Sunday, September 24th - Volksmarch in Sacramento, California.

Our main focus in Sacramento was to do the Volksmarch. The first section of our walk was past an old railroad yard with repair shops that currently seemed to be part of a railroad museum (twitch, twitch--I hadn't been in a museum for a couple of days at least). Perhaps fortunately for my companions, I couldn't see any entrance to the museum grounds so we continued on across a bridge into the center of Sacramento.

As we walked into the downtown area we found the Amtrak station, which was smaller than the Los Angeles station but appeared to be of the same vintage. The ceilings were about 30 feet high and nicely finished. The main decoration inside the terminal was one side that featured a wall-to-wall mural featuring the start of the first transcontinental railroad.

Continuing up "J" street, we passed a state courthouse with the usual bollards protecting the entrance. Although the building itself was rather modern and plain, the plaza out front was decorated with amusing statues. In the paving stones of the plaza we found different types of legal sayings engraved in stone (literally), some of which were quite amusing. One sign read, "If you think you can think about a thing inextricably attached to something else without thinking about the thing to which it is attached, then you have a legal mind!" Monika liked the one that said, "A judge is unjust who hears but one side of the case even though he decides it justly." I did not, however, see the old saying that "A smart lawyer knows the law, but a smarter lawyer knows the judge!", probably for obvious reasons.

We passed city hall and the old governor's mansion after which we called a halt a short time later to visit an antique store and prowled around its cluttered corridors for a while. But we didn't find anything that we thought would be worth carrying with us for at least two more hours of walking, so we escaped unscathed and continued to our checkpoint. That turned out to be a quite reasonable restaurant but we weren't quite hungry enough to stop for lunch yet so we asked the lady to validate our start cards and continued on our walk.

Curling around to head back to the main part of town, we found Sutter's Fort, a state historical site featuring the reconstructed fort and interior buildings from Sutter's settlement just prior to the gold rush era. It looked really interesting, but the entrance fee was $4.00 a piece and we still had miles to walk, so we just glanced in and continued on our way.

Our route back into town led us to the capital complex, and the first part of that was a beautiful park. A small rose garden had a wonderful spectrum of red, yellow, pink, and multi-hued roses in full bloom. I stopped, as I always do, to smell the roses and the scent particularly of the deep red varieties were heavenly rich. Right next to the rose garden was a Vietnam War memorial, that showed a soldier sitting amid the names of those Californians killed in that war.

We walked right up to the state capitol building and it had a pretty central dome framed by the trees in the park. I would have liked to walk through it, but the only entrance open on a Sunday was off to one side. Our feet were starting to get tired and we were starting to get hungry so we skipped the interior and kept walking into the downtown area looking for a place for lunch.

Not seeing anything more interesting, we stopped at the next Subway we ran across, but I remember Chris saying as we made that decision, "You know, if we stop here we will find a much better place somewhere in the next few blocks." That turned out to be a prescient statement, because after our lunch pause we continued into the downtown area where we started to find a plethora of diverse and interesting restaurants with all different kinds of cuisines.

After a one-block detour for street reconstruction--they seemed to be installing trolley tracks--we continued through a pedestrian mall area filled with shops and boutiques. At the end of the mall a broad underpass led to the Old Town Sacramento area. We were all astounded that so many of the buildings from the frontier era of Sacramento had been preserved. I estimated that this historical district was about 4 blocks long by 2 blocks wide, and that is one of the most extensive historical areas I have ever encountered. I was particularly fascinated by the intricate wooden facades on the old buildings, which were occasionally embellished with fancy wrought iron work. The buildings looked like they were entirely made of wood, and I was amazed that they hadn't all burned down in the last century and a half.

Of course, all of the old buildings had been converted to modern shops, and all in all it appeared to be a vibrant shopping district. One boutique sold aviation memorabilia, and I was astounded to see a BD-5 mini-jet hanging from the ceiling. I just had to find out if it was real, so I dragged Chris and Monika into the shop and we chatted a bit with the owner. He recounted that the airplane had been completed in 1987, but after completing taxi tests the builder had been so frightened that he had just sold the airplane before ever really flying it. The shop owner had bought it in 1988 and it had been in his possession ever since.

Historical plaques were scatted here and there in the Old Town area, and one thing I learned while reading them was that the first transcontinental railroad had been started in 1863. That would put it in the middle of the Civil War rather than after the war as I had mistakenly believed. But prior to the completion of the railroad, Sacramento had been the western terminus of the Pony Express overland route. The terminus building for the Pony Express was still standing in the middle of the Old Town section, and a statue of a Pony Express rider at full gallop commemorated the brave young men (all orphans, as I recall) who had staffed that service.

As we approached the riverfront, we saw an honest-to-gosh steam locomotive pull a string of passenger cars into the riverfront station, so naturally we stopped to take pictures. They even had a little roundhouse where the locomotive paused to take on water and coal, I assume. It looked like a fun ride, but our legs were really getting tired by this point so we continued back along the banks of the Sacramento River.

One large riverboat was moored on the bank beside the steam train station, but a smaller riverboat was out on the river chugging its way slowly upstream. It tooted its steam whistle as it approached a big old swing bridge, and we watched as the bridge ponderously swung open so that the riverboat could pass. The old iron truss bridge had railroad tracks on the bottom and a car highway on the top, but despite all that mass it moved surprisingly quickly from the full open to the closed and locked position. Chris and I, of course, stopped to watch the entire process. For those of you who like such details, the bridge rotates by a small pinion gear turning on the edge of an absolutely huge ring gear just below the central pivot point. From the bridge it was just a couple of blocks along the banks of the Sacramento back to the hotel where we had started.

Finishing our walk at the hotel, we climbed into Chris's car somewhat tired and footsore from the 11-kilometer walk. From Sacramento, Chris drove us east along Route 50 into the mountains. It was 3 p.m. and rather hot when we started our drive, but fortunately, as we ascended into the mountains it cooled off noticeably and that was a welcome relief. The Cressida's air-conditioning, you see, went south many years back and as it is an old Freon 12 system, getting it repaired is just not feasible.

As we drove along, Route 50 shifted from a large multi-lane freeway in Sacramento to a four-lane divided highway, and ultimately to a regular 2-lane highway that twisted through the final stretch up and over the mountains. Topping the crest at about 7,500 foot elevation, we soon came into view of Lake Tahoe, a very pretty sight indeed.

Lake Tahoe lies in a bowl of high mountains and is, in fact the third deepest lake in North America, about 1600 feet deep as I recall. The lakes pellucid waters were a beautiful blue although quite cold even at the end of the summer season. We saw a marina with lots of sailboats in South Lake Tahoe at the end of the lake, but only one person was actually out sailing.

Stopping at one of the old summer homes of the rich and famous that had been converted into a museum by the U.S. Forest Service, we walked down to the lakeshore to take a closer look. The water lapping at the shore was crystal clear, giving us a direct view into the rocky bottom just offshore, something I very seldom see. The Tallac Museum in the old lodge house was unfortunately closed as the summer season had ended, so after wandering about a bit we continued driving around the lake.

We first drove up the western edge of the lake to a lookout complete with historical plaques. The views out over the lake were magnificent and I also found the historical tidbits quite interesting. Before the roads had been completed the folks living in the area had used lake steamers for transportation, and the largest one of those looked very graceful indeed. It seemed to me that nothing would be finer than to steam across Lake Tahoe on a fancy launch, and it would be quite a ride as the lake was much larger than any of us had expected.

By this time it was dusk, so we curled back across the south end of the lake to rejoin Route 50, which we followed to Carson City. The boundary of California and Nevada was marked by the sudden appearance of large, garishly lit casinos. To my mind, Nevada runs the gambling business for all it is worth although, as Chris later found out, that keeps the property taxes quite low compared to either California or Virginia.

After reaching Carson City we checked into our motel an then set of in search of those heavily advertised "$6.95 sirloin steak" dinners. We failed to find any trace of them at any of the restaurants inside the Carson Nugget Casino, so we finally had dinner at the Sizzler steakhouse down the street, which was much quieter and less smoky albeit more expensive.

While we were wandering around in the casino I did, however, notice how many of the gamblers were cross-addicted to smoking and drinking. I have not kept up with the scientific research on different kinds of addictions, but my guess would be that since nicotine addiction occurs in the early teens, tobacco is the gateway addiction drug for alcoholism in the late teens and gambling addictions later in life. I did feel sorry for the triple-addicted folks in the casino, however, because after jazzing up the dopamine reward system so strongly with artificial means, they must feel really rotten if any of the addictions are removed, say by liver failure, lung problems, or bankruptcy. In any case, we finished our meal at the Sizzler and retired to our hotel rooms for the night. Monika stitched together panoramic pictures from our trip while I read Donna Leon's "Death in a Strange Country" until it was time to go to bed.