Prison and More!

I spent 4 nights during the off-season at Lake Natoma Inn while working in Roseville. The Inn is quite large, with four floors, and features many sports courts, an outside pool, a spacious gym, a restaurant, a business center, and convention/meeting facilities. While I was there, a tire company and a government group were conducting employee trainings.

What is nice about the inn is that it is in walking distance of Old Town/Historic Folsom (it’s mainly Sutter Street), and many restaurants and shops are nearby. The hotel also sits on the edge of the American River, which connects to Lake Natoma further south, where one can walk/bike/horseback ride alongside. Folsom Lake is about a 5-minute drive away, where summer tourists enjoy water activities.

Overall, my stay was satisfactory. Service at the front desk was excellent; however, the rooms were fair. They were in the middle of replacing all carpets in the rooms, so I know they try to maintain the hotel. It was simple and met my basic needs (e.g., bed, TV, desk, phone jack, bathroom). The furniture and pink-and-green carpets were functional but unimpressive. It was nice to have the small refrigerator, but a microwave would have been a nice addition. I disliked how the rooms feature an open rack with hangers rather than a traditional closed closet, as well as the somewhat dimly lit room. I requested an extra standing light, which was most useful. Further, the walls/floors were kind of thin--the guy staying above me was moving furniture or something at 3 in the morning and woke me up. Also telling of the people who stay here is the fact that my TV remote control was missing batteries when I arrived. Hmph.

It was too cold to try out the well-maintained pool, but I did use the gym a few times. Thankfully, it held several older treadmills and Stairmasters, a few mats, free weights, and some other equipment. Hardly anyone used the gym during my stay, likely since it was off=season and not crowded at the hotel, so I enjoyed the space and relative privacy. You really can’t beat the $89/night price during off-season. Although I don’t know the summer rates, the Lake Natoma Inn would be a nice place for families to stay for its convenient location and because it offers something for everyone.

To warm up from the cold and wet weather outside, I enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea in Teatime. Like many other tea parlors, Teatime offers a homey, Victorian tea setting, and sells teas and related gift items. What sets this parlor apart from others, however, is its offering of hats for tea-sippers to wear and your own selection of a tea cup and saucer. The shop is definitely set up for hosting small parties on the weekends for adults as well as young girls (they have teas like Tutti Frutti and Bubblegum).

Since I was going to be meeting a friend in a few hours for dinner, I opted for a lighter menu, the Cream Tea, which included a pot of tea, scone with Devonshire cream (yum!), and a cup of cut fresh fruit. It was perfect!

Peach apricot tea--fruity and not tart

Scone (maple with nuts)--buttery and just the right crumbly texture; a pleasure that I wished lasted longer

Devonshire cream--thick and sweet

Berry jam--quite delicious piled on my scone with the Dev cream

Fruit cup--refreshing assortment of cantaloupe balls, orange, apple, and kiwi slices without that funny-tasting preserve some places use.

Service was friendly and prompt (it wasn’t very busy when I was there, though), but not rushed. I very much enjoyed the short respite at Teatime.

It was a dreary, rainy day when I finally had time to visit the infamous Folsom State Prison. I was a little disappointed at first that there was not more for me to see (just the outer walls and a tower or two), but the small 2.5-room museum of artifacts satisfied my curiosity about its past and present.

The prison was founded in 1880 to relieve overcrowding at San Quentin. The Folsom location was ideal because the American River borders the prison on the west side, providing a natural barrier, water, and, later, electricity (installed in 1893); granite could be quarried nearby. Early prisoners, brought from San Quentin by boat and then train, quarried the stone and constructed the walls and 8-foot-by-4-foot cells. There are 1,700 cells in the facility, but more were added to Folsom State Prison with the opening of a new facility in 1986, bringing total inmate capacity to 5,500. The prison was originally supposed to be self-sustaining, so inmates kept busy with construction, farming on China Hill next door, and other crafts like tombstone engraving for each other. The first inmate was a Cantonese man named Chong Hing, #1 on July 26, 1880. Only six women have ever been incarcerated in Folsom. Morbid fact: The prison cemetery for unclaimed/unwanted dead inmates had to be moved several times, due to flooding that caused body parts to wash up downstream in the American River--imagine coming across that!

Today, FSP is a granite-wall-and-barbed-wire-enclosed city; it includes schools, workshops, U.S. post office, chapel, medical facility, exercise facilities, etc. The tiny "museum" ($1 entrance fee) holds artifacts from the prison, such as confiscated weapons, handcuffs, newspaper clippings, and pictures. A short, 8-minute video presentation of the facility (from a decade or two earlier) attempts to sell the prison as a great cruise-ship package, offering residents an exciting and productive lifestyle you might like to be a part of (not!) with upbeat, peppy music playing in the background. In the back of the museum is a replica of an old cell, complete with a talking inmate (complete with black-and-white-striped regalia) who can speak about prison life; kind of creepy to me, but perhaps more amusing to kids. Quite an interesting learning experience to visit a place none of us really want to go!

Museum telephone: 916/985-2561, ext. 4589

Located just off Highway 50, the outlet shopping center of Folsom includes Off 5th--Saks Fifth Avenue (my favorite shop of the bunch), Donna Karan, Nike, Liz Claiborne, Gap, Bombay, Osh Kosh B’Gosh, Kenneth Cole, Eddie Bauer, Izod, Jockey, Bebe, Nine West, Vans, and many other outlet stores. Like most outdoor outlet centers, this one is a collection of one-story buildings, with a few eateries. If you need a longer break from shopping, restaurants like Applebee’s are nearby, as well as a new stadium-seating movie house.

If you are really in the mood for shopping, you’ll probably need several hours here. I spent about an hour in Off 5th, where the designer shoe prices were great, but sadly, most of the women’s shoes have high heels that my feet won’t tolerate. I won’t bore you with details of each store, but just thought that I would include a journal entry for the outlets as one of the highlights of Folsom, should you come to town.

Info: 916/985-0312

Snooks provides candy for the eyes as well as for our taste buds. It was founded in 1963, and is the only sweet shop on the main street of historic Folsom.

Since the next big holiday is Valentine's, lots of hearts and red packaging stood out in the windows and cases. Opposite the display counter, customers can actually watch chocolates being assembled and dipped; this definitely convinced me to try some of the milk- and dark-chocolate honeycomb candies. As a mint lover, I also had to try a mint chocolate. I picked one of the sugarless ones, since I’ve always been curious about those. It was great! At least, I couldn’t really tell much of a difference, but maybe that’s because the mint flavor is somewhat powerful.

Not-so-special Dreyer's ice cream is sold at the shop, as well as an assortment of chocolates, fudge and caramel sauces, chocolate bars, other candies, and caramel popcorn. I bought a package of caramel popcorn with peanuts. It was very tasty--fresh and crunchy, and it didn’t stick to my teeth. What more can you ask for?!