Dec 8^th

On Monday morning we left our week long retreat in Bakersfield and once again headed towards the coast. After stocking up with supplies including a live 3’ Christmas tree from Walmart (and lights), we headed towards Paso Robles for a night. The park was only 2 years old and very nicely constructed with stamped concrete sites and lots of space and gardens between sites. We headed for the pool and hot tub in the late afternoon for some of the final rays of the day. The only downfall of this park is that it is located right beside Hwy 101! The row we were in was the closest to the highway – my estimate was 150’ away. Our sleep that night wasn’t too quiet or restful.

Anyway, it got us closer to our main destination the next day which was Hearst Castle at San Simeon, CA. http://hearstcastle.org/ I have listed their website here for those interested and I will try to be short in the narrative and let some of the pictures do the talking. William Randolph Hearst was an eccentric man who was a media baron owning 26 newspapers, magazines like Harpers Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Good housekeeping, and a movie production company. He had a rich father and when he was 10 he and his family toured Europe for 1 ½ years, which is where he got all his grandeur ideas for the castle he was to build later in life. When Hearst owned the castle, which is now managed by the California Parks Commission, they had 250,000 acres. The acreage has now been reduced to 82,000’ which the Hearst family still raise cattle on. Back to his story….briefly. He started building the castle back in the early 1900’s and ran out of money at the time, but by the late 30’s he was back at construction with the help of a architect from San Francisco-Julia Morgan. After 15 years of construction, it was at the point where he could move in, but it was by no means finished – still unfinished today. He was an avid art collector and with his wealth he was able to bring literally boatloads of art and items to use in the construction. He would find abandoned church’s, etc and disassemble entire ceilings, pews etc. to be used later. See pic’s. The tour we took was the Grand Rooms tour. The main house called Casa Grande is 68,000’ with 38 bedrooms and 30 bathrooms. There are 3 “cottages” ranging from 2,500’ to 5,300’. The tour began in the Assembly Room. Often he would have weekend guests, usually rich business people or movie stars (Charlie Chaplin – often) and in the evening before dinner they would “assemble” in this grand room having happy hour waiting for their host to arrive. He would arrive and mingle a bit then it was off to the Refectory (dining room)-see pics. After dinner the guests would continue on to the Morning Room (also used for morning coffee) to wait for the staff to clean up the dinner. At that time, they all would go to the theatre, including staff, to watch home movies or feature films.

After our tour, inside, we were free to roam the gardens, pools and the rest of the outdoor property. It was beautiful and just kept going on and on. Incredible! In his time, Hearst had the largest private zoo in the U.S. The remnants of that now are Barbary sheep and a herd of Zebra that roam the range with the cattle.

Hopefully I haven’t been too wordy and I’ll let the pictures provide more insight into this man’s vision.