August California Vacation update

Greetings from sunny California!   You've been wondering where my posts have been, haven't you?  I told Bruce I needed to make a blog post, as I figured there was checking being done... :)  But I just hadn't taken the opportunity.  

We flew into Oakland, which is basically across a bay from San Francisco.  Since we have a rental car, driving in Oakland isn't nearly as crazy as it is/will be in San Francisco.  Oakland was better than expected area. Unfortunately, however, there is a crazy amount of graffiti all over, and lots and lots of trash in many areas.  This picture was taken from the parking lot of the Oakland Museum.  We drove to a Redwood Park Area, thinking we would see some redwoods, but I think we are still too far south.  We saw lots of trees, and a lot of pretty area (although brown, not green, from lack of rain/drought), but not really any redwoods.  

 We headed northish up to Sacramento, and visited the California State Capitol building.

 The Old Sacramento District is a several block area ... touristy....trinket and candy and ice cream shops, along with some restaurants and eateries.  It was fun to walk around.

 Sacramento is the ending spot of the Pony Express as well as the first Transcontinental Railroad.  We found this pony express statue, but we decided we like Marysville's better.

 There are many, many museums in Sacramento.  We went to the California Museum (eh), the
Underground Sacramento History Tour (showing how Sacramento had to jack up their buildings during flooding of the mid-1800s), the Sacramento Museum (pretty good), and the California Railroad Museum (which was really, really good).

 These pictures are at the Railroad Museum.  I thought this one with the cat on the roof was cute.

We only have three more days of travel, the hind leg of the journey, which is always a little bittersweet.  I don't think it sounds like we will actually go into San Francisco this vacation 'round.  We are going to try to tackle the "Gold Rush" towns, go towards the Lake Tahoe area, and I thought it would make some sense to check off another state capitol by heading over to Carson City, Nevada.  There is a Marysville, California, which is not too far away, and Bruce would like to go through there as well.     I will try to post again soon. :)

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