The-PITTSTOP

Hearst Castle

We enjoyed a seaside campsite in north Morro Bay before a few days' downtime to have some RV repairs - unfortunately, to correct a bungled repair from December when we were in Wilmington, NC. We finally managed to get to the Hearst Castle in San Simeon. He originally called the architect and said he wanted to put a little house on some property that his family used to camp on in San Simeon. Well, thirty years later and many millions of dollars, he died without seeing his dream completed, but he did build a home that far surpassed his original ideas. He worked with the same female architect for many years, and as his vision changed from a small something on the hill to a magnificent estate, he saw it as a museum for the public at some future time and the estate was donated to California after his death. The working cattle ranch surrounding the castle is still owned by the Hearst family corporation.

The estate is at the top of a tall hill overlooking the ocean surrounded by miles and miles of grazing lands. Much of the interior decoration came from churches throughout Europe - tapestries, ceilings, fireplaces, choir seats, artwork. The front of the estate looks like a church, including 9' tall crosses on the belltowers, even though Hearst was not especially religious. Some photos....

The front door

Kitchen had rotisseries, ovens, and multiple stoves capable of easily serving gourmet meals for 100+

Ultra modern kitchen - this stainless worktop was heated from below and used as a warming station before serving

The "assembly" room - where guests congregated for cocktails at the end of a day of adventure around the estate.

Gorgeous 15th and 16th century tapestries

One of many fireplaces

Choir seats as side chairs throughout the downstairs rooms from European churches.

The dining room

One of the many ornate ceilings - this was one with Moorish Spanish theme

A 2500 square foot guest cottage on the grounds

The outdoor pool, heated, of course

The indoor pool

The indoor pool had natural light streaming down from ceiling window blocks embedded in the tennis courts above

Tile work was extraordinary - gold leaf tile at the 7' bottom of the pool

Views of the ocean in the distance from the patios surrounding the castle

Views of the mountains looking north from the Castle. The faint peak behind the hills was the Hearst land boundary - 35 miles away.

Hearst had a major zoo on the grounds with most animals given to zoos in San Diego and San Francisco. A herd of zebras still roam the grazing lands.

Zebras share the grazing lands with the Hearst cattle.

Morrow Bay and Elephant Seals

We used a nice county campground, El Chorro, as a home base to explore San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay.

A few miles south is the small city of San Luis Obispo, home of Cal Poly University, with a vibrant downtown with lots of shops and restaurants. A number of folks had suggested we stop at Firestone Grill for California BBQ - tri tip steak sandwhich. Took some doing, but we found some parking and got in the long line that stretched out the door to order. It was worth the trouble - delicious sandwhich and great people watching.

We also explored Morro Bay - famous for Morro Rock. From photos I had seen, I thought Morro Rock was a medium sized rock way off shore, but boy was I wrong! It is huge and right at the harbor. The sea otters were hanging out just below the rock and falcons next on the top of the rock, but we never did see them.

Morro Bay

Sea otters, wrap themselves in seaweed to keep themselves from floating too far

Morro Rock from across the bay

We left El Chorro on Sunday and drove north on Scenic California Route 1 to see the Elephant Seals, just north of San Simeon. We spent the entire afternoon watching the seals. The males have the big nose and they are here now to mate with females after the moms are done nursing their pups who were born in January. They are extremely noisy - the females arguing with each other to protect an area for their pup, pups squealing for the moms, and males bellowing to intimidate other males. Quite a bit of hanky panky going on, but unclear whether the females were willing participants as the much larger males would get close to the female, clomp down on them with a flipper and worked very hard to achieve their biological duty to procreate, while the females seemed to loudly complain the whole time.

The elephant seals spend the winter here to birth pups, nurse the young for one month, and mate. They do not eat or drink the entire time.

The seals spend most of the year in the ocean, diving between 500 and 5000 feet to find food. Their whiskers allow them to sense prey moving - prey is fish and shellfish small enough for them to swallow whole.

They flip sand up over themselves to keep cool in the sun.

The males' noses grow starting at maturity at around five years old.

Females arguing over beach space for a pup

The seals' eyes are ten times more sensitive than ours as they need to be able to see in the darkness of the deep ocean depths.

Pretty useless teeth, and simply catch they prey and swallow them whole.

Some are incredibly ugly and some are cute! After watching for hours, we could see the different personalities.

They lose almost 50% of their weight while stranded on the beach and spend much of their time sleeping - the rest of the year they will hunt and eat in the sea without touching land.

Monarch Butterflies, Shell Beach, Avila Beach, Montana de Oro

We are meandering up the coast on Route 1. We stopped at another section of Pismo Beach and watched a guy haul a huge fifth wheel through the deep sand towards the dry camping area. Jack wanted to try driving on the same beach, but I was too afraid of getting stuck - we don't have four-wheel drive like the trucks and cars we saw.

We drove a few miles north and stopped at the Monarch Grove. These are western Monarch butterflies that winter over here - not the ones that go to Mexico. They cannot fly under 55 degrees and they will cluster together hanging on to the limbs of these Eucalyptus trees and survive the mild winters here. When the temps climb a bit like they did here, they will fly around and look for mates.

A surprising side story we learned from the volunteer butterfly expert, the Eucalyptus trees were planted here en masse because the railroad companies thought they could use them for railroad ties as California had been denuded of trees by the 49ers. They imported them from Australia and the trees twist slightly as they grow quickly, but no one expected that here in the northern hemisphere, they twisted in a way that makes them susceptible to fracturing when a railroad spike was hammered in - so California has lots of Eucalyptus trees whose timber is useless, but they did need the windbreaks.

Anyway, back to the beaches. We continued north through small resort towns of Shell Beach and Avila Beach (mostly a harbor), enjoying a few stops to have lunch overlooking the ocean and enjoying the views.

Avila Beach

Campgrounds with electric are hard to find along the coast, and the few we could find were unreasonably expensive. We found a state park campground, El Chorro, just a few miles north of San Luis Obispo with nice spots with trees and green grass and nice and quiet - no trains! In the morning, I walked some trails they had through a small botanical garden. We arranged to stay here a couple more nights as a home base to explore the area.

Shell Beach

Then we drove five miles north to another state park on the coast - Montana de Oro. We spent the afternoon stopping at gorgeous viewpoints, walking the beach, and hiking the bluff trail overlooking the bay. We are on the "back" side of Morro Bay and we could see the famous Morro Bay rock in the distance. We will head to Morro Bay in a couple of days.