Not many people realise that Sacramento is the state capital of California. It grew along the Sacramento River during the Gold Rush era and provided a vital transit link between the mining country and the port of San Francisco.
Radio Stations:
Before we came on this trip we'd pictured ourselves driving along the Californian freeways tuned into the myriad of rock stations, a la John Peel. It's taken us 2 weeks to figure out how to get FM on the car radio! We were wondering why we were getting such dire reception AND why all the stations were either rabid religious nuts or rabid right-winger nuts. They must all be confined to AM (we could think of a better place for them) but they did make for fascinating, albeit alarming, listening!!
Old Sacramento
Having checked in to America's Best Value Inn, we headed to downtown Sacramento.
The most important part of the early town were the piers along the river and that's where Old Sacramento is, with cobbled streets and wooden boardwalks.
After an 'exhausting ' stroll by the river side, it was time for lunch and where better than this place that advertised itself as having won awards for its river-view position?
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| Steve was happy with his surroundings...... |
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| .......as was this guy we could see from where we were sitting. |
Then a walk along the main street:
Steve had to have a look inside and thought that Steve Crammond would have a field day here.....
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| A reminder of Sacramento's earlier days...... |
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| .......but perhaps not??? |
Wells Fargo Museum
There are 5 of these small museums in the US.
State Capitol Museum:
This grandiose building houses the State Legislature. Between 1849 and 1854 California had 4 different State capitals, but in 1860 construction of a new capitol building began in Sacramento and was completed in 1874. Since then there have been a number of improvements and additions:
- electricity replaced gaslight between 1892 and 1895,
- in 1906 more office space was created by the remodelling of the area now called the West Wing
- the East Annex was added in 1952
- in 1982 the building was restored to its original elegance during earthquake-proofing improvements after a report in 1972 showed the building would be unsafe in the event of an earthquake.
The State authorities have been careful to prevent the design of any neighbouring buildings detracting from the Capitol.
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| Uninterrupted view looking downtown from the front of the Capitol |
Unfortunately the Senate was not in session when we visited but we were able to enter the public gallery of the Senate Chamber where the representatives sit at the original desks built in the 1860s, casting their votes on Apple Macs most definitely not dating from that era.
The portrait of George Washington, who never visited Sacramento, comes with a story. It was commissioned by Governor Bigelow in 1859, i.e. before the Capitol was built. When a fire broke out in the Governor's office he risked his own life by rushing into the building to rescue the portrait, which was then hung in the new building once completed. For his foresight and heroism, a lake was named after Bigelow. Unfortunately, later in the 1860s, when the American Civil War was raging, Governor Bigelow threw his weight behind the Confederate southern states much to the fury of most Californians. With the defeat of the southern seccessionists, Lake Bigelow was renamed Lake Tahoe, which remains its name today.
The Rotunda, which begins on the first floor and rises 120 feet to the inner dome, has a beautifully ornate painted ceiling.
The statue represents the agreement by Queen Isabella of Spain in 1492 to sponsor Christopher Columbus in his search for the NW Passage. What had that to do with California in particular? Not much, but a rich New York merchant, having commissioned the sculpture for his home and then decided it looked out of place, gave it to the State of California. California gained a statue but he gained far more: his name immortalised in the plaque beneath the statue.
The portraits of past Governors, including Ronald Reagan, line the walls upstairs. As yet there isn't one of Arnie. According to our guide, it is now scheduled to be painted in November 2012 after a number of delays on his part. Anything to do with his recent marital problems and divorce from Maria Shriver??
All the portraits, except this one of Governor Edmund 'Jerry' Brown, are in a very traditional style. But then Jerry Brown was a very radical Democrat in the 1970s who lived what was seen at the time as a bohemian lifestyle for a politician, not least his long-standing relationship with the singer Linda Rondstadt. Amazingly, our guide neglected to tell us that he'd been re-elected Governor last year after a gap of over 30 years.
......and Arnie's bear left still standing outside the Governor's office.
Wine Tasting:
Have to say we were disappointed with the two vineyards we visited.
There was some evidence of wine-making:
and, at the vineyard V. Sattui, some interesting information about the Italian community that set up the wine industry in Napa, and about how they survived the Prohibition era. BUT overall the emphasis was obviously on having a 'leisure experience' where the wine was merely incidental and the prices were eye-watering. Not a patch on the caves we have been to in France, not least Marie-Pierre's in the Jura (www.mpchevassu@yahoo.fr).
Our day was definitely rescued by our visit to the Petrified Forest. Neither of us had ever seen anything like this and we were fascinated.
Over 3 million years ago a volcano erupted pouring out fire, ashes and molten lava and hurling down giant redwoods. Water laden with silicates in the ash seeped down into the gaps left behind by the decomposing tree fibres, replacing the wood cell-by-cell with crystallized silica until the entire tree became stone. Further proof of the blast having knocked over the trees is the fact that all the petrified tree tops point in a south west direction away from the volcano.
An ocean then covered this area at times during the last 3 million years resulting in fossilised fish and shells along with petrified worms, snails and clams.
So technically, this is an archaeological site.
As we walked along the half-mile trail there were many petrified trees we could touch.....
There was a surprising link with Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of 'Treasure Island', who apparently had been a close friend of the man who had discovered the forest in the late 1800s.
Old Faithful Geyser:
Last stop of the day was this geyser. The trouble was that we'd seen a really spectacular geyser in New Zealand (see our previous blog on Rotorua) and so this one did look like a damp squib. To be fair, though, this geyser is man-made. In the 19th and early 20th centuries more than 100 wells were drilled into the geothermal springs of the Calistoga area, and many of them created geysers. Old Faithful is one of the few that wasn't eventually capped off, and it's the only one that erupts with clockwork regularity: 60 feet into the air, about every 40 minutes.
1 comment:
I would have liked to have seen those trees.
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