The Markeroni Blog

It’s Sunday, 1st February, and the buses don’t run quite as early on Sundays as they do the rest of the week. Planning fail! Luckily, this didn’t cramp the style of beautyredefined, AmberLee and WanderingRaleighite; by the time I reached they they’d already trawled through most of Old Sacramento state historic park, a lovely, snarf-rich area. I caught up with everyone just as they started looking for gold. ;)

This is one of the infamous California state historic landmarks with no plaque and, last time I looked, no landmark. But it’s designated! So it counts!

But all this has changed. The construction walls had been removed to view the original foundations of an old hotel, which was just like finding — well, gold! Apparently, they’re going to rebuild the hotel.

Three Markeroons in a row. We were peering over the edge of another empty foundation.

Across the river is the ziggurat, and near it there will eventually be one of the newer state historic landmarks, in commemoration of the salmon cannery that used to be there. In fact it used to be a national historic landmark, but once the buildings went away it was de-listed. I gather that those responsible for the state designation are working towards getting a plaque put up.

The boat is the Delta King, now a floating restaurant and boutique theatre, and it’s on the National Register. I considered having us eat there, but it’s spendy.

By the way, there’s also a 19th century shipwreck in the river just off from here. I’m a bit puzzled because nobody seems to have logged it yet. We found plaques explaining it (I’d never seen those before so it was exciting). I hear “they” might be turning the wreck into some kind of interpretive center.

We broke for lunch, as Markeroons are wont to do. We sat beside the river in Joe’s Crab Shack and enjoyed a lovely meal with typical Joe’s silliness. For a very short while we were joined by a fifth Markeroon, AmberLee’s sister, and her eldest son. It was sadly a very short but sweet visit, due to the vagaries of parking in Old Sacramento.

Lunch convened with a dessert shared four ways. It was an excellent dessert.

AmberLee was getting to where she had to go home, so we made one final trip, this time to see whether we could find a geocache. I had a pretty good idea where to look and when we found it, lo and behold it had itty bitty penguins inside. :)

Then we wandered up to this stately and serious-looking fellow. He is one Theodore Dehone Judah, renowned railroad pioneer, one of the people responsible for the first ever transcontinental railroad. We don’t suppose he minded our mascots that much. :)

It was time to part company from AmberLee, and the rest of us toddled off on our last, footsore snarfari of the Unconvention.