Sacramento River Cruise and Old Town

Most of us don't do the tourist thing in the area where we live and work. Who has time? We're too busy living and working, and then we do our sightseeing far away from home. That is until we have out-of-town guests, holidays, or birthdays, and the question comes up: What's a fun thing to do in this town? The city I work in and live near is Sacramento, California. I spent several of my adult years here, and only recently discovered Old Sacramento and what it has to offer. On Father's Day two years ago we were trying to figure out something we could do that Dad would enjoy. He wanted to see ships in the Port of Sacramento, but something better caught my eye. An hour-long history cruise on the Sacramento River on the Hornblower. Then we'd go try to see cargo ships.

Delta King

The Hornblower departed from its dock in Sacramento's historic Old Town, next to the permanently moored Delta King, a paddlewheel steamboat with a rich history as a passenger boat in the 1920s, on military duty during World War II, an excursion boat on the Hudson River, a home to laborers in British Columbia, and a mysterious sinking in Richmond, California. Now it serves as a hotel/restaurant and nightclub. The Hornblower provided a narrated history lesson as we cruised north up the river in the hot sun. First we learned about the building of our Tower Bridge in 1934, and the historic I-Street drawbridge. Known as a metal truss swing bridge, it swings open horizontally instead of rising vertically.

Tower Bridge

I Street Bridge

Then we passed a ship-like dock--the historic air force docks. The "bow" (front side) of the dock measures the depth of the river. The oddly wing-shaped building sits on the "deck", walled with glass windows decorated with colored circles. I have no idea what this building houses or what it's for. A weather vane sits between the two wings. Further upriver, an historic power house. Further up, a shipwreck, and a whole story about how that happened and why the remains of the ship are still there--apparently providing good fish habitat. We passed riparian woodland, and the restaurants, docks, and marinas along the Garden Highway. We turned around at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers, where people partied on the beach, in the park, and on the water.

Historic Air Force dock

Sunken ship

We cruised back to Old Town and disembarked. Unfortunately, that day we never made it to the Port of Sacramento, because I ran the Prius over a curb, broke it somehow, and we had to be towed to Folsom. Now we spend a lot of fun evenings in Old Town. Elegant dining, flavorful martinis, and live Irish music on a Thursday, or Americana-pop-classics on a Friday, at the Delta Bar & Grill has become a night on the town for us. And on an evening of extreme indulgence, we feast like sea lions on a bucket filled with a whole garlic-buttered crab at Joe's crab shack--sitting on the deck over the river, drinking a fancy cocktail, and watching the tie-died clad wait staff suddenly break into some silly dance. And then when that's done, the blues bar across the street or down the stairs is still open, in case we want to dance to a tune and have a beer.

So when my sister asked us if we wanted to do the Sacramento river cruise and Joe's Crab Shack for her birthday in October the following year, it was "hell yea!" I'd do it a third time if the occasion again arises. And I have yet to explore the other fun vacation-like options Old Town has to offer, such as underground tours, visiting the railroad museum, or showing up on Gold Rush Days, when Old Town closes itself to modern-day traffic and historian actors re-enact the early days of wagons, saloons, and gold prospecting. Now that's a whole lot of fun for a home town, where just blocks away I spend most of my time in a cube.