Re: [HOE] Sacremento

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

earthbinder wrote:
 
> is there anyone on the list who lives in the Sacremento &/ twin towns area
> that can come up with a list of places of interest. within the city or just
> nearby. anyone know where you can find a description of the Sacramento expo.
> or the waterworld funpark.?

I grew up in the Sacramento area, so maybe I can give you a few places
of interest.

First, the California Exposition Center (CalExpo for short) is basically
like a large fairgrounds. Every year, this is where the California State
Fair is held. It's also one of the larger open-air concert venues, where
most of the big rock bands like to play. Right next to it is Waterworld
USA, which I haven't been to in many years but from what I recall is a
fairly standard waterslide/amusement park. I don't think they have any
roller coasters there, just waterslides and a big wave pool, but who
knows what they've built in the HoE timeline.

Second, there's the downtown area, and the biggest draw here is going to
be Old Sacramento and the Train Museum. Old Sac is full of shops,
museums, and historical sites designed to show how Sacramento might have
looked during its heydey as a boomtown and growing capitol. Actually,
the shops you see are about one floor where the Sacramento River used to
be - many of the shops have basements or lower levels that would have
been ground level in the 1870s. The biggest museum is the Train Museum,
which is (amazingly enough) full of old restored trains and train cars.
Few of the exhibits would have anything salvageable that you could
actually carry around, but I'd expect this is where you'd find a lot of
junkers. Another point of interest in Old Sac is a steam train that
still works, carrying tourists to... um, I forget where, but it's a
short trip. Also, there's the Wells Fargo bank and a statue outside that
marks the western terminal of the Pony Express.

Near Old Sac and the Train Museum is the Amtrak depot and train yard...
this is sort of situated between downtown Old Sac and Discovery Park,
which is a big recreational area that encompasses the Confluence of the
American and Sacramento Rivers. During the spring when the runoff from
the Sierra Nevada is highest, the entire park is flooded, but they've
got Folsom Dam upstream of the American River. That might be an
interesting place to take a posse... but that's where they'd get power
for the city. Folsom Prison is also out that way, which I think is
pretty high security but nothing like San Quentin. Also, back by the
train yard is the old PG&E Powerhouse which I think has been
closed/condemned forever, and I have no idea if anything interesting
would be in it, but its a big white building I've driven past quite a
bit.

Back towards the downtown area but on the other side of the major
highways (I-5 down to LA and I-50 to South Lake Tahoe) you've got the
state capitol. In our own timeline, a lot of state and federal
government buildings were actually built in San Francisco rather than
Sacramento, but in the DL/HoE timeline Shan Fan probably wasn't as big a
draw or growing as fast as Sacramento. So you'd probably see a lot more,
bigger state and federal buildings here, and this is probably where
you'd find the big Library. The capitol itself is an interesting
building, but is currently almost too small to actually be functional...
in DL/HoE, I don't think California would have been growing so fast and
thus it could probably handle still handle the state legislature. It's
got a nice big dome with a gold ball on top, two houses (senate and
house of representatives), and offices for the governor and such.

Near the Capitol, you've got Sutter's Fort. It's actually kind of small
for a fort... about four white walls (stucco over adobe) and that's
about it. Sutter was the big rich landowner that owned most of the area
around Sacramento. He also owned this little sawmill up in Coloma in the
foothills above Sacramento, where this guy called James Marshall found
some of this funny yellow-covered metal. When word got out what Marshall
had found, it sparked off the Gold Rush of 1849. All of a sudden
Sutter's Fort went from a simple trading post to smack dab in the middle
of a big boomtown. The miners would come down to the fort to file claims
and weigh the gold... and a lot of them decided to settle down around
it, on Sutter's land. He tried to get them to leave, they killed his
son, and eventually the squatters won out and settled the town around
him. Might be an adventure in all that...

The bad side of town is just across the river... West Sacramento. Huge
problems with drugs and prostitution in West Sac, but that's where you
go if you're looking for that sort of thing. See, anything across the
Sacramento River is in Yolo County, and Yolo County doesn't have quite
the same statutes or resources that Sacramento has, so there's never
been a great deal of law enforcement presence in that particular area.
(Interesting little fact... Putah Creek winds through a good deal of
Yolo County, the locals pronounce it "Pew-tuh" but its actually named
for a large Spanish ranch that occupied a good chunk of Yolo County,
"Los Ranchos De Las Putahs", and that's poo-tuhs, Spanish for
prostitute. I found that out staring at an old map in the county offices
while waiting for my marriage license.)

Just outside of Sac, I think towards Roseville there was a millionare
that built an honest-to-god castle. I forget which highway drives past
it, but that'd be a great place to put some Templars or Anti-Templars.
There's probably some pictures of it on the net somewhere...

For Doomies, the nearest nuclear power plant would be Rancho Seco, but I
don't recall where it is, exactly... I don't think it's all that close
to Sacramento, and I think they finally shut it down. Not that it was
ever up and running before they shut it down... it's "nearby", I think.

Also sorta-nearby would be the Sutter Buttes. These weird little
collection of basalt mountains pop up right in the middle of the
northern half of the Sacramento Valley. I've seen geologic maps and
damned if it ain't a big purple circle in the middle of an old
sedimentary seabed. These I think are to the north of Sacramento, but
they're called "Magic Mountains" because when you're driving around the
valley they seem to move... it's kinda strange, but I've seen it first
hand... has something to do with the distance being shorter than the
mountains behind them, or something like that. 

Of course, the best place to go in Sacramento... Scandia! The weather is
usually nice enough that the miniature golf courses can stay open
year-round, and most of the decent courses have a lot of nice
landscaping. (My favorite Scandia is actually closer to the bay area, in
Cordelia, but there's a decent one up towards Roseville.) Big arcade,
batting cages, go-carts, and bumper boats. And if you hit the ball into
the big volcano, you get a free game. =)