March 18th –
March 24th 2013
Sacramento - Sunday, March 24th 2013
We came home from our southern
California trip. It is all described below. It was interesting trip,
there were some things that were unimpressive, but we were still glad
we saw it all. J. had to work for three days and than on Sunday we
planned the trip to Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. J. has the family in
Sacramento. Slower morning, but we still made it out at about 8.45.
It was partly cloudy. About two hours of driving. There was nothing
really special about it. We left the city, some rolling hills and
than the towns again. We crossed the bay, paid the toll and were
heading on I-80. It was flat and very boring. We were both kind of
tired of driving. At least nice Sunday traffic. We got lost turning
to Old Sacramento, but the downtown was relatively small so we turned
around and parked in Old historic Sacramento. There was visitor's
center (very unhelpful), we walked around those few blocks of old
town, saw a river with a couple of boats. Some shops and restaurants.
Pretty nicely restored old town. We got sun on the sky, it was really
nice. There was old historic school house that was open as a museum,
we walked in (one bigger room) and there were two people (probably
volunteer). We answered the question where we were from (… it
depends, we live in Sunnyvale, but are from Michigan and I am
originally from Czech). He asked me in czech how am I (only sentence
he knew). Apparently his grandparents were from Czech. The other
person, older lady as well had some czech ancestors. It is strange
how many people connected to Czech we met in California.
We crossed the freeway and drove to the
downtown area. J. was not super excited but I figured out we would
see a capitol building. First we drove around a bit. It was
relatively nice town. We found a governor's mansion (now a historic
park). Across the street, there was an economy lodge motel. There was
some rally against brain injury. We parked and went to see California
capitol. Obviously, we had to go through a metal detector (that entry
way was pretty trashy). There was an historic original capitol
building with several additions. We walked through, some rooms were
furnished and showed as a museum. It was some what dark there. The
railings, doors and walls were really decorative and well done.
Actually, the difference between new and old buildings were huge. You
walked from something nice and great looking to new maybe 70's
building (kind of ugly). We saw assembly rooms (nice). The former
governors paintings. Pretty much the same (including Reagan), there
was one standing out, it was current governor from the time he was
governor in 70's. They are still waiting for Arnold's painting, they
are apparently unable to schedule it. Arnold as well apparently
bought big statue of bear. That statue is now in front of the
governor's office (we saw it). Interesting visit.
Nice park was surrounding the capitol
building. We went to see a bit of Sacramento's downtown, if nothing
else, it was fine and safe (nothing special though). It was
relatively small and “cozy” for a state capitol. There was not
much more we wanted to do and we did not want to be too early coming
to visit a family. We drove to see a city's historic cemetery. We
passed Odd Fellows and Masonic parts. We were than able to drive into
the cemetery and park. We walked around a bit, it was pretty, quiet
and so peaceful. One part of the cemetery had a rose garden (roses
were part of the plots). It was really nice place, it got pretty
warm. It was as well getting close to three o'clock, so we were
heading to see J.'s family. It was about half an hour drive. We got
back on I-80 and drove north. We did hit some traffic congestion and
were stuck there for about 8 minutes (did not see a reason). We found
the place and had an early dinner. J.'s aunt and uncle are in their
80's and she did not see them for a longer while. It was a bit
strange beginning, but it turned out to be really great visit. We
spent a night there.
