Sacramento Marina

I walked today at the Sacramento Marina. Of all the places I've been this is my least favorite. It's nice there - you can see the river and there are lots of trees and grass but I didn't find a good place to walk (and maybe I just didn't know where to look) and it felt very deserted and a little intimidating. I went in the middle of the day so maybe it's different on the weekend. I'll probably go back at some point and see but for now it's not on my soon to be revisited list! I did get a few nice pictures and some sunshine though!

McKinley Park

Today I walked at McKinley Park. This is a great park with a rose garden and pond. It's also where a library branch is that I went to earlier. The park is in a lovely neighborhood - I've decided it's where I want to live when I win the lottery! I even found a house for sale there (picture below) so I'm very optimistic! The rose garden was really pretty and a lot of the roses were memorials for people which was nice I thought. It has a lot of benches to sit and admire the view, which I did after my walk. I want to go someplace different everyday for awhile but I'm tempted to go back there tomorrow!

I also found two leaves that I didn't have. I've been picking up leaves every place I go and putting them in a glass heart dish on my counter. Mostly I seem to be getting the same ones but these are different and I was very excited to find them. I don't know what kind they are but I thought they were pretty.

Musical Monday

American River

Yesterday's walk was more of a stroll since it was part of a tour so I decided today that I'd just walk. I went to the American River Parkway and started walking. Fortunately or unfortunately I had my iphone with me and did take some pictures. It's really beautiful there! I got some great pictures of the river and trees and had a nice relaxing walk. I thought there would be a lot of people around but I only saw maybe 8 people altogether. It was very peaceful and quiet - it's hard to believe you are literally in the middle of a busy city.


This tree leans - a bunch of the trees there were leaning way over - I thought that was odd. . .

A view of the river.


This is the path I walked on down to the river - I was a little worried because it was narrow and meandered a bit - I didn't want to get lost!

This was another path I took down to the river. I was a little overwhelmed with choices!


Another view of the river.


After my walk I parked and sat and read for awhile. Then I noticed that I had a visitor. I don't know if this is a crow or raven but he worked very hard to get the garbage out of the can.


Apparently it didn't meet his standards. After a cursory pecking, he walked off, slightly disgruntled I thought.


This tree is almost falling into the water.


This is the walking/biking path. It's a nice place to walk and then you can take little side-trips down to the river edge!


I liked the ways the trees reflected in the water in this picture!

Silent Sunday

Cemetery Rose Garden Tour

Catchy title isn't it! I went on a tour of the Rose Garden at the Sacramento City Cemetery this morning. It was very interesting and I took lots of great pictures. The cemetery was established in 1849 with a ten acre gift from John Sutter to the City of Sacramento. Famous guests include John Sutter, Jr., Mark Hopkins, E.B. Crocker, and Newton Booth. Some of you may wonder who Newton Booth is. Until a couple of weeks ago I had no idea. He was the 11th governor of California from 1871-75. You may wonder why I find this interesting - it's because the neighborhood I live in is called Newton Booth. Pretty cool! Anyway I made sure to take a picture of his resting place when I went to the cemetery - it seemed the appropriate thing to do.

The tour was very interesting. There are a lot of old roses in the garden that are really beautiful. Beside the Rose Garden, there is a Perennial Garden and a Native Plant Garden. All the work here is done by volunteers. In 1986 a group of citizens formed a committee to restore this historic cemetery. They do a tremendous amount of work in creating and maintaining garden areas, photographing and documenting headstones, repairing damaged markers and much more.

A Wet Day

I had a great idea today to ride the Light Rail system downtown. I thought it would be fun. . . actually it didn't turn out all that bad except I was very wet and cold by the time I got home. It's an interesting system. Since I'm from the Bay Area, I can't help comparing it to BART. Which is mostly inside. And warm. And dry. The light rail stations that I went to today were outside - I don't know if that's true of all of them. Outside is fine if it's a nice day. When it's pouring rain and cold, it isn't so great!

But it was fun to ride and get a different view of the area that I've been driving. I rode it downtown and walked around a big mall. On my outward journey it actually hadn't started raining yet. By the time I finished wandering around the mall - which was pretty empty - it was beginning to drizzle. I realized that I was close to the library and remembered that I had a couple of books on hold so I walked over there and got the books and looked around a bit. I was severely limited by what I could check out as I had to carry them home!

By the time I left the library it was pouring rain and I had to walk 3-4 blocks to the station and stand in the rain waiting for the next train. At this point I was muttering not so kind words about myself and my dumb ideas! By the time I got home I was completely soaked and freezing. A hot shower and dry clothes left me in a much happier frame of mind and willing to admit that it had actually been kind of fun. I didn't spend as much time as I'd planned because of the weather so I'd like to do it again. I'm thinking that maybe on the weekend there will be more people around and it'll be a little more interesting.

I didn't take many pictures but here's a few of the downtown area. The first one is the light rail station where I started!