Sac Zoo for FREE

Who wouldn't go to their local zoo if it were free? Well for free museum day here in Sacramento, Mike and I went to the Zoo. There are 26 museums in town, but with this being an annual event, we figured we can go to some other places next year. I've only been to the Sac Zoo once, so it was nice to go back.

The free shuttle system they offer is really nice. There's a hub downtown with tourist buses that will drop you off at most of the museums. We walked a mile or so this morning and picked up the bus to the zoo, and at 10am the line at the zoo was already wrapped around the park, but it moved pretty fast.

The weather was perfect today, so we decided to walk home through a nice neighborhood, and 2.5 miles later we were back home. It was a nice mellow adjustment from the crazy stroller land of the zoo. The best overheard quote of the day, parent to about an 8 year old child- "I told you: No texting! It's family day."

Pizza and Crickets at Pismo Beach

Pizza on the beach never gets old, and with a six hour journey ahead of us we needed some sustenance. I did a quick search for gluten free around Pismo Beach and stumbled upon Doughboy's Pizzeria, who also makes their own gluten free crust from scratch. (Why can't more places in Sacramento offer this? err) While we were paying for our pizza we ran into another gluten free diner and ended up chatting a bit. There's more of us out there than I think any of us realize.
Anyhow, we ordered a the pesto chicken which had cheese, pesto sauce, roasted chicken, feta cheese, & fresh tomatoes. The chicken on this pizza was not nearly as dry as the chicken from Pizza Guru, although the crust was less firm than Pizza Guru, and almost couldn't handle all of it's toppings. The edge of the crust was almost over done and the edges of the left overs got really hard. The flavor however was amazing; the chicken had a nice roasted flavor and was nice and moist. We ordered our pizza to go, and headed to the beach for the last of the sunset. We found a bench away from the teenage clicks there to party for the night, and had a nice romantic dinner.

When we were all done we walked up the strip a little and went into a "candy" store for a treat before hitting the road. We were surprise with what we found. Gummi bears, taffy, and insects. Yes insects, the real deal too. The cashier told us about all the owner of the store raises all the insects that they had: ants crickets, scorpions, and larvets; chocolate covered, or seasoned. WOW! And he ships them all over the world. I mean I know some cultures eat insects but I've never anything like this in a candy store before. I was seriously tempted by the sour cream and onion crickets, but I saved my $2 bucks.

Arroyo Burro Beach

Gorgeous weather and great company equals an awesome afternoon at Arroyo Burro Beach. We ate our left over pizza from the previous night and spent the afternoon playing Frisbee, flying our stunt kite, and enjoying the sand. At the time we didn't know this beach was listed as a dog friendly place, but had never seen so many dogs on the beach in the middle of the afternoon. We had multiple dogs attempt to join in on our intense game of Frisbee, and while I was mediating on the beach with my eyes shut a very fluffy dog came and stood on my chest and licked me. Now I'm not normally a dog person, but this one was cute so I didn't completely mind, however Mike wasn't so lucky, and got a bunch of droll all over him from a different dog. We also had a seagull snatch one of our ziplocs, but luckily it ended up being our trash bag of food bits, and not the good stuff.

We knew we had to leave, but couldn't manage to tear ourselves away until the sun started setting.