Sactown Series: Sutter's Fort

There is always an adventure to tempt you out there in the world. But I find there exist quite a few hidden in your own backyard. Since my backyard is California's capital, Sacramento (otherwise known as Sacto, Sactown, River City or the Indomitable City), I've decided to do a series on its local gems to punctuate my global travels. Hopefully it will either inspire a visit here or spark curiosity as to your own city/village.

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A fur trapper hard at work.

When I was little, Sutter's Fort was the field trip every kid in class looked forward to. People in pioneer outfits weaving and leather stamping and handling molten metal and firing canons was about as exciting in my mind as being told we were going to the moon. The Fort does everything it can to make you feel like you're stepping back in time to the point where you can sense the wildness and opportunism in your bones.

I remember after school, about a month after one such trip, I decided to try to sell some rocks I'd collected in my driveway, as though I, too, were a Sutter's Fort peddler. A nickel a rock was the going rate on the playground, and I sold out in about an hour. Yep, I would have done just fine in what some refer to as the West's first mini-mall. If you wanted guns, they had 'em. Furs, you betcha. Quilts, yup. Saddles, oh hell yes. While Sutter, the man, may have been a controversial figure, his legacy was the gold rush, agriculture and California as we know it. Not bad for someone who ended up bankrupt.

If you want to plan a visit to the Fort, my strategy for the day would be as follows... Start out at Temple Coffee in Midtown (only blocks from the Fort) for some delicious farm-to-cup coffee and enjoy it while in their outdoor garden. Then it's off to the Fort for an inexpensive and rewarding ticket to Sacramento's past. I would follow this up with a stroll through the fort's surrounding garden (I'm told the grape vines in the middle of the pond are the originals from Sutter's time - i.e. seriously old vines) and a pop into the nearby State Indian Museum. Finally, it's a late lunch/early dinner and craft cocktails at Hock Farm - a new and yummy restaurant in Midtown named after Sutter's vast empire of a farm and specializing in seasonal farm-to-fork dining.

And, FYI, the going rate for my hand-curated backyard stones is now $5 a pop.

Heat Warning

Heat. It can kill. Especially if you're Belgian.

I had warned my Camino love (and husband) that the Sacramento Valley was an uncomfortable place to live in the summer. Memories flashed by of my friend and I volunteering for a homeless shelter in her non air conditioned car just sweating all over ourselves, trying to pretend that the hot air blowing in from the windows was refreshing. "Don't worry," I tell him, "as long as you stay indoors where it's cool you'll be fine." Little did I know he'd eventually get two jobs that required him to work outdoors and that temperatures would reach 115 degrees as early as late June. "I feel like roasted chicken" he told me in a text from work, to which I assumed meant he wanted me to pick up a rotisserie at Safeway. Of course, he meant he was the roasted chicken. A roasted Belgian chicken.

This all reminds me of a time on the Camino where a heat wave swept through Spain, somehow annihilating all traces of shade in its wake. One of these days we were trudging to Portomarin - a city quite cruelly placed atop a hill. I remember thinking to myself as I drug my feet up the billionth step to get to the top that never in my life had I sweat so much in a day. 'Moisture Wicking' my ass. I was drenched. The hottest day I'd lived through other than the time my mother and I spent a night in a Death Valley hotel who's AC had broken, thanking god every time the ceiling fan made a rotation and evaporated one of the collective beads of sweat of my forehead. Yes, those are my hottest memories. THEN I walked outside this morning. 

With the luxury of working indoors and in the safety and security of temperature controlled home, you tend to forget the scorched earth laying in wait beyond the front door. As I looked at the wilting gardenia bush in the front yard, I thought of my poor pilgrim husband schlepping to work like a slumped over, melting Dali clock, and my heart sunk. So what do the Sacramento Valley people do to escape the heat? They go to Tahoe. We were just there with the family, in fact... and what did I do? I avoided going into the lake because it was too cold. Too cold! If I could take it all back I would sit in that lake like a Coke in an ice box. Just snuggle right on into the sand and chill. Until we can go back, I guess I'll just greet my roasted chicken husband at the door with a cool drink and a look that says, "Don't worry. As long as you never go back outside the house until fall, you'll be fine."

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Some pictures from our Tahoe excursion: