On Friday night we drove up to Sacramento for the weekend. My son Chris was being ordained as an Episcopal Deacon on Saturday, and we decided that it would be a great opportunity to explore Sacramento.
The ordination went off very well, although unfortunately Chris’s grandparents weren’t well enough to make the journey. I took a number of photos, and although they capture the feel of the event, the quality is pretty abysmal. I blame myself for adhering to the rules (”no flash photography”) – rules which many others ignored. (It’s tough having those first-born, rule-observing instincts!)
On Saturday afternoon, Kate and I explored the “Old Sacramento” area. It was very hot, and the crowds made it hard to appreciate the historic character of the place. We took the steam train ride, which was a bit underwhelming – a short trip to nowhere. Hmmm. Fortunately when we returned on Sunday morning, things were very quiet, and we could really enjoy the nicely-restored district.
The main reason for the Sunday morning visit was to go to the California State Railroad Museum. This was a wonderful experience; I’ve been to many railroad museums around the world, and the CSRM is clearly the best so far. Mostly this is because of the holistic approach: it’s not just a place of pilgrimage for hard-core enthusiasts, like Didcot or Lancaster, Pennysylvania. As you can see, it brings in the history, politics, sociology, business, and culture of the railroad in California, as well as the resulting love affair with toy trains. Nice touches: the sleeper car, which vibrated on its tracks just as if it were rolling down the track, and the enormous “cab forward” freight engine of the Southern Pacific:
After lunch on Sunday, we decided to head back, rather than waiting for the rush-hour. (Even so, the traffic heading back from Reno to San Francisco was quite impressive.) On the way, we stopped to look at the “ghost fleet” moored in Suisun Bay. You can just make out the clipper bow of the USS Iowa, BB-61:
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The Iowa is the sister ship of the Wisconsin, on which my father served in the mid-50s.
Looking at the resemblance between you, you’re definitely your son’s father
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Glad you had a good time – I think yu’d like the railway museum in York, too. Crewe (close to where I grew up) very nearly had one, and it still has what I think is the only remaiing HST prototype.
Such a shame to see the Iowa still mothballed, though. Back in 2003, when I was seconded to N1 Engineering in SCA for a few months, I got to experience “Fleet Week” over a weekend in SF, and there was a movement under way to have the Iowa turned into a floating museum (I gather her sister ships Wisconsin, New Jersey and Missouri, already are). I signed the petition and contributed to the fund.
These four truly were the last great battleships ever built; designed as “Yamato killers”, the fact that Yamato and Musashi were both sunk by air strikes, rather than exchanges of huge shells, really brought the era of the battleship to an end.