22nd & 23rd June, 2009. Travel to Auburn, California.

North America » United States » California » Auburn
June 23rd 2009

Published: June 24th 2009

Edit Blog Post

SamCraig

23rd June, 2009 Auburn, California 002

Sacrament streets

22nd June, 2009. Travel to Auburn, California.

71 degrees this morning, clear skies, another beautiful day, BUT we are travelling in the Chevy!!
No problems for the first part of the journey on SH1, then as we got to Marysville the GPS decided we should go cross country, at the same time we were due to get onto SH 65 so we got lost, had to turn around, read the map and do our own navigation, bit hard when you have come to rely on the GPS. Never mind she decided to get over here drunken spell after a while and we were on the right track.
Beautiful country through here, huge fruit orchards and lots of roadside stalls selling fruit, of course we stopped and made a purchase of peaches and apricots - very nice. Lots of cherries around, mainly the bing cherry, quite a light colour compared to ours, have paid about a $1.67NZ a lb (cheap as), but they do get dearer.
Anyway made it to Auburn which turned out to be much bigger than we thought, booked into our RV park and just had a lazy afternoon in and by the pool, by this time it

23rd June, 2009 Auburn, California 011

State Senate Building

was 30C so a great place to be.
Dinner at the RV and a walk after, nice relaxing day.

23rd June, 2009. Auburn, California.

Auburn is a city 39 miles out of Sacramento on the highway to Reno and Lake Tahoe, it is a city of approx 14,000 people and has a metropolitan population of 19,000 (over here they measure the population in two parts).
Rang Roy and Terri (a couple we met at Zion NP), who live here, this morning and went around and visited, they took us out for a tour of Auburn - it is an old Gold mining area and has two parts, the Old town and the New, the Old has been set aside as a Historic area and the old buildings have been restored - a nice area. Lunch at Old Town and then off to Sacramento for the afternoon.
First stop was the State Senate offices - wow we were very privileged as Terri's niece is employed there and she gave us a tour through the building - even saw Arnies Offices. The building has been completely restored, has a lot of security and we passed through metal detectors before entry.

23rd June, 2009 Auburn, California 017

Arnies smoking tent - for him when he is smoking cigars

The building is magnificent, a big thank you to our guide.
Off down to Old Town Sacramento, an area set aside on the bank of the river, a huge Paddle Steamer has been restored to its former beauty and is now a hotel, restaurant and bar - very nice. Old Town is a couple of blocks of renovated 1800 buildings, now a tourist area with shops, restaurants and apartments, also a train museum.
USA is steeped in history and the people have set aside their history for future generations - we have a lot to learn.
Back to Auburn and out to dinner at a Thai restaurant, nice and our host David had been to NZ.
Roy and Terri have a lovely home, roses aren't so great, the dear come up from the valley and eat them - they are a delicacy to a dear, a lot of mornings they find two or three dear on their lawn. We also got to smell a skunk - one was outside somewhere scenting - not a great smell, Roy was saying that if they spray on you it is very difficult to remove, you bath in tomato juice.
A great day, thank