Today we left at about 8:35 a.m. with the intention of spending the day at Monterey, about 110 miles south west. We planned on taking Amtrak from Jack London Square, about 1 mile west of us, to Salinas then get to Monterey via the Amtrakc connecting bus. The train was going to be at least 2 hours late, so we changed plans and instead took the train to Sacrament, about 90 miles to the north-east.

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The view across the tracks from the Emeryville station, the first stop on the way to Sacramento. The parking lot serves commuters taking Amtrak down the east bay to San Jose. The brown building to the right is the Emeryville public market, a mall with lots of restaurants.

The stop at Richmond, which is a connecting point for BART service. This picture shows the transit center for local bus service. In the distance, just left of center, you can see Mt. Tamalpais, across the Bay in the Marin headlands.

A clearer shot of Mt. Tamalpais, reflection notwithstanding. This shot is from a couple of miles out of the Richmond station.

The Richmond refineries with the Marin hills, across the upper San Pablo Bay, in the background.

View of San Pablo Bay as we head to Sacramento.

Another shot of San Pablo Bay. The pier just off-shore is probably from the WW II era, when Richmond was a center of US Pacific ship building.

Yet another shot of San Pablo Bay. No, I have no special affinity for the area :-). The pole with the orange top in the lower left is a marker for a fiber-optic cable route, owned by MCI/Williams Telecommunications. They follow the lines fairly closely all the way to Sacramento, and likely beyond.

Approaching the Carquinez Straits, with the Martinez refineries in the distance. These lie to the top right of the upper San Pablo Bay.

Another shot of the refineries at Martinez, last stop on Amtrak in the east bay, showing the mudflats along the Carquinez Straits.

View of the ongoing construction of the new Richmond-San Raphael bridge. The project was delayed for several months because of environment concerns. The shock waves generated by pile driving was causing havoc among aquatic life within several hundred feet of the construction site. Also visible are the pylons for the high-voltage transmission lines that take power into San Raphael.

Old pilings tell of a more vibrant time, as we race along the shore of Upper San Pablo Bay, leaving the Richmond bridge in the background.

The Carquinez Bridge, which lies ahead, as we head south towards Martinez.

View of one of the piers for fuel freighters. These are plentiful above Richmond.

The view across the tracks from the Martinez station stop. The verdant palm offsets the cabling plant storage facility, likely used by the fiber-optic project that runs alongside the tracks.

Another, closer shot of the Carquinez Bridge. There are 2 bridges, actually, one for the trains (the lower one) and the other for cars. Periodically, when ships need to pass, the movable section of the bridgeway for trains has to be raised, which causes delays, one of which we encountered one on the say back.

The brown hills of summer. The darker side of Memorial Day in the central valley is the start of the annual fire season. The charred left flank of the hill is clearly visible.

Fields of bright yellow flowers topping an unknown plant, stretching to the houses along eastbound route 80. This was the only area we saw with these flowers.

If you believe the TV ad, those are genuine happy California cows, hanging loose in the hot sunshine. It was at least 85 in Sacramento when we arrived, and all through the valley the temperature was probably in the same range.

A herd of browsing horses on a central valley ranch. This was somewhere between Suisun/Fairfield and Davis.

Sand sculpture in the Downtown Plaza mall.

Another shot of the sand sculpture from a different angle.

Yet another shot of the sand sculpture from a different angle.

Flower-ringed fountain in the grounds of the state buildings, directly across from the building where my picture was taken.

Another shot of me.

State Capital building. The news van was probably there to cover the ongoing budget impasse, which had prevented a budget being passed on time.

A couple of paintings on the western wall of the lobby in the Embassy Suites on the Sacramento River. Both scenes were celebrating the river.

View up the river, looking north east, from the 3rd Street bridge. The Embassy Suites is off to the left out of the picture.

One of the river ferries, with a non-functional stern wheel, preparing to cruise down the river. The 3rd Street bridge is in the background. The tower houses the hardware to raise a portion of the bridge to allow large freighters to navigate the river.

Two of the horse-drawn carridges available for guided tours of the area. The buildings are very authentic, some of them dating back to the 1880s.

A building, patterned after a step pyramid, on the far side of the river, as we take the train out of Sacramento. For the trip going back home, all the pictures were taken from the east-facing side of the train, as I'd taken all the pictures going to Sacto from the west-facing seats.

A sea of bright green plants stretching away to the raised highway 80.

The fertile and the fallow. Growning and already-harvested plots alongside each other as we head towards Davis on the way home.

The graveyard of many WW II ships, the waters of the upper San Pablo Bay. There are at least 100 ships anchored here. Though they would make good bases for reef dwellers, towing them to suitable locations is currently prohibitively expensive.

A closer shot of some of the abandoned WW II ships, many of which were probably built just across the bay in the Richmond shipyards.

The Carquinez Bridge, with a portion of it raised to allow a freighter to sail under. This delay added about 15 minutes to our trip.

Hundreds of cars that were unloaded from the trains coming in from Oakland and from Detroit, a few cars of which can be seen in the foreground. Each car can hold 6 - 8 vehicles, depending on their size. This is a major staging point for cars arriving from Japan and Korea. Some of the abandoned WW II ships are in the background.

A couple of Union Pacific locomotives positioning themselves. In the middle distance is the parking lot with new vehicles and the ship that caused our delay is in the background, about 2 minutes from passing under the bridge.

Shot of the freighter that paused our trip. The east bay hills are a backdrop for the Martinez refineries.

The Martinez station from the southbound train. Of all the stations on the route, this one is matched only by, surprisingly, Sacramento, in terms of generally depressing surroundings.

The Richmond BART station, accessible via a tunnel under the tracks. The train was on it's way out to switch tracks and prepare for the return trip to San Francisco.

The Emeryville station. The walkway to the public market is in the foreground. There are some newly-built condos in the background, planned in the heady dot-com days, and now sitting mostly empty. Maybe the fortunes of Chiron - a biotech heavyweight just up the road - might help them along.

The other side of the Emeryville station.

Downtown Oakland as we run alongside the Cypress Freeway, rebuilt a few years ago after the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.

Another shot of downtown Oakland, with ongoing construction of the Oakland multi-mode freight terminal in the foreground.

The Jack London Square station, Oakland, after our return. It's named for Ron Dellums, a now-retired long-serving Oakland congressman.