Today, Chris and Stacey had to work.  Actually, so did Jeremy.  I had a relaxing morning playing with Mico and Sophie and doing a little load of laundry.  Koira sulked.  She does not play when Mico and Sophie are around.  She stayed close to Jeremy while he worked and I chased the little ones around the house.  Ah, it is good for Koira.  She does not always need to be the centre of attention.  I think she got caught up on her sleep too.

We met Chris in Old Sacramento for lunch at a very cool burger joint and pub called Fanny Ann’s Saloon.   We all ordered the Singin’ the Blues Burger – their famous burger topped with a slices of blue cheese.  Excellent burgers . . . and not just because of the generous serving of blue cheese.  The restaurant decorating was eclectic, to say the least.  It was three stories of antiques and collectibles screwed to the walls anywhere there was room.  They also encouraged graffiti and etching contributions from their customers.   We even saw an old Ontario license plate.  Now, was that someone who drove down to California and decided not to go home?  I can see how tempting that might be.

Chris had to go back to work, so we had a few hours for another touristy adventure.   We spent a little more time wandering around Old Sacramento, mostly at Candy Heaven, and picked up a few souvenirs.  After about the tenth gift shop, we decided it was time to move on and try and see the Johnny Cash exhibit at the Folsom Prison museum.  This museum was on our list two years ago when we were in Sacramento but we were unable to squeeze it in.  This time, though, we were not going to miss it!  We had Chris’s Nissan T-top and some sunshine so we headed for the freeway.

For some reason, I had not picked up on the fact that Folsom Prison is still an active prison.  Jeremy knew but I did not.  It was a little unnerving seeing all the warning signs and lists of things we could not carry onto the grounds.  After navigating around the turkeys chasing each other back and forth across the road, we found a parking space in the “visitors” parking.  And when I say “turkeys,” I do really mean turkeys.  It was not other tourists like us confused about where to go just to see the museum.

There was absolutely no signage anywhere pointing to the Folsom Prison museum.  Jeremy thought he saw an old building a little ways up on the hill where the turkeys had disappeared.  Maybe that was the museum?  We thought we would just hike up the little path and see.  All of a sudden this booming voice was asking us where we are going.  It was a plain, clothes guard in the parking lot and he was not happy that we decided to go for a hike.  He told us to come down from the hill.  When I told him we were just trying to find the museum he relaxed quite a bit.  We must have been exuding the tourist vibe.  Apparently, they have problems with people trying to leave various types of contraband and drugs in this area we were in (which, by the way, the guard informed us, was the old armory and grounds) for the prisoners to try and pick up and bring into the prison.  That also made me a little nervous.  These hills around the parking lot are OUTSIDE the prison walls.  How and why are they out here anyway?  Grounds duty for “good” behaviour?  I decided that I was not interested in any more wandering, even if we could get special permission to see the old armory on the hill.

The guard also gave us some bad news.  Although the museum was straight ahead of us just past the prison guard house, the power was out at the prison and, as a result, the museum was closed.  OK.  Are we jinxed or something?  Now, this “closed” sign was very disappointing.  It was not because it was off-season or because we got there a little too late in the day.  I can understand that happening quite frequently to us when and how we travel.  It was a fluke power outage this time, though.  I guess they have backup generators for the prison but the museum is just shut down when the power goes out.  Oh, well.  I guess we will just have to try again next time we are in Sacramento.  Third time’s a charm, right?

We still had a few hours to kill before Chris and Stacey were off work so we decided to check out the historic district of Folsom.  We stopped at the Folsom County Museum a little unsure if anything would be open due to the power outage.  Well, all the power was on in Folsom, so it was only the prison that was out.  Lucky us!  The Folsom County Museum ended up being a nice, safe little museum to visit.  We learned a little bit about a lot of different things related to Folsom including the Gold Rush, the Pony Express, and the wine-making and olive-making industries.  And they even had a little Johnny Cash exhibit.  They called it the “Singing John and June.”  It was a whole bathroom dedicated to Johnny Cash.  To get into the bathroom, you had to actually enter a fake Folsom prison jail cell too.  Now, this kitschy tourist trap made the trip out to Folsom worth it!

We made it back to Old Sacremento in time for happy hour at Ten 22, a restaurant and bar with a selection of craft brewery beers.  We sampled some beers we will never be able to get in Canada.  We ordered the cheese sampler too.  Oh, so good!  It came with an amazing selection of cheeses, dried strawberries, meringue-coated pecans, artisan bread, and a slice of honeycomb.

We were pretty full by the time we got back to Chris’s house, but we had one more fantastic restaurant to try before we left – Bandera.  We can see why it is one of Chris and Stacey’s favourite restaurants in Sacramento.  We had yet another fantastic meal and visit at this restaurant.  The food was a mix of Southern-style cooking and barbeque.  We had roasted artichokes, poke, and cornbread for appetizers.  For the main course, it was fall-off-the-bone barbeque ribs and chicken.  We tried to save room for the chocolate banana cream pie, but none of us could stuff another morsel of food into our bellies by the time we were done the main course.  Maybe next time we will save room.