I’m going to back track here since I was able to recover many of the lost pictures. This section is about the trip my brother and I took to Hearst Castle on the coast of California. Enjoy!
Since my brother and I were in the area, we headed over to the coast to visit the Hearst Castle. I’ve never been, Dan has been 2-3 times, but he didn’t have a problem with going again. The weather was threatening with big black clouds hovering over the area coming in from the sea. On the trip up to the castle, I’d seen a campground just a few miles from there so I figured I could stay there that night.
The castle was interesting but my feeling was that it wouldn’t have been to much fun living there, except for the pool in the basement, because it was so dark with far too many religious icons all over the place. The library was cool, with thousands of 1st edition books. I did try to take pictures but they have a strict ‘no flash’ policy and then with the weather being so bad, it was pretty dark in nearly all the rooms. But, I’ll put some of them up to at least give you an idea of what the place looks like. About the weather, we hung around the interpretive center while we waited for our bus. Dark but calm. A couple hours later, when our tour was to begin, it had started to rain and the wind had picked up. During the tour, we had to run for it a couple three times as we left one area of the castle for another. When we got up to the 3rd floor, the wind was howling, and looked, based on the trees, that it was 50-60 MPH. Kind of happy we were inside that day. The rain came down in buckets for the whole tour, over two hours.
The weather turns ugly on the way to Hearst Castle.
Storm warnings were sent out around this time...
We arrive at Hearst Castle.
Some of the statuary.
The outdoor pool. Hearst had it rebuilt a couple times over the years, trying to get it perfect.
Another view of the pool and the statuary.
Would love to live here for a time...
A little wet here.
The wind is picking up, was around 35MPH at this point.
The first room we visited was on the ground floor.
One of the living rooms.
Another set of priceless antiques.
The pottery and the painting were all very valuable we were told.
Each room had a fireplace or two...
Check out the wind blown tree tops...it was really raging for a while there.
Another of the many finely furnished guest rooms. Hearst really liked to entertain his Hollywood friends. Usually invited 20-30 people at a time to stay over for a long weekend or even a week at a time. Often flying them to San Simeon in his private plane.
One of the outdoor walkways.
A few first edition books.
Some of those lamps are worth 10's of thousands.
Another fireplace with fancy lamps!
There were several small balcony on the upper floors.
The 'Grand' room. Place for everyone to gather and talk at the end of the day.
And the dining hall.
It is quite the room, woundn't mind watching a good football game here.
Some of the rare 'gold' objects at the castle.
Still a pretty big storm out there. Happy I was inside.
We brave the weather to walk over to the pool house.
And here is the spectacular mosaic installed by Italian artisans at the pool.
A little light on the statuary.
A little more of that incredible floor.
What an amazing place to just take a swim.
And finally, the pool itself.
How'd you like to hang out here?
Amazing place. I mean, really, who wouldn't want to hang out here?
A little natural light at the shallow end.
The diving platform.
I'm thinking here of ditching the tour group, sneaking back and taking a quick dip.
And a last look at the window wall.
Well, that’s our tour of the Hearst Castle. I did get more pictures of the giant visitors center and our drive up and then down the hill to/from the castle but those didn’t survive the great ‘dead motherboard’ & ‘dead harddrive’ debacle of 2010.
Dan left me at this point and drove back to Rosamond to go to work the next day. He did inform me that he’d decided to keep working for another two years for some reason. He’s 66 now and could have retired this March. Thinks he’ll live forever I suspect.
Anyway, after the tour, I hung out in the visitor center, guess it was around 4pm, for the weather to calm a bit. It really didn’t. Finally around 4:30pm, I just braved the 200 yard walk to my RV with just a light windbreaker. Wasn’t even waterproof. Then I drove my RV back south 4-5 miles to a state park. The low cost section was blocked off. So I had to park in the expensive part of the park, $35 per night for just a spot. No electric or water, just a spot with a fire ring (it was raining buckets), a picnic table and a near by washroom. WHAT A HUGE RIP OFF. If you are thinking about going to California for camping, forget it. They are trying to fix their budget problems by ripping off campers. DON’T GO TO CALIFORNIA.
It was late, near 5pm, raining with no let up in the forecast, and miles from any other campground. So, pissed as I was at the 71% increase in camping rates in one year at that state park, I went ahead and paid and stayed. I will not camp anywhere in California again. I did try to start my genset but it always has trouble starting in wet weather so after a couple tries, I gave up and just did without AC for the evening. I had myself a MRE for dinner, even used the chemical heater that comes with it, found it to be ‘not bad’.
My MRE dinner. Comes with lots of goodies too, like Skittles, PB&J, pound cake, crackers, etc.
(The burn spot on my stove top was there when I bought the rig. I tried to sand it down and paint it once but the paint only lasted a few weeks. And yes, it was high temp paint).
Crawled into bed to read by 9:30. Totally dark and dreary by then, with sheets of rain coming down intermittently throughout the evening. Wind gently rocked me to sleep.
Too bad you could not camp up top,it is really beautiful. Sorry about the fee. Our state government is wacko. 32% of the countries welfare recipients don’t cha know. Got to pay for it some how.
That would have been fun. Maybe someday they’ll put an RV park up there. But I’m guessing that they will never lower prices now that they’ve gotten them so high, so I’m pretty sure I won’t be staying there.