on the distance thing, btw. Anything under a 150 mile round trip is a casual jaunt.)
We’ve all been “shootin’ wide” here, so a little more guidance on what kinda fun is sought would be helpful, i.e. what would be enjoyable to the OP?
For all the unthinking, offhand putdowns, Des Moines is a neat city and offers a lot things, disguised–perhaps deliberately–by the dismissive label. Been too long since I’ve prowled around there but there were some killer quality, understated bar/restaurant/whatever options even then. As to the club/music scene, I was always clueless.
But surely there are some stalwart native Des Moinian (Des Moiniote?) Dopers who have the current inside skinny. Advise, advise!
Veb
Who–sheepishly–has a blast following “blue highways”.
Watch out for the squirrels, vicious bastards. They have stare downs with busses, and win.
And, like fluiddruid said, I’d look to Des Moines, there are certainly things going on there. And the Amana’s aren’t
that far, I am about halfway between the two, and visit both regularly. Try court avenue in Des Moines, and maybe
check the civic center events calander. (It’s down right now, so I can’t
comment)
Ok, clearly I’m going to have to post more.
Des Moines, and its surrounding cities and towns (there are many) make up a very big metro area – not dense, but large in scope. There are a lot of things to do, so much so that I can’t really post comprehensively (not like Ames, anyway), but I’ll hit a few hotspots in the area.
First, Altoona (not in metro area, but close) has to be mentioned as the requisite tourist trap. It basically just has an amusement park, Adventureland. (Not super-huge, but the biggest in Iowa, I think.) It has roller coasters and all of that sort of thing. Des Moines has, I believe, Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun (an amusement park and a water park – you can pay one price for both).
There are sometimes things going on at the State Fairgrounds. Iowa State Fairgrounds has a website which you can check for activities: http://www.iowastatefair.org/. Most of the site is, of course, dedicated to the State Fair in August, but they have other things occasionally. The State Fair is actually a pretty big deal.
Cripes, there’s a lot of stuff to do other than that. We have a casino and dogtrack in Des Moines (and more in Dubuque, which is about 3 hours from here). There’s a downtown area (with skyscrapers and such), but I never go down there, myself. A lot of places have web sites, so it won’t hurt to dig. There’s Valley Junction in West Des Moines, a sort of faux small-town main street; they have events and concerts down there regularly.
If you could give us a better idea of when exactly you’ll be around, I could get you some more info. I’ve never been to Amana, but it is a pretty decent drive from Ames, too. Doable, of course.
Oh, another thing – restaurants of Ames! I just hit Hickory Park (our most famous one), but there are more. I prefer places like Luchulain’s or The Pizza Kitchen, two Italian places (the former is slightly more expensive and ritzy than the latter). There’s Aunt Maude’s, which is pretty pricey. I’ve never been there, but people say they have American food – steaks and such. Cafe Northwest offers Greek food, and we have several good (and inexpensive) Mexican restaurants – La Fuente and Cazador are my favorites. We have lots of Chinese restaurants, too – I prefer the new restaurant New China, which offers a sizeable menu at very reasonable prices. They even serve a number of vegetarian dishes, which is rare for this area (sesame tofu!). Of course, we have a lot of major chain restaurants, too.
Things to laugh at – well, if you have the time, you can hop up to Story City, which is about ten miles north of us. Their two major attractions are a giant carousel and a huge eyesore of an outlet mall. shudder There’s other things in nearby towns – I took a friend of mine to a bunch of small towns and cruised around, shopping and staring at the slacked jawed locals (for the latter, you can’t beat Ogden, Iowa, which is just west of us near Boone).
There are a lot of local festivals and events all summer long. Pretty much any small town of some size has one.
Well, Lissla, I hope this helps you! Consider me your “eyes in Ames” and let me know if there’s anything you need. It’s not the most super-exciting place on Earth, but there ARE things to do here. And, hell, if you really want, you can drive only 3 short hours to the Mall of America. (double shudder)
Worlds of fun/Oceans of fun is in Kansas City, a 4+ hour trip. There is a larger casino in Tama, about 30 mins straight east on highway 30, and very near me, Valley Junction is cool. There are also the Living History Farms in Des Moines, a reproduction of a turn of the century farm, complete with craftspeople doing authentic tasks, but that doesnt sound like Lissla Lissar’s thing either.
Downtown Des Moines usually has civic events/concerts and whatnot about every weekend, and actually Ames has a pretty decent local music scene, when school is going.
and hey, I am one of those slack-jawed locals