We realised in the morning that the RV Park was the same one
we stayed in on our 2011 trip. We continued along highway 1 along the coast.
Lovely views, but we decided not as spectacular as the Oregon coast. It was
more desolate landscape, drier and not as many viewpoints to stop at. There
were lots of houses built along the cliffs, and some built in places that
surely must get battered by waves in the storms. We drove through a stand of
Redwoods at Big Sur, but not as big as the old growth forests. We met some
cyclists at a viewpoint who were cycling from Canada to Mexico. Interesting
trip!
We saw a beach with masses of elephant seals, but we couldn’t stop
because there were too many cars in the pull off area. That was the other thing
we noticed – heaps of traffic.
We stopped at lunchtime at Hearst Castle, one of
the many homes owned by media giant William Randolph Hearst. Construction of
the estate began in 1919 and continued for 27 years until Hearst’s death. It
really is something else to see.
Hearst was an avid art and historical
artefacts collector and had the vast fortune to buy whatever he liked. The
house is huge – 115 rooms, 3 guest houses, two pools, a zoo etc etc. It is kind
of Mediterranean style, but each room contains things like medieval ceiling
panels, 15th century tapestries, antique Persian floor rugs and so
on.
We did two tours – the main reception rooms and the upper floors. Each tour
only went through a small number of rooms. To do the whole estate takes 4 hours
on a private tour and costs $750.
The guest list of people who stayed at the
estate was a “whos who” of the times – Einstein, Winston Churchill, Charlie
Chaplin, the Warner Brothers to name a few. The guide told us a story about
Jean Harlow, who appeared for dinner one evening in a transparent dress and no
underwear. Of course the room went completely silent as the distinguished
guests tried to decide how to handle the situation. Hearst leapt up, took off
his dinner jacket, wrapped it around Harlow and said “you must be cold my dear,
please go up and dress for dinner”. After the tours we wandered the gardens –
the pools were just amazing.
Dragging ourselves away, we drove inland, through
more wine country on highway 46, to Paso Roble and the start of our run through
to Sierra Nevada and the sequoia forests.
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