Fun Halloween Events in Sacramento
If you want to enjoy a day full of activities all in one place, head for Old Sacramento, a popular tourist destination that always offers something for locals too. Buy your ticket for the haunted train ride, and while waiting enjoy the small pumpkin patch that’s usually set up on one of the historic streets. If the weather cooperates, a brisk breeze might come up off the river and you can take in the pumpkin patch while finally getting a sense that fall is on its way.
When the train rolls into the station, find a good seat (probably inside, but outside will work too) and take in the decorations. Depending on the year, you might find spider webs, skeletons and skulls hanging from the ceiling. The train ride is only 40-minutes along the river, but as you enjoy the sites, you’ll also be entertained by music, performing ghosts and maybe a scare or too.
Best of all, this pre-Halloween Old Sac day will cost you around $10 a person. If you want your parking validated, stop in at the candy barrel shop and buy $5 worth of candy, then have them validate your parking. Now, with candy in hand, you’re ready for Halloween!
If you think a hayride and picking your own pumpkin brings the right mood for Halloween, you want to head out of town to Bishop’s Pumpkin Farm in Wheatland just outside of Lincoln. As you travel on Highway 65 past Lincoln, there will be signs leading you there.
Here, you can make an entire day of harvest and Halloween activities. Since you’ll likely have the kids with you, start at the tiny feeding and petting zoo near the front, then move on to the food booths, where you can get the kids a big caramel apple. If you brought a picnic lunch, there are plenty of tables at which to enjoy your own bounty.
The kids will enjoy running into the barn, climbing the steps and then sliding down the built-in slide to the hay below. They’ll also enjoy the hay bounce, a padded area filled with hay much like a bounce house but it’s filed with, well, hay. Feed the ducks at the pond, and enjoy a train ride around the pumpkin farm. For many children, the highlight of this train ride is going through the giant pumpkin “tunnel”.
Depending on your energy level and your children’s, they might want to ride a pony or get lost in the corn maze. Once you’re ready to pick a pumpkin, and you want to do this last so you aren’t carrying your pumpkins around all day, you can either take a hay ride to the pumpkin patches or walk. Kids prefer the hay ride for the simple charm of it. You’ll be dropped off smack in the middle of a seemingly endless pumpkin patch, then you can board another tractor when you’re ready to head back.
For the freshest, most useful pumpkin, pick one still on the vine. They aren’t hard to get off and they’re a better choice than ones that have been discarded by other visitors or – obviously – ones that have been eaten by bugs. Before you leave, have your pumpkin measured; this is how they’re priced (hint: since they measured around, if you want to save a couple of dollars, pick a tall, skinny pumpkin rather than a short, squat one).
If you don’t have much time to enjoy the season, be sure to stop at any number of pumpkin patches around town. All offer wonderful picture opportunities and, of course, pumpkins. At the pumpkin patch on Sunrise Avenue and Antelope Road in Citrus Heights, you can even cart the kids around in a wheelbarrow.
