Last night when we finished writing our story for the day we made some last minute reservations for a tour of the Hearst Castle which was just a couple of miles from where we stayed. The Hearst Castle is a mansion which was built between 1919 and 1947 for William Hearst, who was a newspaper publisher in the early 20th century. The house was donated to the state after he died and is now a state park. The house, like the Biltmore Estate on our last trip is not only huge, but is over the top in every way. The castle sits on top of a mountain on a ranch which was over 25000 acres. The main house, or the castle, is over 60,000 square feet in size with other buildings on the property totaling another 30,000 square feet. We were lucky enough to score a 9:50 AM tour. Tours run every 10 minutes all day long and all other tours were sold out until 11:50. We took the 950 tour so that we could get on the road and see other stuff. While this house was certainly not the grandest house we’ve seen (Biltmore has it beat), the level of detail in the architecture was just amazing. Inside the house there were also various art collections, including paintings, furniture, silver, rugs, and even wildlife on the property. He had zebras on his property (and there are still some today), kangaroos, polar bears, to name a few. He also often entertained the Hollywood and political elite at his home. We took the hour or so tour and then we wandered around the outside of the home for another hour or more before getting back on the tour bus back down the mountain. To give you an idea of the size of the property, the bus ride each way is about 15 minutes. After touring the castle and grounds we decided that we need to be rich.
 |
| View from castle |
After leaving the castle we headed back north for a couple of more miles to see some elephant seals on the beach. On the map we bought yesterday we saw a beach pointed out where elephant seals like to sun themselves. Thanks to geocaching, we knew that the pull-off that was pointed out on the map would be packed with people to the point where you would be more like to get a picture of a person than a seal. There was a geocache hidden about 1/3 of a mile north of the main parking lot. If one was willing to walk for 10 minutes you would see what we saw: dozens of the seals on the beach with not a single person around. As we walked to the cache we first saw about a half dozen seals on the beach. We thought this was impressive. We then saw two smaller ones just up the trail a little bit and we saw two more in the water diving. We thought we were unlucky and this would be it. Then we saw a couple who was coming down the trail towards us. They were surprised to see other people this far up and they told us to walk for 3 more minutes over a sand dune and we’d hit the jackpot. We followed their advice and we saw probably 50-60 seals on the beach and we had the place to ourselves. We watched the seals lay there, fight, yell at each other and slither around (or whatever seals do) for maybe 20 minutes before starting back towards the car. When we got closer to the car we looked down the beach where there were easily 100 people looking at about a dozen seals spread over the beach. If only they knew..
 |
| The people who told us to keep walking. |
Completely unrelated, as we were walking back to the car we started talking about how many foreigners we saw not only on this road trip, but also on the last few road trips we have taken. It seems there are more Europeans, Japanese and South Americans touring our great country than there are Americans. Where do all the US citizens go on vacation? We definitely see far more foreigners on the road than anyone else. We vowed to try and strike up a conversation with some of them to find out why they come to the US (probably weak dollar) and what they see when they come here but they always pretend to not speak English.
After watching the seals it was past lunchtime. We went to a deli in Cambria, CA called Sandy’s where we got a turkey with avocado and hot pastrami. They put lettuce, tomato and hot peppers on the pastrami, which we thought was strange, but it was still pretty good. We stopped at the first pull off to eat by the ocean with a great view and a nice breeze.
After lunch we were unsure of what we wanted to do so we just started driving hoping we’d figure something out. When we got to San Luis Obispo, on a whim we went to the San Luis Obispo de Tolosa Mission, one of twenty-something missions located throughout California. The Spanish missions in California are a series of religious and military outposts established by Spanish Catholics between 1769 and 1823 to spread the Christian faith among Native Americans. The missions were spread about 30 miles apart because by horseback that was about a day’s journey. The missions were usually comprised of a church, as well as workshops, kitchens, living quarters, storerooms and other buildings usually grouped together in a quadrangle where events and celebrations took place. Today these missions are some of the oldest buildings in California. The mission in San Luis Obispo was somewhat small yet still impressive. We spent about a half hour there before getting back in the car and moving on.
 |
| Do not head toward to light |
We made another stop while in San Luis Obispo, the gas station and car wash. We needed gas but we didn’t need $4.23 gas. Unfortunately that was all they had. We got a car was as well which while costing $6, brought the gas price down by 20 cents per gallon. Normally we wouldn’t wash our rental car but while on the Old Coast Road yesterday we scraped up against some branches which combined with the dust gave the impression of large scratches down the side of the car. The rental car kid would think it was a scratch and try and charge us for it so we decided to just wash the car and make the “scratches” go away. We also wanted a clean car because every time we walked by the car we got dirty clothes.
After the car wash we drove south along Route 101, which is also known as El Camino Real. While driving we kept seeing large bells on poles along the side of the road. These bells had no markings that we could see at 70 mph but they were interesting and there were a few of them. We saw probably 4 of them in 20 miles, enough to make us think they meant something. Finally when we hit a rest area there was a display explaining what they were. These bells were early highway markers, first placed in 1906 to mark the route of El Camino Real, which refers to the 600 mile route of the California Mission Trail. Given the lack of standardized signs at the time these bells were placed, hung on 11 foot high supports in the form of shepherd’s hooks. There were originally 450 of these bells and over the years they either disappeared due to highway relocation or vandalism. When the count got down to about 80 the state started replacing them. A few years ago a program was put in place to restore the bells and today there are 555 of these markers up and down El Camino Real.
Somewhere along the way we made a reservation on our Holiday Inn app using points for a Holiday Inn Express south of Santa Barbara. We wanted to stay at our favorite hotel, Hotel Indigo but the only one in the area was sold out for the night.
We ended up stopping at two more missions, Old Mission Santa Ines in Solvang, CA. Solvang was a pretty cool little town. It was founded by Danes back in the early 20th century and today is it basically little Denmark. There were restaurants, bakeries, beergardens and all kinds of other fun stuff all over the place. Had we known about this place sooner we would have stayed. Next time. We took some pictures and checked out the inside of the church at Santa Ines and we drove south towards Santa Barbara. In Santa Barbara we visited Mission Santa Barbara, which was by far the largest of the three we visited today and one of the largest of the 21 missions in California. Unfortunately, the original mission was destroyed by and earthquake in 1925 so what we saw today was a replication, but it was still impressive. Since it was around 8 when we got there everything was locked up so we could not get in but we did explore the outside a bit. After leaving the mission we went towards downtown Santa Barbara. Thanks to geocaching we knew that what is believed to be the largest fig tree in the country is located in Santa Barbara. It was after dark when we arrived so we now have something to do first thing tomorrow, but in 1997 this tree was 41 ½ feet in diameter 4 feet off the ground. This is a big tree. We took some pictures in the dark and then drove the 10 minutes more to our hotel. We will return to the tree tomorrow.
 |
| Santa Ines |
 |
| Santa Ines Inside |
 |
| Santa Barbara |
No comments:
Post a Comment