Sacramento last day - Bean Sprout Adventures

Our last day started off with a tour of the Stanford mansion! Apparently Leland Stanford (Sr) was the governor of California for a time and lived in Sacramento. The house, originally pretty modest at around 2000 square feet, was expanded to 4k and then 19k square feet.

Front of the mansion in the Second Empire architectural style.

After a really bad flood in 1862, the house was raised up and a relatively low-value ground floor added. That particular flood was so bad that Sacramento was about 10 feet underwater for 3 months. Afterwards, the entire city was raised a story, buildings and roads included. There are tours of the subterranean areas available during the summer.

The alleyways were not raised, which you can see evidence of in the still-present sloping.

A view of the Sacramento River with weird pyramidal building in the background.

Pizza for lunch! J got a slice of garlic chicken pizza in addition.

Full-size model high-speed train at the State Railroad Museum. There’s a big room full of train cars from different eras.

Snow plow car, essential to rail travel through the Sierra Nevadas.

Dining car with historic train dining car china patterns.

Mail car, back when trains were used to transport mail. Apparently they were vulnerable to robbery.

Shinkansen training simulator. J did it and says its super easy – all you have to control is the brake.

Dinner for J. I had leftover burrito from the previous day.

We took Amtrak home in the evening, and then Caltrain back to our place!

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