Sacramento - The End is in Sight!

It's now officially been a long trip. I'm very much looking forward to coming home on Monday after I'm done my trade show here in Sacramento. The hours on the road have been long but what's really taking it's toll on me is the fact that I've had to eat out for 12 days already. It's amazing how sick of eating out you can get and how much you can crave a home made meal or just a simple snack from your cupboard!

Monday I took the afternoon off to go visit the Manatee Springs State Park. I really wanted to see some manatees but alas, they were heading up the spring at the State Park to the north! Oh well. I did get to see some vultures which was kind of cool. While snapping some pictures of the vultures I had a conversation with a guy and girl from Missouri which went something like this:

ME: Do you guys see the vultures over there?

GUY: Yeah, my girlfriend here is a scared of big birds like that.

GIRL: They freak me out!

ME (to girl): Oh, you don't need to worry about them. They won't bother you...That is, unless you were dying, and then they'd only just pick you apart!

GIRL: Oh, gee, thanks! That makes me feel a lot better.

GUY: *LAUGHS HYSTERICALLY*There were a ton of birds flying around there as well. I've never seen so many hawks and vultures circling in my life!I also had the chance to take a look at the Manatee Spring as well. It was pretty beautiful, though I don't know if I can appreciate it as much as some people since I get to see mountain lakes all the time with lots of minerals in the water.Some of the cypress trees at the Manatee Springs State Park are rather neat. You can see in the picture what are called "knees" that the tree has to help it filter the water it sucks up from the ground. It would make for some crappy bush whacking if you had to navigate through them but certainly some pretty cool vegetation to look at.Tuesday and Wednesday last week were installation days at the libraries I visited with. The install/training went quite well and I had a good time visiting with the librarian and her husband who took me for a tour of Levy County. I sure did learn a lot about the area. Unfortunately it was raining pretty heavily so I didn't get a chance to snap any pictures of where we went but I did get to visit Cedar Key, an old and historic town on the Gulf of Mexico that was a key port during the civil war.

Thursday was a long travel day. I ended up getting to my hotel on Wednesday night at about 7:30pm and I was out of there by 5:30am on Thursday morning to fly to Sacramento, arriving here at about 1:30pm local. Most people don't realize it but traveling sure does take a lot out of you!

Today I was setting up for my trade show that I have this weekend. The setup itself wasn't too bad after I got things ordered that were overlooked when we set up the plans to come to the show. I ended up waiting for power to my booth and an Internet connection (I'm doing an Internet cafe so both are kind of critical!) for over 2 hours. It was...frustrating, yeah, that's it. For those of you who have no real clue what I do, here's a shot of the system I sell set up for this trade show.After setting up my booth I decided I was going to take a look at downtown Sacramento. It was getting kind of late but I figured today will be the only day I have the time to explore the city a little. Sacramento is the state capitol of California so I took some shots of the capitol building. I also had a chance to shoot some pictures of the cathedral downtown. Since it was pretty dark and the pictures weren't all that great I decided to sketch them.Tomorrow and Sunday are exhibit days. This show and the American Library Association shows are always over a weekend which is good because I build up overtime but bad because I have to work on a Sunday, something I've been excited not to have to do since leaving Hurricane's Ice Cream store in Ontario years ago. Oh well. Once the show is over I get to fly back home, hopefully relax a little, and be with my darling wife once again! Oh, and eat home cooked meals!

D