Hearst Castle

This is the castle built by newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst on the California coast in San Simeon, a couple hours north of LA.  Actually, as the rather pompous tour guide told us repeatedly, it actually is not properly called a castle.  It's correctly called something like "The Hearst Summer Cottage at San Simeon".  However, her point was undermined by the "Hearst Castle" written in big letters on her ID badge - and by the official web site, which is of course www.hearstcastle.org. 

The "castle" is located high up on a bluff looking out over the Pacific Ocean.  This facilitatesone of the more entertaining or terrifying parts of the tour, depending on the thrill-seeking level of your personality.  No public cars are allowed up by the castle, so you park down by the shore and take a tour bus up to the top.  The road is a narrow, steep, winding road - the kind of road, you drive up carefully, especially in a large tour bus.  Our bus driver flew up and down this road as fast and in as reckless a manner as possible.  I think at least half of the bus thought they wouldn't live to make it to the top for the tour.

The castle was a summer home for Hearst and his mistress (his wife stayed back home in NY) and actually consists of three cottages.  There are actually several tours, most (if not all) of which do not go through the entire grounds.  This is something that they neglected to tell many tourists, thus leaving many to feel ripped off (after spending $18, you'd think you'd get to see the whole thing).  Our tour saw one of the small cottages and the first floor of the main cottage, which included the reception room, the dining room, and the movie theatre (yes, a legitimate, if smallish, theatre).

The dining room did answer one long-standing question I had.  Hearst was the inspiration for Orson Welles' classic movie Citizen Kane, widely considered the greatest, or at least most influential movie ever made.  However, it was almost never released.  While the movie never specifically alludes to Hearst, the character of Charles Foster Kane is obviously a thinly-veiled caricature of Hearst, and it is not a positive portrayal.  Hearst, being one of the richest and most powerful men in the country at the time, used all his power and influence to try to block the movie's release.  This story is related in the HBO movie RKO 281, which while I haven't seen, I heard is fairly interesting.  Anyway, in the movie, one of the seemingly more preposterous scenes involves a character standing by and being dwarfed by an outrageously large fireplace.  However, there is indeed a humongous fireplace right in the dining room. 

Big Sur and the Bixby Bridge

The Hearst Castle was a stop for me on the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), which I've always wanted to drive up in California (there's also a PCH in New Zealand, which I believe I've also driven - see my Australia/NZ report).  Several years ago, when I spent a month in Monterey, I drove a small part of it.  One reason for that journey, was that the thrill-seeker in me wanted to drive the most dangerous road in America.  It is obvious why it has this reputation.  It's a steep, winding two-lane road with lots of blind turns; and off to the west is the Pacific coast, with some of the most spectacularly distracting scenery you can imagine.

Another reason was to finally figure out what the heck Big Sur is.   I had heard of Big Sur but had no idea what exactly it was.  During my stay in Monterey, I took a trip down the PCH to find Big Sur.  However, it's not really well-delineated on a map.  There's a Point Sur and supposedly a town called Big Sur, but Point Sur was unremarkable and I never found anything resembling a town.  I drove for about 50 miles until I thought I should be in the midst of it, but there was nothing distinctive.  It was getting late and I didn't want to be on the PCH after dark, so I turned back.

On this trip, since I was going up the coast the entire way to Monterey, I knew I'd pass Big Sur.  And sure enough, I finally found it (it was just a few miles farther down the road from where I turned back on the first trip) and discovered why it is notable.  Most of the coast is pretty dry and sparsely vegetated.  While the cliffs and the ocean are spectacular, there isn't much else - just brownish grasses and a few scattered small trees.  Except for the Big Sur region, where due to some small-scale climate regime I presume, there's a beautiful densely forested area.  Of course, I could've just checked out the website and saved the drive, but oh well.

Another goal was to check out the Bixby Bridge.  This is also is along the PCH and is one of the most photographed bridges.  Even though you may not have heard of Bixby Bridge, you'll know it when you see it; check here for just one of numerous sites with photos.  It's an elegant single-span concrete bridge over a deep canyon right on the coast.  There's a commercial that's lately been on tv quite frequently that features Bixby Bridge:  two guys are getting ready to bungee jump off the bridge, but then see some scantily clad women playing volleyball on the beach below.  I think it's a commercial for a car, but since I can't remember what kind of car - or even if it is actually for a car, I guess it's not the most effective commercial.

Another accomplishment on my trip up the PCH was my first In-N-Out Burger.  The first In-N-Out was built in 1947 and over the years it has developed somewhat of a cult among burger afficionados.  For many years there were very few locations and they were only located in California.  Now they are widespread throughout the state and have expanded into Nevada and Arizona.  However it is still privately owned (no franchises) and they do still draw very devoted customers.  I have to admit that it's probably the best fast food burger I've ever had, far superior to McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy's.

Sequoia National Park

Another place I always wanted to visit was Sequoia National Park and its neighbor King's Canyon.  It was a bit out of way and required a stayover Fresno (a city I strongly recommend never visiting - a real pit of a town and one which does not do a good job with their road signs, resulting in a 30-minute unplanned detour).  Sequoias are known as the largest trees in the world.  An important caveat is that these are the largest in terms of mass; they are not the tallest (the coastal redwoods are taller),  nor the thickest, but just most massive.  Regardless, they are impressive.  By the way, for you Star Wars geeks, this is the area where the scenes from Endor in the Return of the Jedi (Episode 6) were filmed.  Fortunately, I did not encounter any Ewoks.

Perhaps as impressive as the trees themselves is the drive into the park, which was totally unexpected.  I knew the park was near the Sierra Nevadas, but I noticed that the elevation was only 7000-8000 feet.  Coming from Colorado, this isn't particularly high.  However, in California, you start, not from 5000+ feet like in Colorado, but from the floor of the San Juaquin Valley, which is ~500 foot above sea level.  And you cover that 7000 foot elevation gain in about 30 miles.  It's one of the more impressive mountain drives I've taken.  The way down was harrowing.  They tell you to save your brakes by using low gears.  I was using low gears, but was still on the brakes a lot.

About a third of the way up to the park I passed through Squaw Valley.  The name sounded familiar, but it took a moment to remember that this town was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics (and the first Miracle on Ice by the U.S. hockey team).  This just didn't seem right.  First, for some reason I always thought Squaw Valley was near Lake Tahoe, much farther to the north.  Second, it's not much of a town, at least not anymore - there was only a post office and a convenience store as far as I could tell.  Finally, it's not the kind of town you imagine for a Winter Olympics.  It's not really in the mountains at all and I doubt it gets much snow.  Could this possibly be the Squaw Valley?  No, it couldn't.  Turns out there's another Squaw Valley in California - just where I thought it was, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.  So, I didn't get a chance to check off another Olympic city from my list (which includes:  Munich [1972], Atlanta [1996], Melbourne [1956], Los Angeles [1932, 1984], London [1908, 1948], Paris [1900, 1924], and (oddly enough) St. Louis [1904] for the summer games and  Innsbruck [1964, 1976], Cortina d'Ampezzo [1956], and Salt Lake City [2002] {also Vancouver as of 2010}for the winter games).