Last weekend Bruce and I got away for a vacation in exotic Benicia! Bruce's tug has two home ports, San Francisco, pier 17 and the Benica Industrial dock in Benicia, so he knows the area quite well. We stayed one night in a new motel and one night in the historic Union Hotel in downtown Benicia. (cost about the same, accomodations about the same in general, everything was a bit larger in the modern motel, both came with breakfast). We went to the Friends of the library book sale (Bruce is a friend of the library. The sale had a great selection of books, very reasonabe prices and many helpful volunteers), the Historic Military cemetary (some very old graves, military, civilian, and even a few prisones of war), the Benicia Historical Museum housed in the Historic Camel Barn complex (there was a short military experiment to use camels for conveyance in the desert southwest, the experiment was cancelled due to the Civil War and the camels were brought to Benicia to be sold at public auction in 1864, so for one month, there were camels in the camel barn in Benicia!). Benicia was named for Vallejo's wife Francisca (many middle names) Benicia Vallejo. First named Francisca, when Yerba Buena changed it's name to San Francisco, they decided to change the name to Benicia to avoid confusion. Sra. Vallejo bore 16 children, 10 of whom lived to adulthood, and I made note of quote from Sr. Vallejo's journal: "The family is the only thing which keeps up society. Childhood has the right to joy." We spent two hours plus in the museum and only got through less than half. I got up the pony express days, then we decided to come back another time and see the rest. The museum is very well done -- I would recommend a visit if you like historical museums. We also visited several garage sales, and lastly the Historic First State Capitol Building in downtown Benicia. The state constitution was written in Monterey in tents and Benicia, San Jose and Saramento all started vying to be the capitol. Benicia finished it's building first and was the state capitol for about a year (1853-4), and remains the oldest capitol building as the only original part of the Sacramento capitol is from 1860. It was very interesting to see the small clerks and copy rooms and the large meeting rooms for the Senate (downstairs) and the Assembly (upstairs) with the raised and railed paltform for the speakers. It was built with locally made bricks because they didn't want to wait for bricks to be shipped from the east. Did you know that Mt. Diablo was named for a vision of the devil that a Spanish Father (not Serra, I can't remember his name at the moment (Haro?))had while in reverent comtemplation of the valley below? He was tempted to have the church leave so the Spanish could "inherit" the land. He did not heed the devil's temptation and now we know why it is called Mt. Diablo. There is a painting of this vision in the Assembly room upstairs. We really enjoyed our weekend getaway to lovely Benicia!