A Day in Sacramento

Saturday we headed the other direction to Sacramento.  There was a ton of traffic going east, so it took us longer to get there than we had thought.  We figured everyone was heading from San Francisco over to Tahoe to ski or something.  But then we looked on the other side of the highway, going west toward San Francisco, and it was just as crowded, if not more crowded, than our side!  We decided people in CA just want to be where they are not on weekends, LOL.

Eventually we got to Old Sacramento City, and even managed to find a parking place for the big van.  Everyone got out--and immediately Faith starts wailing and shrieking loudly.  Nothing like a quiet, unobtrusive entrance!  It turned out that Faith had somehow (details are still sketchy) run her hand against a wooden raised box thing, and she had gotten a ginormous splinter in her finger.  It wasn't just on the surface either--this sucker was deeply embedded.  And since we had been doing all this flying, we had nothing even remotely sharp in any bag.  (Note to self:  at least put a safety pin on the diaper bag.)  After some Civil War-era medical care, we did manage to get a large chunk of the splinter out (Bob held her arms, and I pushed the bottom of the splinter up and got it out a bit with my teeth, then the rest of the way with my fingernails).  It was quite the show.  We were parked right in front of this "psychic" business, and the lady just sat in there on her couch (the door was wide open, for walk-ins, I guess) and stared at us!

After all that excitement, we walked through Old Sacramento City to the California State Railroad Museum.  We had been there once before, back in January 2001, when we visited my brother Dan, who used to live in Sacramento.  We were almost ready to PCS from Colorado to Ohio, so Nathan was 3, and Luke was almost 2.  It had been a while!  The museum was as good as we remembered.  There are a ton of trains on display, and the best part is that you can walk through quite a few of them!  Micah in particular loved that.

This train reminds me of the Little Engine Who Could-if only it was blue!

This is in the dining car of a luxury train.  The kitchen was behind it.  They also had several other cars to go through, like a passenger car (where the berths were being made up to sleep in, so you could see both ways), and more of a first class part, where each person had their own little cabin.  Train travel seems so cool, although I'm sure it's like air travel now--only really nice if you are really rich, LOL.

We made our way upstairs, which was definitely the favorite part of the younger set.  There was a big display of toy trains from way back when until now, and there was also this huge model train set-up.  It had all sorts of lights and sounds, and the sun even rose and set, so you could see the lights at "night time"!  Drew and Micah were QUITE enthralled with this.  Drew did not want to ever leave!  But one of the girls dragged him off, because the next area was a play area, with several train tables and all the Thomas train stuff you could imagine!  The youngers played here for probably an hour, LOL-until closing!  Bob, Caleb, Jonathan, and Anna went off to watch a train movie, and Nathan and Luke actually walked down the street and toured the California State Military Museum.

We left and walked back to the van with no further splinter incidents.  I really enjoy walking around Old Sacramento City!  I think old buildings are jut so neat, architecturally--I would love to see inside all of them! 

We made it back to Travis before the BX food court closed, so we were able to have Anthony's Pizza.  I also bought a pair of tweezers in the BX, for further splinter removal operations . . .  We were able to get the rest of it out later that night, thankfully.  It was such a monster!