Sacramento to northern California

After spending a month in Sacramento and the surrounding area, it was time to move on. A few people I spoke to commented that 4 weeks in the capital would have been 3 weeks too long for them, but it worked for us, giving Mark the time to do what he needed to on our house and also to do the tourist stuff, such as visiting the capitol building:

Sutter's Fort built in 1839 and the beginning of the town of Sacramento and where gold was discovered in 1849 to the California State Railroad museum:

We also visited Old Town Sacramento and the History Museum where we learnt more about the gold rush and also the massive earthquake of 1906 that devastated San Francisco.

Lake Tahoe wasn't too far away so we decided to go and take a look. The views were stunning:

We carried on over the pass into Utah and stayed overnight in Reno. I thought it would be like a small Las Vegas, but was very disappointed as there were only 4 hotel/casinos downtown and nothing like the 'glamour' of Vegas. We did, however find an excellent Teppan restaurant in Hurrahs, so a good end to a long day. 

The next day we followed the old highway 40 to the Donner Memorial State Park, a tribute to the Donner Party that didn't make it across the Sierra Nevada range in 1846 due to an early winter setting in, and many other things. 

The scenic byway was very steep and winding and I would have hated to do it by wagon train or on foot!

As it turned out, there was so much traffic on this road (soon after I took this shot), including many trucks, and we found out later that I-80 (the main interstate from Reno across the pass) had been closed due to an accident. 

During our time in Sacramento we had a few day trips to the Napa and Sonoma Valleys to do a little wine tasting. Well, as we were in that part of the world, it would have been rude not to. 

Moving on up the coast, the landscape changed from wild oceans to giant redwoods and back again. The main highway (101) goes through the Avenue of the Giants and there were a few trees close the the road that had chunks taken out of the bark, about the right height for truck and RV mirrors :-) 

 This is the Shrine drive through tree, which we drove through in the car, not Badger

Unlike the Dodge pick up before us (who got wedged and had to reverse back out again), Mark had no problem getting our car through, although he only had about half an inch spare on both mirrors.

This was a lunch time stop in Badger - beautiful.

The last California sunset before we head up into Oregon.