Our Mid Life Crisis Trip (Chapter 2.)

Hearst Castle Was A Sight to See...
And Big Sur... Beautiful!

We got to the Castle in plenty of time, relaxed a bit and picked up our tickets at the Will Call window. We got some pizza, browsed through the museums, and waited for the movie to start. There was an awesome set of giant carpet murals on the walls of the theater waiting room. They depicted some type of war and peace scenes from ancient Sumeria in the "who knows how long ago" times.

We also got a kick out of this old fire truck in the parlor. Here again, I got myself in trouble because I have to "touch" everything. With Chris, you'd think that I could break a fire truck or something. The couch was cool too. It had this neat ottoman that sort of doubled as a coffee table (well maybe you wouldn't really want to put coffee on it but you could).

           

 

           
The movie started right on time and it was pretty cool. The screen was 5 times as high as your typical movie theater. It got Chris kind of dizzy, but she made it through with flying colors. They basically took you back to the times before William Randolf Hearst was born. His father discovered silver in the Sierra Nevada and used the money to buy mucho land in California. This was land newly taken over from Mexico and you can see how people fell in love with it. It is still as beautiful today.

Anyway, Hearst's mother took him on a year long tour of Europe as a child and this is where he got his love for European splendor. I would do the same thing for my kids if I had the means. That was a great thing for them to do. When Hearst got older and made his own fortune in the publishing business, and after his mom passed away, he inherited hundreds of thousands of acres of this land and that's when he began the project of building (and rebuilding) this unbelievable place. It is worth coming to see. We only took one of four possible tours. I think the best part is the swimming pools, especially the indoor one. I couldn't get a picture of it because of the light. It is more beautiful than the one outside in the picture.

 

We got out of The Hearst Castle at around 4:00 PM so we decided to keep on pushing north through the coastal area. This is some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. It is a place where high craggy mountains crash with the sea and create very unusual sights. I wanted to stop more but we had to figure out where we were going to stay. We made it pretty far that evening and ended up settling right into the small forest area of Big Sur. I found out that Big Sur just means Big South. It was given that name by the Mexican land owners before the US took over the territory. It is big.

The sun started to set so we had to figure out where we were going to sleep. There weren't too many towns along this route so we were beginning to think that we would end up sleeping in the car. Eventually though we found a place...


We found a small cabin type hotel. Unfortunately, the pictures didn't come out to good but it was a small cabin with two rooms in it, one bedroom and one bath in each. There was no TV, no radio, and really nothing to do. I like that so I took it... $70 bucks. That wasn't too bad. Actually it was really nice... clean... it had a heater... and it was nice and quiet... at least until the neighboring couple got home. We could hear everything they said and did... They didn't do anything weird, it just was that we could hear it all... and we knew that they could hear us too... I mean every breath. It was that clear. Actually they were very considerate and quiet. Hopefully we were too.

 
We had kind of an interesting experience when we went to dinner. We went to a small but nice restaurant across the street. We were the only ones in the restaurant. I ordered Chicken Pot Pie and Chris got some type of Pasta. As we neared ending our meal, the waitress told us that they were going to have more customers coming in and that I would have to turn my cellular phone off. At first, I said sure, but by the time we left me and Chris were steaming about that. It was so strange. It seemed to me that what she did was the same as me asking someone at the table next to me if they would mind not talking while we sat there. I don't know. It just bothered us. I must be prejudiced about cell phones. Needless to say, her tip was less than normal and I even left her a note cause it kind of ruined our mood (shouldn't have but did anyway). Chris didn't like the food too much either.
   

When we got to our room, we read to each other for a while. That was different. It was just what I needed to relax and just forget about all that was going on at home. Chris fell asleep and I went outside for a while and just checked out the stars and brushed my teeth ( I didn't want to wake up Chris or our neighbors). It was a beautiful and cool night. The stars were very clear and easy to see here.

We woke up at about 6:00 and got on the road by 8:00 AM. Here again, the scenery was just awesome. There was still a good amount of road ahead of us till we hit civilization. I got a few nice pictures of the coast. One of them was some type of offshore island that had morning fog all around the base. It made it look like the island was floating in a cloud. I think that someone lived there. A few other spots offered places to look at the sea and the cliffs. I tried to get a picture of a nice sea gull but he took off and wouldn't stay still so I just shot him (camera shot) as he flew away.