Saturday November 21, 2020
Saturday I woke up in Citrus Heights. It was about 40 degrees out and the sun was shining. There were so many beautiful trees and fall leaves. I couldn't get over how much it looked like pics I've seen of back east...or when Harry Met Sally...or St. Elmo's Fire. Here's the theme song for both just so you don't have to look it up.
My original plan was to go tour the capital on Saturday. My friend I was staying with in Citrus Heights had never been and I already had a reservation to stay in Sacramento Saturday night so it all made sense to just spend the day there. I even called ahead to the hotel and they were cool with me parking there since my car would be in their valet all night and they were totally cool with it. In fact, I found that most hotels were super accommodating in the time of Covid due to not being able to book the rooms to capacity, and were happy to have me park at the hotel the day of my stay as well as the morning after.
Hotel Tip#3
When staying in an area where parking is at a premium, such as a metro/downtown/beach facility, I have found that most hotels are fine with you using their parking the day of and even the day after you check out. If you can stay within walking or "app taxi" distance of whatever you have planned for the day it can save you an extra $20+ on parking garage fees. Parking rates can change weekly and, especially in the time of Covid, some parking that used to be free now has a fee.
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But traveling in the time of Covid means compromise and going with the flow. The capital has been shut down including all tours, as I already mentioned. The gates around the capital were sad to see and I knew I'd have time to walk around in the daylight Sunday morning after staying the night in Sacramento. So when my friend suggested we check out Folsom, it seemed like the right idea. I really had no idea what I was in for but he said it was kinda cool and there were shops. That was all I knew. I was already in a shopping mood from the outlet stop on the way up so I said great.
Once again I didn't know what to expect but my expectations were wildly exceeded.
Traveling East from Sacramento there isn't a lot between the State Capital and Lake Tahoe or Reno but the little town of Folsom was certainly perfect on this day. Think Frontierland at Disneyland. We arrived at 11:00am just in time to see the farmers market vendors. It was a beautiful 60 degree and sunny day with spectacular fall leaves. There were a lot of people out and pretty much everyone was wearing masks. We felt plenty safe. On this day the county was allowing dining outside and all the restaurants had their patios open. I happened to eat at a Chinese restaurant (Hop Sing Palace) just for something different but there are a wide variety restaurants up and down Sutter Street and free parking at the garage at Leidestorff St. and Reading St.
Part of our success this day was just the day we happened to be there. Saturday morning vendors, fall trees, sunshine, friendly people and great shops all made for a great visit. As you walk up and down Sutter street and pop in and out of the shops you can see people out dinning and enjoying the day. There are a few ice cream shops and a chocolate shop as well. We kept our masks on inside and bought some more items for Christmas. By 2 pm we were full and happy and ready to get on with our day. We left Citrus Heights and made it to our hotel in Sacramento just in time to be met by 300 people on bicycles? Yeah, this was by far the strangest part of the whole trip and looking back probably should have been taken as an omen of things to come.
We showed up in Sacramento around 3:30. My plan was to make it there early enough to take some pics before the sun got too low and we lost the light. I went straight to Front street and the area known as Old Town Sacramento that is right on the water. I had a reservation at the Delta King riverboat hotel. In order to get to the riverboat, you have to park in valet and pass through the cobble stoned streets of Old Town Sacramento. Unfortunately, as luck would have it there was a strange bicycle protest/flash mob group riding through the streets leading up to the hotel. There wasn't anything I could do except stop, let them pass and hope they did not run into my car as I came around a blind corner. I've since looked online to find something about this group. I can't find anything. I don't know how organized it, what it actually was or what it was actually about. All I know is that about a block away from the hotel I turned onto Front Street and was met with about 300 cyclists in a tight group that covered the whole street from sidewalk to sidewalk. The group was mostly young kids-adults riding bmx, freestyle and Fixie-type bikes. In all my years and travels I have found that these random, kid-generated, internet based activities, meant to disrupt, are the toughest to figure out.
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Years ago I was in a coffee shop in Palm Springs and teen-agers were walking around outside with scary-looking paper bag masks on their heads. The plan seemed to be to walk up to quiet coffee shops and just freak people out by standing outside the window and waving. It was really ominous and creepy because it was impossible to tell their intent. When acts of civil disobedience/protest/or pranks are so new that no one even knows what they are for, it is very odd. It feels like it could be anything from a fun act to something terrible and you have no idea if you should you be scared or just annoyed. That's how this felt. I turned a corner and had to stop because the street was flooded by kids on bikes. Wish I had a pic but I was simply stunned by it. Haven't found anything online to even explain large groups of people on bikes but in a time when we have had protests on freeways and people blocking traffic, I feared for the worst.
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Saturday was the day that Gov Newsom had announced a new curfew to go in effect for bars, and I have a feeling a lot of the chaos that ensued this night was either in protest or at least in complaint of that statute, or maybe the whole treatment of Covid, BLM or just everyone's ire for the state legislature in general. Sacramento had been the target of many of the recent protests and riots just a few months earlier in August. You could sense that certain groups and local law enforcement were still at odds and over the next few hours I witnessed a lot of things that were out of the ordinary.
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As I walked around the shops and quaint downtown area around 4 pm the streets were very crowded. People were wearing masks but it was the most traffic and gatherings of people I'd yet encountered on my trip. The homeless population in Sacramento has been a problem for some time, like it is in most metropolitan areas, but somehow having the capital be a block away seemed to make people feel as though they had a better chance of being heard when they complained and many just walked the streets shaking their fists at the capital. It was like this area was a staging ground and anything you did would be seen by people making decisions. In my short time in Sacramento, I witnessed several homeless people remarking about government quite loudly. I saw one man shouting at the capital at 9pm as if the Governor was there and could hear him. Government and local businesses near the capital were all boarded up and fenced off. Cop cars were parked at each side of the capital building. Here on Front Street, in the Old Sacramento Waterfront it was just chaos. No police were to be seen but there were people everywhere enjoying the fall day and ignoring social distancing. The stores had no limits and though people were not nasty or anything it did seem as if there was a general attitude of disregard. I never felt unsafe but I did feel a little like there were shops I did not want to go into. In one of the busiest intersections, we saw several cars cruising and obviously trying to be noticed. Young people riding around on scooters, homeless people were out panhandling, and one young person, who appeared to be having a rough day, refused to get out of the intersection and kept dropping his belongings as traffic honked at him. It was a pretty wild scene.
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In the mists of all of this chaos on the streets there is a charming waterfront area that was similar in design to the storefronts we'd seen earlier in the day in Folsom. There are a lot of cool candy/ice cream shops, souvenir shops, bars, restaurants, a comedy club, and a really cool collectibles shop. But the coolest by far was the costume shop.
Evangeline's Costume Mansion in Old Sacramento is one of the most complete collections of costumes I have ever seen and a very cool place to visit. It is the top two floors of a historic old building. I used the elevator to go up to the second floor and then the stairs to go up to the third. It is really something to see and you could spend hours just looking at the different collections. The wardrobes are all themed and there are rooms dedicated to particular genres of costumes. There is a whole western room for anything you can think of to be a cowboy, cowgirl, piano player, waitress or just about any character from the old west. There is a room dedicated to just Renaissance Faire costumes and one for vampires. It is very organized and has the cheaper halloween, one-time use, type of costumes as well as costumes that you might wear if you are in a Hollywood style movie. Prices were very reasonable considering the quality and uniqueness of the types of vests, suits, and dresses they carry. I have not seen anything quite like this even down near LA where I live.
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My reservation for dinner was at 5 pm back on the boat so we left the costume shop somewhat pre-maturely in hopes we could come back after dinner. Dinner was served outside on the deck and was cool but not too bad with our coats on. The food and service was great. In retrospect, knowing what I now know about the Sacramento area, I would have been happy to eat dinner on the Delta King but I would probably not stay there again.
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Why I will probably never stay at the Delta King hotel in Sacramento again...
The staff at the Delta King are to be praised...and their valet/bell boys were just spectacular. Everyone was trying really hard to be accommodating in the time of Covid, however, Saturday night in Sacramento is just rough.
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It had already been a long day and we even went out at about 9:30 at night to take some more pics. Most everyone had gone away and all the music, random performance artists, street vendors and un-attended street children on scooters had mostly gone to bed...or at least that's what it seemed. We turned in early a little after 10pm and were fast asleep. Our small quaint cabin on the river was perfect and pretty quiet. It was cold but the heater worked...for the most part. About 11:30 I woke up to what sounded like music from a cell phone or something. I wasn't quite awake and thought maybe my cell phone was playing something for some reason. I got out of bed and realized it was coming from outside. I looked out the window and couldn't really see what it was.
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Finally I opened the door to see on the river a small dingy with several people in it and a giant blu tooth speaker blaring rap music I couldn't make out. It was something inappropriate and I could make out the N-word in the lyrics every now and again but I couldn't tell you who it was - just that it was loud enough to wake up everyone on the river side of the boat. The toughest part about this situation is that you never know when something like this is going to end. The gentleman in the cabin down the row from ours came out of his room several times over the next two hours to shout at them and eventually about 1:30 am they finally stopped and went away.
At some point I called the front desk and they were very polite about saying they could move me to a room on the other side of the boat that might be better, however, I did not relish moving in the middle of the night only to find that I could still hear them or some other group that wanted to disobey the curfew. The manager volunteered that they had problems before and that calling the local Sheriff was futile because they did not respond to noise complaints on the river for some reason. So, I stayed put, I put in my earplugs and I just suffered through it. I slept horribly.
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I took a shower a few hours later after giving up trying to sleep and went down to breakfast which was again out on deck at the stern of the boat. It was fine and cold and I was not in a great mood for sure. I packed up all my gear and called the valet to have my car ready. While I was waiting in the lobby for one of the boys to help me with my gear, one of the maids greeted me and asked how my stay was. I remarked simply, "loud" and she responded, "Oh, yeah, Saturday nights in Sacramento" and my jaw just sort of fell open a bit in disbelief that this was a normal occurrence. I don't really have enough experience to say if this was how things are regularly or not. This lone party boat outside our hotel room on the water seemed like something that was random, unplanned, and difficult to predict. I'm not sure if it was about keeping the people on the boat awake or about the freedom of people that just wanted to stay up and party on the river. Not for nothing but I was cold in my room and I couldn't imagine how cold it must have been on the water. The strangest part to me is they just sat there for hours. They weren't going back and forth just sitting in their dingy blasting music, drinking, and keeping everyone on the hotel awake.
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The boat is charming and quaint, romantic, and the staff is awesome. The food was great but since I like to sleep this was not the place for me. I was so excited about staying here I did not read the reviews and even looking at them now most are positive. People love this place. One review mentions that the fact this is on the water that there are often party boats up and down the river day and night. She even mentioned someone playing music at 3 am. I felt it was pretty quiet during the day and their was only one boat so maybe I should feel lucky.
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Hotel Tip #4
Read the reviews, particularly if it is an area you are not familiar with. I think of hotels as places to get some rest while on vacation but several times I have noticed locals wanting to use them as places to party all night. If you are looking for quiet maybe call the hotel ahead of time and see if you can get someone to be honest with you about things that are out of their control such as local environment (birds), culture (parties or celebrations that last all night), or temporary inconveniences (construction that starts at 6am).