Salem enroute to Sacramento - February 2013

When the word broke that hedge fund manager and lifetime Sonics fan had made a deal with the Maloof brothers to buy the majority stake in the Sacramento Kings and relocate them to Seattle, my first thought was, why wait till they move?   This idea hatched and we drove to Sacramento to watch the Kings play.

We left Seattle on Sunday afternoon after Bronwen got off work. We drove to Salem, Oregon and stayed in the Grand Salem Hotel.  After checking in and surveying the room, it was beer time! (first beer in 12 days, see vision quest blog).  We walked across the street to a Mexican restaurant. Upon entering, we could immediately see that this was not a dinner destination, we sat at the empty bar , one of the few seats in a bar that sported a large dance floor. This was a meat market 20something bar.   One beer and on our way. Mmm, beer.

We walked around the old downtown district.  We found another bar a few blocks away.  Sat at the bar and ordered some more beer. This place had the Oregon video poker games, so I quickly gave a $20 donation to the state into one of the machines. I ordered a Quesadilla to hold us over and after we ate it we headed out to find dinner. Turns out the only nice restaurant was in the Hotel! The place was crowded, which surprised us since the streets were barren and most places closed at 8 pm on a Sunday night. 

Dinner was decent, we went to bed early so we could hit the road the next am.  The next morning I did get a chance to walk down to Riverfront park.  The park has an indoor Carousel and we saw several Carousel related businesses in town.  On the river, there was an old Stern Wheeler offering short cruises around the Willamette river.  The park was good size, had wide, paved walking paths on top of the river banks, it was a beautiful morning and I was the only one in the park! I thought it odd I didn't at least see a biker or jogger. Nothing.  We left when I returned.