Mike Rowe had a heck of a good time in Des Moines and he wants everybody to know.

The “Dirty Jobs” star and voice actor extraordinaire posted a veritable love letter to the capital city Friday, saying he had a “great visit” and met “great people."

Rowe was in Iowa for an appearance at the Iowa Skilled Trades Alliance dinner, where he gave a 90-minute speech in support of skilled jobs training and education in public schools.

“Des Moines is literally closing Iowa’s skills gap with a workable model that all cities could follow,” Rowe wrote in a blog post following his visit.

While Rowe made a bunch of stops in Des Moines — more on those later — his blog stressed that he was here on “serious business.”

Closing the skills gap and fighting the pervasive idea that the only path to success is a four-year college degree has become a personal mission for Rowe, who runs his own foundation, mikeroweWORKS, to fund young people’s education in skilled trades. At the end of the dinner, the Skilled Trade Alliance donated 10 percent of the event’s net profits to Rowe’s foundation.

In both his speech and his blog, Rowe specifically highlighted Central Campus’ Skilled Trades Academy, which offers hands-on, real-world experience and college credits with classes in industries like welding, painting, drywall, home-building and plumbing.

MORE: Training in skilled trades making comeback in Iowa schools

The Skilled Trades Academy, which Rowe called “a model for high schools all over the country,” is made possible through a public-private partnership that features funding and support to the tune of $1.5 million from more than 30 businesses. Rowe called the program “the way forward.”

“There’s simply no way the vocational arts are going to reappear in American high schools unless businesses help subsidize the cost,” he continued. “And they’re making it happen in Des Moines.”

Earlier in the day, Rowe toured Central Campus, staying for more than an hour and meeting as many students as were interested, said Aiddy Phomvisay, the schools’ director.

To hear Rowe pay such big compliments to Central at the dinner and later in writing was not only a great endorsement for the school, but also for the kids’ personal choices, Phomvisay said.

“The students that we serve come from a certain level of poverty, but all of them want to work hard and learn a skill and give back and break that cycle of poverty,” Phomvisay said. “So for someone like him — and he’s not only just a movie star, he’s an advocate — to come in and say, ‘I am proud of you,’ and, ‘By choosing welding or a skilled trade you are going to make a big difference in this community and in your families lives,’ that’s just huge for our students.”

And Rowe left the students with a catchphrase that the school plans to reinforce, Phomvisay said.

“Mr. Rowe kept saying, ‘The job that you are doing, the skills that you are leaning, make modern civilization possible,’” Phomvisay said. “I mean, wow. There is no better way to show our students how important these classes and these jobs are than that.”

At the dinner — which hosted about 1600 people, according to Jay Iverson, executive officer of the Homebuilders Association of Iowa — Gov. Kim Reynolds also stressed the importance of filling the skills gap.

“We have more than 8,000 active apprenticeships in Iowa right now, and that’s almost doubled since 2011,” Reynolds was quoted as saying in BUILD Des Moines, a free publication for the central Iowa home building industry.

Reynolds also mentioned that “Iowa is in the top five states for apprenticeship opportunities in 2017,” according to BUILD.

In his note about visiting Des Moines, Rowe pointed out that the greater metro area has nearly 3,000 job openings that “require the mastery of a skill that’s in demand.” But the lack of employees with skills isn’t an issue in Iowa alone, Rowe said.

“America’s skills gap now includes more than 6.2 million vacant positions — most of which do not require a four-year degrees, but rather, the kind of training programs that Des Moines is making a reality," Rowe wrote.

While Rowe was only in town for a day, he certainly made the best of his stop, chronicling his fun on Facebook.

First, a sudden schedule change in the Discovery Channel Friday night lineup meant that Rowe had to stop at Sonic Factory Studios to record narration for “Bering Sea Gold,” a docuseries that follows gold dredges and their “eccentric” crews.

“He was totally cool and super professional, especially when he was in the studio,” said Jon Locker, the studio’s owner. “We chatted for a few minutes before he went in and he was just as cool as he seems on TV.”

Rowe also stopped for a few libations at Juniper Moon, where he called out bartender Jason Garnett’s Gimlet and Sazerac as being especially delicious.

Always on brand, Rowe ended his blog by calling Garnett a “skilled tradesman” whose “handiwork is not to be missed.”

From Rowe's Facebook: