California Trip -Sacramento -Part Four

Merritt took us in search of three bridges this morning.

Thanks to my nephew Brent Logan, who pointed me to Folsom's Bridges website, I am able to get the right names on these awesome bridges.  This is the famous Rainbow Bridge, built in 1919.  Nice clean lines, eh?

Behind the Rainbow Bridge is the Historic Truss Bridge, which was re-opened to be used as part of the American River bike trail.  We saw several joggers and bikers using it.  Maybe next time we come to Sacramento we will rent a bikes and do this trail round trip... 32 miles each way.  I think it would be an awesome and fun bike ride.  It goes over some pretty special bridges I haven't seen yet... like the Guy West Bridge, which is a scaled down version of the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge.  How cool is that?

This is the newest bridge, the Lake Natoma Crossing, was built in 2000... and it is a really cool, modern bridge.

This second photo of the "Welcome to Sacramento" water tower is justified by the time and effort expended to find this monument.  This one stumped even the 40-year Sacramento veterans for a little while... but we did not give up and once again persistence always succeeds.

We did the tourist thing in Old Sacramento, down by the river and around the Tower Bridge.  We poked around the shops, looked at the merchandise and Shirley actually bought a hummingbird feeder.

This old Caddy seemed to just fit into the theme of Old Sacramento!  I only wish I could have taken more shots of it without all the other trashy newer cars parked next to it.

What this shot lacks in sharpness in makes up for in content.  Had to shoot it thru the front windshield as we were driving... but the colour and style was just right for the day.

You can see we were having fun looking at stuff, taking pictures... and we eventually stopped for a little lunch at a Mexican Restaurant.  You can only read so many crazy tee shirt sayings.

The Mexican food was fine... but this chandelier will be remembered long after the food was burned off. It was a one of a kind and very creatively done... well suited for the place.

From Old Sacramento this picture shows how close the new Sacramento is... just across the river.

This is the California State Teachers Retirement System building. (CALSTRS)  As you can see it takes a lot of people to manage the money for all California's retired teachers!

This memorable pyramid shaped building is the Ziggurat Building... #50 on the Emporis.com website of Sacramento's tallest buildings.  What a cool design.  and right next to the CALSTRS building.

We timed it just right.  Just when it started to rain, we were ready to go into the Crocker Museum anyway... and what an incredible place that was for Shirley and me.  The place was such an inspiration.

We were allowed to take photos of the permanent exhibits... but not the traveling ones.  And it was the travelling ones that were quite amazing. To see details on the current exhibitions click on this Crocker link.

You may also check out some websites of the two featured artists.
Gottfried Helnwein:  Click to go to an exhaustive website of all his work.  He had huge photos on which he painted with acrylic.  Some of his work was pretty dark... WWII type stuff... bloody!  But the concept of his work blew the top off my mind... and the Death Valley piece was about 4 feet by 20 feet or more... absolutely breathtaking.  Find it on his site under landscapes or click here.

John Buck:  Click for a short slide show of his works.  A most impressive collection of wood prints... and a true craftsman.  It was incredible work.  Unbelievable.

I wasn't going to include any of the photos we took in the gallery... but this one was special.  Here my sweetheart is reading about the artist of this work, and quite by accident got captured with my camera and became a part of the original piece.  Don't you just love it when this kind of thing happens?

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." 
-Steve Jobs