Travel Log, Sacramento CA: Day 2

The best laid plans almost went awry today. Repeatedly. Today’s plan was to make an 8:30AM session at the new Sacramento temple, meet Vanessa and The Other Shauna in Placerville for Z’pie, and then head over to the Swift’s reception at 7PM.

Now let me just say that the Sacramento temple is very small. It’s so small that you must make an appointment for the session you wish to be in. We had originally planned to rent clothing, but there’s just no space there to do rentals. We ended up bringing our temple clothes and buying some of the items we normally rent.

So we’re all on-track to be there on-time this morning, and Chloe is making a royal pest of herself. I had taken her out first thing to do her business (which she did), but she was still whining like mad to go outside because she wanted to sniff around. Shauna couldn’t stand it anymore, so she tied Chloe’s leash to the tree in the front and came back in to finish getting ready. As we’re getting ready to leave, she goes out to find Chloe gone.

Yes, gone. She had chewed through her leash and taken off. We immediately had both of Shauna’s parents and her brother hop into cars to go looking for her while Shauna and I set out on foot. It only took about 10 minutes to find her, but she gave us one heck of a scare (not to mention she ruined yet another one of her belongings, but that’s an entirely different entry). Even with that delay, we made it to the temple on time. Barely.

I’m glad we went too. I felt like I got my batteries recharged from doing a session, and I think I realize now that I may have been in a bit of a funk since it had been some time since we’d paid the temple a visit. The celestial room in Sacramento was gorgeous and, thankfully, quiet. We’ve been put off from going to our home temple, Jordan River, because it’s often so noisy and you can’t get the peaceful and quiet reflection that is so rejuvenating. (Tip: early morning is usually quieter.)

Because it’s a very small temple, the session actually took some time to complete. We didn’t leave the temple grounds until around 11:30 and we had machinations of making it up to Placerville by noon. If you’re not familiar with the area, look up the distance between Folsom and Placerville sometime, then factor in changing. Luckily for us, Vanessa thought it was at 12:30, buying us a small amount of time, especially helpful since US-50 was a virtual parking lot for several miles.

Z’Pie was something that totally lived up to the constant hyping Shauna had given it. We kicked it off with a fruit a cheese plate with grapes, pear slices, crackers, a wedge of brie, and slices of gouda and mimolette, a cheese new to me. Mimolette is now one of my favorite cheeses. It’s aged Edam that has an almost parmesan-like sharpness to it, and it was quite tasty. I followed up with a house salad made with real field greens, something a far cry from the “Mt. Iceberg” usually upon my plate in Utah.

Then came the pies. Oh, such pies did I have. The entree pie I went with was a jambalaya pie filled with andouille sausage, chicken, shrimp, ham, and crawfish with the perfect amount of heat. It was most enjoyable indeed. After all of this, I still had room for desert, so I opted for the multi-berry pie with ice cream and it did not disappoint. It’s a real shame that they don’t ship out-of-state or our freezer would be stuffed with the things.

After lunch, we wandered off down Main St. in Placerville. Our first stop was a small cheese shop where we suspect Z’Pie got their cheese from. The selection of gourmet cheeses was overwhelming and they had an amazing olive bar, plus a selection of baked goods and other gourmet foods. I suspect it’s a good thing I didn’t whip out the Visa or we would have been in serious trouble.

Being that our group was 3 women and 1 man, I then spent a lot of time sitting outdoors while they drooled over girl stuff like decorations and fancy soaps. On the way back to the car, I spotted my greatest weakness: a kitchen gadget store. I forced everyone to duck inside while I drooled over the nifty gadgets adorning the walls. Shauna wisely pointed out that most of that stuff was way overpriced, so we skipped on more purchases and made our way home.

We took some time to recharge since we’d been going non-stop for most of the day, figuring that we didn’t need to be to the Swift’s reception until 7. Naturally, I had the time all kinds of wrong: it started at 6. We dashed into our dress clothes and made a beeline to Eldorado Hills only to find that most of the other attendees had also opted to not appear until after 7. Ryan, I swear we’ll mail you a gift since we never made it to Linens and Things.

Wedding receptions are often a weird experience. After the limousine services Sacramento dropped us off at the event, the Shaunas and I kinda kept to our own little group since we didn’t really know anyone there, and nobody (other than Ryan and Kim, of course) decided to descend upon our table. This is typical of a lot of receptions I’ve been to: I don’t know most of the other attendees. Bobbie and Jeremy have the distinction of being pretty much the only wedding reception I’ve been to where we conversed with and had a great time with people who were total strangers before.

We pretty much called it a night after the reception and spent the rest of the evening bumming around the ‘rents house. And now… bedtime. We have a long drive to start tomorrow.