The Fascinating Life and Times of Me

Lauren, Jody and I visited the Leland Stanford Mansion State Historic Park in Sacramento, California on Saturday, Septemeber 10th. Admission was free because it was Admission Day Weekend.
We spent a while admiring the lovely exterior of the building as we inched forward in the line to get inside. It was kind of like waiting in line for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, except for there was no animal graveyard and the crowd's average age was 55.

Detail of a window incl. creepy mustache man (insert)

One of the things we noticed was all of the windows had fancy things around the upper half. We also noticed that there is the face of some guy with a mustache incorperated into the design. The docent we asked said no one knows who the guy is, but that it might have been the architect putting himself into his work back in 1858. I think it is creepy.

Once we got inside, we found out that it is very lovely inside the mansion, and that they have very nice things, including newly restored carpets! The building is now used by the Govenor to throw fancy parties and stuff. We also got to see the Golden Spike and Emergency Back-Up Silver Spike that symbolized the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

Mr. Stanford is best known for driving this spike, founding some college, and being a California Govenor.

Other things I learned while visiting the Stanford Mansion:

1. You may not take pictures inside the building (with or without flash)

2. It is nice when things are free, but waiting in a two hour line to see something for free is not so nice.

3. Apparently, some water baron charged gold miners $6 a day (!) to use the water he provided to mine their gold in the late 1850s. Outrageous!

We also went to the state capital, which was awesome.

They made Lauren and I take off our belts so that we could go through the metal detector.

The Capital building dome is pretty on the inside and the outside.

Other highlights of our day included an adorable horse and Jody getting eaten by a sad-looking tree.

It was pretty much the best day ever.