How Great The Yield From A Fertile Field: California 26

I am wearing my skunk boots again. The smell has dissipated. There are still some nocturnal animals out and about, but I haven't gone after them.

We attended the Camper and Boat show at the Civic Center, but it wasn't very large. It did get us in the mood for camping again, be we don't have a camper or a vehicle to pull one. So, we will probably just dream.

We hadn't been to California to visit our Brother-in-law/Sister-in-law since Amy and Alan's wedding. I have points to use, so we booked a flight to Sacramento to visit them in January. We missed the coldest week of the year here in Illinois, and enjoyed mild weather in Sacramento. Temperature there was in the 40's at night and the 60's during the day. They have a grapefruit tree in their back yard, so every morning we picked fresh grapefruit to add to breakfast.

We had good flights both ways, and enjoyed staying with with Ed and Peggy. We did several sight seeing trips during our stay. We drove past Folsom Prison, and we may have started singing a Johnny Cash song. We took a day to visit the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historical Park where gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848. This discovery sparked the 49's gold rush.

We toured old town Sacramento one day also. It was a fast growing town during the Gold Rush, but was built on low lying ground between two rivers. After it flooded once, they built a levy around it. It flooded again after the levy broke, so they raised the levy and raised all the streets ten feet. This caused the first floor of all the buildings to become the basements. The second floor became the main level, and you would have to go downstairs to get to the first level. So, many of the buildings were jacked up ten feet to road level, which made for a lot of underground dungeon-like basements.

On our last full day in California, we drove to San Francisco. We crossed the Golden Gate Bridge coming and going. We hiked around Land's End, and then we spent some time at Great Beach. The water was freezing, but we waded anyway. On our way back, we stopped at Muir Woods. Its is a forest of giant coastal redwood trees. I am always impressed by the size and age of these magnificent trees. We spent an hour hiking among the trees.