The final destination of our mini vacation was the California State Train Museum, located in old town Sacramento. It was a pretty neat place to see with the several different types of trains and cars set up (some of which you could actually get on. Unfortunately, Adahleigh and Charles were a little to young to enjoy it, or make it enjoyable for that matter. From the first second all they wanted to do was run around. There was a play area where they had wooden train set put up for them to play with, but the train set they have at home is almost as big as the one to play with there. Since there were over 20 kids trying to fight over the small sets it wasn't that great for them to play with either. Over all they did enjoy seeing the trains and just running around, so in their eyes it wasn't a complete failure.
We did get a couple of good pictures with the trains, once they stopped bouncing off the walls.
We were a little hesitant to go because we didn't want to disturb the other train enthusiasts, but reading online most people said it was really kid friendly. We found out right off the bat that it wasn't as kid friendly as described, or at least the one museum volunteer (all the museum workers are volunteers, most retired railroad workers) we ran into first wasn't very friendly. The kids got in trouble for standing on the box, it didn't help that Charles was shaking the pickaxe as hard as he could to get it loose.
In all the museum held over 20 engines and cars.
This was probably the highlight of the whole museum. This volunteer grabbed the kids and set them down to tell them how people traveled in the train and how the seat they were sitting in pulled out to form a bed like camper trailers do and there was even a bunk that folded out above the seats. The funny thing about visiting the museum is Adahleigh had to have a map of her own to look at. The whole time we were there she would constantly whip it out to tell us this is where we are and were going here next. She did go and use it as a way to ignore the museum volunteer, she acted like he wasn't even there. He made the comment when he was picking them up that he hadn't held kids this young for about 20 yrs since all his grand kids are also grown. I think their visit also made his day.
Separate from the museum, there was and old steam engine and cars you could take a ride on. The ride ended up lasting about an hour and the kids really liked riding on the train.
Charles had had a little too much running around by the time we got on the train that he couldn't manage to stay awake and ended up sleeping for half the trip.
All his energy came right back after we got off the train and he proceeded to run around the whole place. Adahleigh has picked up a strange habit that she won't step on the cracks between boards (like on the wooden walkway, that's why she is lagging behind) even on playground toys.
We never found out if all the activities and time relevant activities were an everyday occurrence (such as military marches and women picketing for rights), or we just got lucky on the day we were there and they had more to do. The kids liked play in the water and trying to pan for gold (it was planted with iron pyrite you could find and take).
After showing Adahleigh how to pan for gold, she wanted to do it all by herself. She never did figure out what exactly she was looking for. She would just pull out the biggest rocks and say "I found gold, a big one".
She did do a good job, especially for how young she was. All Charles did was take the pan and dump water all down the front of him.
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