A wide valley at first light with mist in the bottom and sun on the far ridge.

Vacation packages and tours from Des Moines, IA

Travel Agency in Des Moines, Iowa: Vacation Packages and Tours

Rowan Logbook is an independent travel agency in Des Moines, Iowa. Seventeen trips, sorted by the one thing nobody asks you: how much of your day somebody else has already decided.

Ask what a trip costs +1 (515) 698-3142

Seventeen trips, sorted by how planned the day is

Ask somebody what went wrong with a holiday and it is rarely the hotel. It is that the days were full when they wanted them empty, or empty when they wanted a plan.

Nobody asks about that before taking a deposit. Everybody asks where and when.

So it is the first question here, and the whole catalog is built on the answer. Four shapes of day: nothing in the diary at all, one fixed thing a day, a program with real gaps in it, or every hour held by somebody else.

The bar on each is a proportion, not a color: it shows how much of an average day is already spoken for.

The seat, before any of the hours

Everything below this counts what a day already owes to somebody else. A flight is the purest case of that and the least negotiable: the hours were set months ago, they are the same hours for everybody aboard, and no conversation with this office moves them by a minute. So it is the one piece of a trip you may as well settle first, and alone.

Price a seat without asking anybody

Every trip in this catalog prints how much of an average day is already decided for you. A scheduled flight is the far end of that scale: the hours were fixed months ago by people who will never meet you, and no amount of asking moves them. Which is why it is the one thing on this site worth settling on your own.

This catalog counts things, so count what this office does from the press onward. It does not fetch the price. It does not hold the seat. It never touches the card, and no page here owns a field capable of taking one. It cannot amend the reservation afterwards. Four times nothing, and the reason is that a separate firm does all four, on a subdomain of this address and under its own terms, which are the terms printed on the ticket and therefore the ones worth reading. What this office does get, if you go through with it, is a share of a margin that firm had already built in. Which is why the figure you pay reads the same whether you came through this page or typed their address from memory. That line, read back character by character.

Four to begin with

A plain sunlit rendered wall showing its trowel texture and the grain of the light. — Seventeen trips, and each one prints how many hours of an average day are already spoken for. Nobody else in this trade prints that number.

The catalog

An immense grassland rolling to a far horizon under towering white cloud. — Send something at any hour that suits. No message here queues behind an opening time, and nothing you write puts you under an obligation.

What arrives when you ask

A written proposal naming the operating company, the dates and the whole figure per person
The hours of an average day already committed, counted rather than described
The earliest start in the trip, with the time on it
Every move, and what it does to the day it falls on
Which of the operator's rules are genuinely enforced, extracted from small print nobody expects you to read
The same person handling it from your opening question through to the last night

The work, and what it costs you

The work itself: Reading somebody else's terms line by line, spotting the clauses that will hurt, and saying plainly when the trip you described will not fit the week you described
Your bill: There is not one, and no page here quotes a charge of ours
The source of the income: Part of the operator's own margin, handed over once you are back
Who sends the invoice: The operator does, under its own name, which is what appears on your statement
What is held at this end: Not a cent. This website has no field capable of accepting money

Ask what something costs

The company

Registered as: Rowan Logbook LLC
Registered with: the Iowa Secretary of State
Office: 801 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50309
Telephone: +1 (515) 698-3142
Requests: Through the form above, at any hour
Writing: hours@rowanlogbook.com

Everything sold here is run by somebody else. Rowan Logbook finds a trip, reads the operator's terms properly, and hands the booking to the airline, hotel, guiding company or ship whose job it is to carry it out. No vehicle, no room, no berth and no guide belongs to this company. Your written proposal names whichever firm is doing the carrying; it applies terms it drafted itself, and it bills you without a dollar crossing this desk.

Four consequences, all of them better stated than left to be inferred. First, no vehicle leaves and no room is let by anybody employed here. Second, no department of any government has vetted, approved or blessed this firm, and no page pretends otherwise. Third, whether to insure a trip is a decision for you and a market that is not this one, as is every question about the documents a border wants. Fourth, these pages cannot take money: there is no mechanism, and no card is retained.